Mutations

Spring semester: day thirty-seven (in a row?)

This is quite possibly one of the strangest semesters I've ever had to deal with. Like, ever.

Let's put aside, for the moment, the issues I've had with paychecks and health insurance and sleeping issues. Let's put aside for the moment the extreme differences in weather, where it can be nearly 80 one day, in the 20s that night, and 40 the next day, or when we get a snowstorm four days after it's been in the 60s for the better part of a week. I'm even willing to brush aside, for the moment, that our department lost one of its administrators, I have no clue what's going on for the fall, and I'm getting married before the fall semester happens anyway. No, I'd like to focus on the "nobody gives a shit anymore" mentality.

Case in point: last night, I taught my 011 night class. That class has nineteen students on the roster, almost a full section (the class caps at 20). Of those nineteen students, only ten showed up. They had a new paper due, as well as any rewrites and leftover journals I needed to collect for a grade (if they wanted them graded at all before the end of the semester, when I collect them again). From those ten students, I received about six papers, zero rewrites, and zero new journals. My grade book for that class looks like it's been riddled with bullet holes because of all of the zeroes in it for people enrolled in my class who either show up and still don't do the work, or don't show up and don't do it. At least one more student auto-failed due to absences last night, and of the ones who haven't auto-failed yet, some will sooner or later -- if not for absences, they'll mathematically fail from not doing the work.

No matter what the class is, I've never taught a class where almost half the class doesn't show up, doesn't do the work, or both. I've never seen this before at the university level in my going on five semester years of teaching now. In every class, I'll usually have a few stragglers who slack off a bit, and those stragglers will either drop, auto-fail, or they'll buckle down after midterms and work their asses off enough to pass with their C-minus. Never have I seen so many students so nonchalantly just skip class, show up a week or two later without having done any work, never ask me any questions, and then skip another week or two after that until I email them, tell them they're about to fail the course if they miss another day, then they show up the next week still with no work done to turn in to me, still never talk to me or ask me any questions, and then disappear for good.

Yes, this happens. This has actually happened at least twice this semester.

I don't get it. I really don't. There are students who have been there every week, students I've given assignments to by hand, students who have listened to every lecture and know exactly what they're supposed to do for their papers and journals, and still haven't turned in a single piece of work to me. Ever. As I've mentioned before, this is a remedial English class -- at best, it's teaching them...10th grade English? At the hardest? And at its easiest, the core of the class where we work on sentence structure and grammar, it's probably 4th to 6th grade English. I really can't simplify the course any more than it already is, especially since I give them templates telling them how to write every paper in the class and email them frequently to tell them what we're covering and when, how we'll go about covering it, and what the due dates are for the assignments. Short of literally making them sit there for three hours every week to cover forty minutes' worth of material, which I refuse to do, there's nothing else I can really do to make the course any different than the last 011 course I taught, and nothing I can do to make it easier on them since it's a credit/noncredit course.

Of course, I do have the good students, which make up a little more than a third of the class -- the students who ask me questions, who email me when they need guidance on something, who turn in every paper and assignment on time and conference with me first before every paper comes due so that they can get my feedback and can do better on the final copies of said papers. Not all of those students are native speakers, either -- two or three of them are international ESL students. Most of them are doing quite well in the course.

I had to have the midterms discussion with them last night, as the midterm date is today. For a credit/concredit course, midterms are even more meaningless than usual. There are only 34 of the 100 points in the class calculated thus far anyway -- they've turned in but two papers, had two quizzes, and I've collected their journals for the first time and calculated the first half of their participation grades. That's it. They've still got three more papers to write, a practice final exam we'll do on the last day of class that counts as much as a paper does, the actual final exam, three more quizzes, and the other half of their journals and participation points. The semester may be half over, but their work isn't. They're doing papers once every two weeks or so when we return from break at the end of this month -- because that's the way the class has to be scheduled for a once-a-week night class. The bare minimum these students need to receive the currently passing "CR" score on their midterm grade is 24 of those 34 points. Some of the students have it, but the vast majority of them do not, either due to absenteeism or not doing their work. I still stressed to them that it was meaningless anyway, and is doubly meaningless for our class, since it's just something they make us professors do and it's not generally an accurate representation of anything when it comes to one's final grade in the class.

Still, I'm sort of at a loss as to what to do with that class for the rest of the semester. I can't really change any of the lesson plans or assignments, so it's fairly certain that if people stop showing up and auto-fail due to those absences or due to mathematics, by the time May rolls around I'll only have a handful of students left who can pass the course.

By comparison, my other two classes are going extremely well. They show up, they do their work, they don't give me any shit, and all of them do what they need to do in said classes. I'll have to spend a few hours or so over the weekend, probably on Friday or Saturday, to calculate everyone's midterm grades and post them, and that involves spending the time I need to make sure everything's actually graded and recorded as well. I have to do that before I leave for Omaha, as the window for posting midterm grades is only open until Monday, I believe. It may be open longer than that, but I'd rather not push it, and I'd like to get everything taken care of and out of the way before then.

My pay stub info is now available online, so I can see how much my check on Friday will be. It's less than it was this time last semester, but with all of the adjustments and re-adjustments that's been made over the course of the past two months, I can see why and it's understandable, I suppose. For the rest of the semester it'll be even a little more less once my insurance benefits kick in and they take that out of the check every two weeks. It's not a huge issue, however -- I'll still be able to pay my bills and rent just fine as per the usual, and I need to remain on some semblance of a budget anyway to be able to save as much as I can for the wedding and after the wedding. But, of course, let's just say that I definitely have more motivation to get my taxes done now so that I can get my refunds processed.

