Fallibility

Finals week: day four

I'm not a perfect person by any stretch of the imagination. I make mistakes -- sometimes big, sometimes little, just like anyone else. Well, over the course of the past two days, I made a big one when it came to one of my students' grades; he got a C- in the class instead of a B-.

This, of course, came down to a computing error, and it was an error that was all mine; he turned in an assignment a few days late because he was out of town, and while I recorded it in my gradebook, I didn't record it on Blackboard, which is what I let add up my points for me. This means, essentially, he had 100 points less in my final calculations as he should have had, which is a full letter grade. No, it didn't keep him from passing or anything like that, but it did cause him to email me no less than four times, text me, and leave a voicemail on my phone (the number of which he got from the department sometime yesterday, apparently).

I, of course, reassured him that it would be fixed, and he was quite appreciative of that (obviously). Fixing it entails me filling out a change of grade form for the registrar's office and delivering it to them on Friday when I go back in there -- it's a pretty simple fix and one that I am completely willing to do ASAP when I get back to campus. But, that being said, I'm glad he noticed and told me, otherwise I never would have known. It's the first time I've ever messed up like that in my grading processes...to my knowledge, anyway. If I have in the past, nobody's ever noticed or corrected me.

I notified the office ladies and CC'ed the chair on the email that said I'd have to change his grade and needed one of the forms to do it, but didn't know if that came from our department (read: if we had any on hand) or if that all had to be done at the office of the registrar. I also didn't know if any supervisor would have to sign off on it before I could take it over there, which is why I CC'ed the chair -- he's basically my direct (read: only) real supervisor/boss figure anymore. Remember, that class is, as he put it, "my baby," and I've been in charge of it all by my lonesome for a year now. I'm sure it won't really be a hassle, and things like this happen all the time, but it still tells me that I do occasionally make mistakes. And this student's a good guy, too -- he tried really hard in my class, and his writing slowly got better and better over the course of the semester. He came to my office hours frequently, he went to the Writing Center for help, etc. He worked hard for his grade in my class; he didn't half-ass anything at all. While I'd make the same immediate grade adjustments for anyone I accidentally entered the wrong grade for, this kid earned my respect more than most, and by accidentally messing up his grade for a few days, I feel like an ass and desperately want to get it fixed ASAP.

This afternoon I received a reply from one of the office ladies, who informed me that she'd put the form in my box and that I'd have to take it next door to the advising center instead of to the registrar's office, because the advising people fix that and send it onward. Okay. Fair enough. No worries, then.

As an aside, I had another student, this one who didn't pass my class by 2%, whining about his grade today via email, and I gave him a point-by-point list why he was failing -- showing him no less than 65 easy points he could have gotten but did not. I was also CC'ing all of my correspondence with him to the chair of the department as well, to give him a heads-up in case said student tried to come up there and start complaining. I'm more than willing to go through the process of changing a grade if I've made an error -- that's on me. But if you feel like making a speech to tell me why you deserve a better grade even after I tell you exactly why you did not pass the course in great detail, citing many examples, that's on you. And I will be a little less kind than my usual self. I have little patience for grade-grubbers and even lesser still for students who try to give me shit. This kid was being as respectful as possible given the circumstances, but I've always remembered two great, all-powerful pieces of advice I was given during my very first week as a GTA:

1. You don't fail your students; they fail themselves

and

2. Don't take shit from your students.

It's highly ironic that -- now that I'm graduating in two more days, after three years of nothing but smooth sailing when it came to my teaching -- I'd run across problems like this. I feel bad failing any student, but I always come back to piece-of-advice #1 in the end. Again, my class is not hard to pass. It's geared toward Engineering students who are either really good writers already, or who can't write a coherent logical sentence. It's well balanced in both regards; I've seen good writers excel in my course, and I've seen bad writers become concise, logical, much better writers in my course. Every semester I have at least two or three students who thank me because they hated English until they took my class, or students who will come up to me in the next semester or the one after to tell me that because of my class, they were able to better focus on their writing in their other classes, and wanted to thank me again for that. Both scenarios of this sort took place again Monday, actually; one of my former students from the fall took what she learned in my class to heart, and has now been accepted fully into the nursing program here, and several students thanked me after the exam, telling me that they really enjoyed my class. One of them, a below-average writer when he entered my class, focused on his work and ended up getting an A. I also wrote him a letter of recommendation for a $200 scholarship, and they gave him $500 instead because of how much the company he'd applied through liked it.

