They Really Like Me! (Or at least one does)

FINALLY! I have a review on Rate My Professors. I've checked many times before, hoping for and craving positive feedback from legions of anonymous students who were all inspired by my exciting yet informative and challenging class. For the longest time, there was complete silence.

Apparently, I forgot all about it when I wasn't teaching last semester. I mentioned to Keith earlier this week that I didn't have any ratings and he said I was wrong. I did have a rating, and I even got a chili pepper for hotness! What exciting news!

Unfortunately, when I checked out my rating, I was a tad bit disappointed. With a mere two sentences, my former student managed to make two different grammatical errors. Plus, the rating was posted last summer ... at which time I was only teaching an online class. I suppose I can hope that the reviewer was a former on-campus student, and the chili pepper is actually based on the student seeing me, not on one fuzzy picture in my Blackboard profile. And the grammar mistakes were .... meant ironically? Let's go with that.

Anyway, thanks for the positive review, anonymous!

February Update

Still here! We're all settling into our post-holidays routine. Well, some of us are. Declan hasn't been very good about sleeping through the night. I'm not saying he has to sleep 10 hours straight (although that would be nice ...), but after about a week of only waking up once in 7 hours, he's now gone back to waking up and eating every 2 hours at night. Not cool! Like many facets of baby behavior, I'll just keep my fingers crossed and hope that this development fades away soon.

Something I never got around to mentioning earlier is that I am teaching this semester. I was on the fence about whether I was ready to go back or not. I told my department coordinator it would only make sense for me, fiscally, if I had an evening or online class so we didn't have to pay for childcare. At first there wasn't anything like that available, and I was equal parts disappointed and relieved. But then an evening class opened up, so now on Tuesdays and Thursdays I give Keith a quick kiss when he gets home from work, hand over the kids, and run out the door. I've really been enjoying it! They're a good class and it's a nice change of pace from being a SAHM. It's gratifying to do something that isn't undone a few hours later (changing diapers, washing laundry, cleaning the kitchen, making meals). I think it's a lot harder on Keith, though, to come home after being at work/commuting for 10 hours, to then be charge of the kids for nearly 3 hours. It wouldn't be that bad, except Declan has made it clear that he doesn't approve of this arrangement. We're both keeping our fingers crossed that he changes his mind soon, or at least stops protesting so vociferously, because if he keeps this up I think Keith might need a hearing aid by the end of the semester.

I think those are the only major developments. Our winter has been very mild, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it continues! When I need to get out of the house, I usually take Beckett on walks around the block (a mile). I've been much more prone to that since the snow melted and hasn't really come back. Plus, Eleanor has ridden her tricycle with us the past two times. I've been so impressed with her, riding for a whole mile! She's so motivated; not once has she asked me to carry her or push her along. Sometimes she needs one or two pushes to get over cracks, uphill, etc, but just for a few seconds and then she's off again. Watching her race ahead of me, it's almost like I see her growing up before my very eyes.

Yesterday she wanted something with her lunch. "After all," she reminded me, "I'm almost 4 years old."

I know, sweetheart. It will be here before we know it! And then, suddenly, you'll be 33 and living in a purple house and a professional ballet dancer, just like you're planning. Life changes so fast!

Lunch Date

Today Eleanor and I met Keith at work for lunch. (Clearly, the picture is not actually from lunch today. It's from this past weekend, when we visited Hale Farm. But we did not actually take pictures of Keith sitting at his desk, so this will have to do.) When we started talking about a day to meet for lunch, I was shocked to realize that we've only ever done it once before, when Eleanor was only a few months old.

The problem has been twofold. First my always-changing work schedule would get in the way, which in the Spring meant working 4 days a week, right in the middle of the day. Secondly, for a very long time, Eleanor has been taking a nap right in the middle of the day. There was no way to plan on meeting Keith for lunch without expecting it to go very, very badly. I'm not complaining about the nap—I love the nap!—but it could be a bit inconvenient.