As for those insurance benefits, all of the paperwork was sent over to the HR office yesterday, including the life insurance beneficiary form -- on which I listed Daisy as my primary (and only) beneficiary. Each beneficiary listed needs their SSN on the form, and as I don't have either of my parents' SSNs on hand (it would be weird if I did, of course) she's the only one I listed. The policy only lasts until the end of May anyhow, so if, for some reason, I die between now and then, she makes about forty bucks. Woohoo, right?

Daisy and I were discussing last night about how we'll do the visit this time around -- and we'll get a lot of alone time when we're there, some quiet downtime that will allow us to spend more time together in peace in a place that's not this house or this state. She plans to come down on Monday night after she sleeps (she works until Monday morning) and then we plan to turn around and go back, with me driving most of the way, of course, in the overnight hours before we sleep for some of the day on Tuesday. She wants to take me to a vapor shop so that I can look through some of the e-cig vaporizers and possibly get one, and then we need to look for a jacket for me for the wedding -- and purchase one if possible, regardless of cost. The time has passed to be choosy, and I have to find something, like, now so that we no longer have to stress about it. Every time I've gone to Omaha I've always checked the thrift stores for jackets, and none of them -- not a one -- have been in my size (or most of the time, even close to my size). The jackets people donate to places like Goodwill are worn by people with 29-inch waists and arms eight inches shorter than mine.

I may be a large man, but I'm not that large or disproportionately-sized. I wear an XL or 2XL t-shirt. I have a 42-inch waist and a 30-32-inch inseam (depending on what shoes/boots I'm wearing). These have been my sizes since middle school, despite any weight gain (or, in recent times, loss) over the years. But I have broad shoulders, a broad back, and long arms, and because of that it is incredibly hard to find a suit jacket that is not only in my size, but would be comfortable to wear all day/night in a formal setting such as my wedding, short of going to a tailor and having one custom made -- which, of course, in no way in hell could we afford. I'm not a dressy person, so it's not like I have my measurements on hand and memorized. For me it's enough that I get out of bed and out of my bathrobe/slippers once a day, and if I can avoid it, I don't even do that.

So those are the first two things we plan to do. We'll probably go see the new Mr. Peabody and Sherman movie, and we'll probably go out to eat at a Chinese place where they serve vegan food/appetizers/etc at some point, but the trip will be fairly short overall anyway. We'll have to come back Thursday night, as Daisy works on Friday night -- and she'll need time to sleep and drive back to Omaha before that, obviously.

As for the title of this post, it not only refers to the massive differences between this semester and other semesters I've taught, but (again) to my allergies. Monday it was almost 80 degrees here. Yesterday it was 72, before a strong cold front rolled in and brought with it 40mph cold winds, dropping the temperature last night down into the 30s (if not 20s in some places). Today it's 55 right now. This has confused my seasonal allergies -- they don't know where to go or what to do, so it appears that they're mutating and are finding new ways to annoy me. I'm not overly tired or fatigued -- I slept for ten hours last night -- but my jaw is bothering me where it connects to the skull on my right side, which is usually a sure sign that my eustachian tube is clogged and draining poorly. My ears and sinuses are clogged up anyway, and my ears are popping like crazy and have been for two days now. There's a lot of post-nasal drainage down my throat, and my lungs have filled with invisible pollen and other allergens, giving me a slight ache in them and in my throat when I cough -- all big-time spring allergy signs for me. Once my body adapts to the weather and the allergens in the air, these things no longer bother me and I can go about my normal life for the next, oh, four months or so. Of course, if we get another cold snap or snowstorm, all of my allergies reset themselves again, and I'm in for another week or two of misery and hating the weather because of it. It appears, at least, that the weather is going to remain mostly stable for the foreseeable future, with highs in the 60s and lows in the high 30s/low 40s at night, at least here anyway. As of the forecast right now, the weather is going to be similar in Omaha while I'm there.

This afternoon, I have to get a shower and prepare for my evening 210 class tonight. It's beautiful but still a bit windy, making it a bit chilly outside even though it's 55. I didn't even wear a coat to campus yesterday, just a light jacket, because even by the time I got home last night long after dark, it was still in the high 40s. Tonight, since I have no one to particularly impress on West campus and only teach a class of eight students, I'll probably just wear the Flash hoodie that Daisy bought me for Christmas as it's thick enough to keep me warm just fine, and the heater in the Monte Carlo actually works (and works well) when it's well above freezing outside.

Interesting side-note: I have two Flash hoodies. The first one, which is probably six or seven years old at this point, is old and faded, and I can only wear it around the house because the zipper slider on it broke off, meaning I can no longer close it. I really need to find some way to repair it by putting a new zipper slider on it, because I really like that hoodie and it's just been sitting in my closet for the past two years or so since the zipper broke. Daisy got me the new one because of that. I love the new one, but it fits differently than the many-years-old, broken-in old one. The new one is also a lot slimmer in its fashion and is more form-fitting, despite the fact that it's a size larger. Daisy told me that it's not something mama can do, but she'd work on it eventually and try to fix it herself.

So that's the rest of my day for you. Showering, teaching tonight, coming home, eating something (more than likely, anyway) and going back to bed so that I can end my week -- and the first half of my semester before Spring Break -- tomorrow morning when I finish teaching my 102 class. I have to stop by Walmart tomorrow afternoon on my way home to do some shopping for essentials, but other than that, despite my allergies and grading I'll have to do over the course of the next few days, I am slowly coasting into my Spring Break.