I may not be the best professor in the department; I'm not the biggest hardass, but I'm not the most lenient, either -- but let me tell you, I've always tried to be the best professor I can possibly be. I suppose that's why now, when I make a grading error as I did Monday night for my aforementioned good student, it affects me so much. It's the principle of the thing. I know I'm not infallible, but damn would I like to be sometimes.

Oh well. There's really nothing I can do about it until Friday when I fix it, and I've calmed said student's fears so that he's not worried about it. There are still finals on Friday, so it's not like I'd be submitting the form late, or anything like that. I still hate making mistakes, though.

Anyway.

Yesterday I cleaned the entire downstairs of the house, washed the sheets and blankets, and vacuumed down there. Today I did the same to the upstairs, though that took a little more time, as the upstairs is a bit more difficult to clean. I planned to mow the grass again this morning, as it was somewhat cool and not incredibly sunny, but upon going outside to look at it, the grass itself is fine -- it's all of the dying dandelions that are high and sticking up like sore thumbs, giving the yard an unkempt appearance. I looked around the neighborhood and saw that basically everyone else's yards looked the same as mine, so I shrugged and went back inside. I did, however, trim all of the weeds and overgrowth around the house, retaining wall, and mailbox so that it doesn't look awful while I'm gone to Omaha after Friday. That only took about 25 minutes or so.

The impetus was great to get this done; I read last night before bed that there is the possibility of severe storms from...well, pretty much now throughout the entire weekend and time I'll be gone. Omaha is supposed to get rocked by some storms on Sunday, as well, which is when I'll be up there (and Daisy's one night of work while I'm there). I doubt it'll be cause for concern, but I'm always apprehensive about bad storms/tornadoes/etc happening when I'm away from home. I will, of course, be putting my car in the garage anyway, probably tomorrow after I go out to get some cat supplies (food/litter) and cigarettes for when I'll be away, but that will matter little if a tornado knocks my house off its foundation while I'm six hours away in Nebraska. If the storms come early, they may play hell with graduation and the graduation party on Friday, as well.

I got a letter in the mail yesterday about my diploma; apparently they need me to fill out a form to verify my mailing address and pay them $5 for shipping it to me. My first thought was -- and I'm not kidding -- Seriously? Something else they want me to pay for? I can apparently get five free transcripts between now and September 15th, though, so that's a plus. They want me to include a photocopy of my ID, too, so there's something else I'll have to do on Friday when I'm on campus. The action never stops.

Daisy comes into town sometime tomorrow, but does not yet know when; it will depend heavily on how tired she is after work. If she's awake enough, she's planning to come straight down here after she gets off of her shift. If not, she'll be sleeping and then coming down here after she wakes up in the afternoon. This leaves a window of about twelve hours or so in which she could arrive at any time, and I won't know one way or the other until Thursday morning. I could wake up around noon or 1 with her arriving here, or I could be getting ready to go to bed for the overnight hours with her arriving here. One way or the other, it still doesn't matter -- we still have to leave the house at 6:30 on Friday morning regardless. Parking on campus will fill up fast, even hours before graduation (especially because people's families will be in town), and I have to do a lot of shit at the office -- changing my student's grade being first and foremost, and other stuff including moving all of my office things out to her car. The closer the car is to the building for that, the better (obviously). If I'm lucky, the office might have a dolly somewhere I could borrow for ten minutes or so to get everything out to the car. Otherwise, it's going to suck carrying those heavy-ass boxes out one by one.

