Rude Awakenings

My Spring Break: day two

This morning at 10AM, I was awakened by someone pounding on my doors. Yes, both doors, top and bottom. I didn't answer; I looked out the window and saw that it was a group of traveling missionaries/mennonites/Jehovah's Witnesses/etc going door to door trying to talk to people, and gathered as much from the fact that they stopped at every house in the neighborhood, had a handful of brochures, and were dressed like idiots.

What savage wakes up before noon on a Saturday, let alone wanders through neighborhoods bothering other people?

If they didn't have children with them, I may have answered the door naked from the waist down with my gun in my hand -- because, yes, I own a handgun.

Ahem. Anyway.

Last night -- yesterday afternoon, actually, leading into the night -- I did all of my grading and midterm grade calculations. I had not one, but three stacks of papers and a stack of journals to grade through, which I then had to record in my gradebook and once that was done, tally up all of my students' points individually, one by one, to calculate their midterm grades -- before I could put them all on Blackboard and Banner and let them all know that said grades were up. This took, from beginning to end, approximately eight hours.

Of the nineteen students in my 011 class, only seven of them are passing -- and some of them barely passing at that. The rest have either failed for absences or quite literally have no points at all in the class (or, at the most, four points from being there for two 2-point quizzes) because they haven't done any of the work. Any of the work. As it stands, quite a few of those students who are failing right now will have to get perfect scores on everything else in the class from this point forward to be able to pass the course, and that's just not going to happen.

Again, I've never had a class like this where so many students just don't care, don't show up, or don't do the work even when they do show up -- the latter being something that I don't, and can't, understand at all. There are students in that class who are doing really well and have nearly perfect scores thus far...and then there are the rest. Because of that, I know it's not me; I'm not being obtuse, I'm not being difficult as an instructor, and I've made it very clear what must be done in the course. I even lay all of it out on Blackboard and put every handout up there in PDF format. If my good students can do it, so can they -- but it's still on them to actually show up and do the work.

As for my other classes, they're about average when it comes to midterms and midterm grades compared to past semesters and my experience with this sort of thing -- I've got the students who have done everything in the class perfectly up to this point, and I have the students who need to improve and/or buckle down hard if they want to pass my courses.

Regardless, all of that grading and school-related stuff is done now, and I don't have any of it left to do aside from some minor lesson-planning for when we all come back from break. My work for the remainder of the weekend will focus on cleaning up this house, doing my taxes, and taking care of any leftover chores and errands before I leave for Omaha. I have a list of things to do before I can leave, obviously, lest I get distracted and forget to do something big. My suitcase, as you know, is already packed, though I may adjust its contents a bit between now and Monday depending on need and weather forecasts -- as well as the foresight of needing space for anything I get and/or will bring home while I'm up there. As of right now, it doesn't look like it's going to be incredibly warm up there next week, with highs only in the 50s and low 60s while I'll be out and about with Daisy. That's right in the middle ground between needing pants and shorts, short-sleeves or long-sleeves, jacket or no jacket every day.

I myself, physically, am a mess right now -- I haven't showered since Wednesday night, though I meant to last night. I didn't because I was fucking exhausted after all of my grading, which always mentally tires me out, and instead just went to bed. I've been wearing the same clothes for three days. I've eaten maybe four times in those three days. It's apparently nice outside, judging from my windows and the somewhat warm breeze blowing through them, though the only "outside" experience I'll get in the next day or two is when I go outside for a few minutes to put my car in the garage to do my monthly maintenance on its fluids, and when I go check the mailbox at the end of my driveway. I'm not a fan of being outdoors any more than I have to be.

I'm actually motivated (for once) to do my taxes this weekend; more than anything else, I just want to get them done and sent off, as I'll need whatever refunds I can get from them, small or large, sooner rather than later. My mother told me she was doing her own taxes yesterday, which is usually the trigger for me to do my own anyway. I'll either do them tomorrow or Monday, depending on which day I have more time, calm, and mental focus at my disposal. Today is "the great cleansing," where I'll be spending hours metaphorically scrubbing down everything in this house that needs to be cleaned, and I'll probably take care of the car stuff as well, before once more passing out tonight. Daisy's working until Monday morning, so she won't be down here until Monday evening.

I got paid yesterday, as I mentioned a few posts back, so I can now cover my bills and the like. I only have one bill right now -- my Citi card bill, which arrived on Thursday -- that I haven't paid yet for this month, though of course more will be coming. For the moment, financially at least, I'm mostly okay. Living paycheck to paycheck, but okay. I'm not starving or hand-wringing over paying my bills is what I'm trying to say, even if the balance on my Discover card is higher than the amount of money that's actually in my bank account right now, and will go ever higher over the course of the next two or three months. Again, I can't really help that -- the only reason I'm not starving or hand-wringing right now is because of that card and it's incredibly high limit, and I do pay off more than 3x its minimum payment every month because I want to at least try to keep it in check somewhat.

On that note, I'm off to take care of the stuff I need to do for the day, as sitting here typing is doing little more than making me sleepy again (due to my, ahem, rude awakening this morning). I will update you on the goings-on of my life when I can.