It's really hot and stuffy in the house; it got up to 88 here yesterday, and in the low 80s today. In Omaha, where Daisy is, it got up to 100 yesterday, breaking all sorts of records. We're in our first official "heat wave" of the season, thus proving that Kansas really doesn't have a "spring." I'll remind you that on my last teaching day a little over a week ago, it was fucking snowing, and the week before that (give or take a day or two) we got an ice storm. I've had the windows open and my fan running, which is circulating some air through the house, but it's still stuffy upstairs. It's much nicer downstairs, as always. I really hope this isn't a harbinger of the summer to come. The neighbors on the other side of the duplex have been running their air conditioner already for the past two days, and while I'm warm, it's not yet hot enough for me to even turn on the furnace fan to circulate some air through the house, much less turn on the AC. I don't know if I can stand another 110-degrees-every-fucking-day summer here. That could effectively drain any and all energy from me once more over the summer months, and possibly make me even more neurotic than I normally am when it's hot.

Of course, if you know me well, you know that I become, ahem, especially neurotic over the summer if I don't have something to keep me busy. This summer will be spent doing four things, primarily:

1.) Writing.
2.) Submitting to publications.
3.) Job searching.
4.) Spending time with Daisy.

We received the Creative Writing MFA newsletter in our email today, and in it was the list of publications by members of the department, current and former. Many of us grad students have been getting published like crazy over the course of this past year in various journals and lit mags, and I've done nothing -- I haven't been published but once, and that was well over a year ago now. More like a year and a half, really. I haven't submitted anywhere and I haven't really written anything fresh and new in several months, mainly because up until recently I was busied by student work, comps studying, taking care of all of my graduation requirements, etc. I had so many things on my docket to take care of now and right now on deadlines OMG that I couldn't focus on anything else. Once I graduate, go to Omaha for a few days, and come back, I should be relaxed and clear-minded enough to focus on that stuff, and will hopefully be feeling creative again. I'd like to be able to write at least three poems per day this summer; they don't have to be good, and I would imagine they'll be heavily edited over time, but I want to keep writing, keep exploring, keep finding things to write about and places to submit to. I'll never be famous, and I'll never be a "great poet" or write the Great American Novel(tm), but it won't be for lack of effort.

I also need to heavily re-edit and overhaul my book, too, and work on my second one. I'm not going to get anywhere with my MFA if I don't continually churn out writing and attempt to actually use my degree that I paid so much money (and went into student loan debt) for.

A bigger part of it is, well, what else am I going to do with my time?

I've been dealt a unique hand here for the summer; I have free time and enough money to survive on easily for a good six months or so. While I'd rather not run myself out of that money (obviously) it does afford me a good bit of time to pursue professional opportunities and, especially, my writing. I will probably never again get an opportunity like this, not for the rest of my life -- Daisy and I will marry, we will have children, and I will be forced to run a household, go to work, raise kids, pay even more bills, etc. While I am certainly fine with this and expect it, the amount of freedom I have now that I've completed grad school is not only unprecedented, but also gives me a timeframe, a window, to work with -- and it is indeed in the grand scheme of things a rather short window. I've basically got six months to make life happen -- to get a job, to find a teaching position, to start publishing everything and everywhere I can, and to figure out a lot of things. That window may be shortened further if I'm asked to adjunct several sections of classes in the fall at the university, or if the budget changes in July and I can do something more with the Engineering English classes I've been teaching for the past two years, but the overall goal still remains: use that degree and use it hard, and use it as much as I can while I still have the time to do so.

Add to this the wedding planning that Daisy and I will be doing over that time as well, and my hours and days seem just as hectic and task-filled as they would be otherwise. I mentioned before that I have more than likely found my wedding ring already, the tungsten carbide ring -- but there are several other ones I've been looking at which I really like as well, and several that Daisy and I have looked at for her as well. As for the wedding registry or any other planning, neither of us have really had the time to talk about or work on that as of late -- she's been working the past seven days in a row, and I've been finishing up everything school/work-related, in addition to cleaning the house.

I'm not yet done with that, by the way; I still have to scrub the toilet and clean the kitchen, and scrub cat vomit out of the living room carpet in three places (because my cats are little assholes and like to yack for no reason whatsoever). In the overnight hours tonight, I'll probably head to Walmart to get the supplies I need for the next few days and for over the trip to Omaha, but only if it stays nice outside and decides not to storm. Everything else, basically, is prepping for Daisy's arrival tomorrow, whenever that may be. If there's one thing I've learned from Daisy in the last almost-year we've been together, it's that she operates on her own time schedule and on her own frequency -- so, again, she could get here anytime between early afternoon and late-night tomorrow night.