But these days, she's become a bit more lenient about the time of her nap. Previously, she had to be down by noon or 12:30 at the latest. Lately, her nap can start anytime between 12 and 2, and it will (usually) still be a good, 2-hour nap. So it was time!

It was so fun this time to show up at Keith's work with a toddler. She was very excited to see Daddy at work. The elevator doors opened, she ran out and turned to see him then yelled, "Daddy!" and launched herself at him. He shushed her, but with a big grin on his face.

He showed her his desk, with many Eleanor pictures on it, and introduced her to his co-workers. It was so fascinating to watch Eleanor take it all in. She knows that Daddy is "at work" a lot, but I don't really know that it's ever meant much to her. What did she think that meant, exactly? Did she have an idea in mind? Or did she just equate that with "not here" and not really think about it any more?

The only downside is that it's really expensive to park downtown. We wanted a close spot to Keith's work, because I'm very pregnant and didn't really want to drag Eleanor several blocks back and forth from the car to his building. But we were there for less than two hours and had to pay the daily MAX of $11. WTF?!? I think they charge in 6-minute increments, like the lawyers at Keith's firm. So even though the meal itself wasn't expensive (especially since we didn't buy Eleanor her own meal but just shared ours with her), the entire outing was a bit pricey.

Still, even with the complaints, I'm glad we did it and I hope that we can do it again sooner than 3 years from now. I'm interested to hear if Eleanor says much about it, next time we talk about how Daddy's at work. Next up: Eleanor sits in on a college English class!

Firefox Add-Ons

For quite a few years now, we've been using Firefox as our Internet browser of choice, instead of Internet Explorer. One of the great things about Firefox is that, being open source, there's a million different add-ons to increase and personalize its functionality. If you're thinking of getting some, this is the main page for Firefox add-ons. Here's some of my favorite add-ons (keeping in mind, of course, that I call everything an "add-on"; I don't really understand the difference between an add-on vs. an extension vs. a user script):

• Greasemonkey: Customize the way a web page displays or behaves, by using small bits of JavaScript
• Personas: Over 30,000 different designs to personalize your browser. Purely decorative, but fun!
• ColorZilla: Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies... This is helpful when I'm designing Christmas cards or, say, baby announcements, and trying to find colors that work together.
  
• Word Count Plus: Counts number of words in selected text. Can add the count to a running total. This has been a huge help to me with teaching online, to easily make sure students meet the posted word count.
  
• IE Tab Plus: Many websites don't adequately test for compatibility with Firefox, so they don't display properly in my browser. When this happens, switching on IE Tab usually fixes the problem.
  

End of the Grading

Yesterday I was talking about the end of the summer semester, but was mostly focused on my concerns about what comes next. Today I'm just focused on grading and wrapping up this class.

Final essays were due yesterday. I thought I'd get a lot of them graded during the day while my sister watched Eleanor. I thought my students would be eager to finish the semester. Alas, I overestimated their eagerness to finish, and underestimated their procrastination tendencies. Out of the 10 essays I was expecting, only 4 were turned in early enough that I could grade them during my "work" hours. A student emailed me at 10:30pm, the night before essays were due, to ask some basic questions about essay content. The kind of questions that should have been asked long, long ago. I'm not looking forward to grading that essay.

Teaching online has been .... interesting. I have really enjoyed the shorter, weekly assignments, and having the opportunity to respond to their writing regularly throughout the semester, instead of on only a few bigger assignments. If it's a case of practice makes perfect, in some ways I think being in a 100% written environment, as opposed to verbal class discussions, is more effective than a traditional classroom. I also like that it's much easier and clearer to require the same participation of all students online. It doesn't matter if you're shy; everyone is required to make X number of original discussion posts and Y responses to your peers. End of story.

Online, it's also much easier to define "participation" in a clear way. If you are regularly signing into the course site, making your posts on time, and completing quizzes, you are participating. If you're not doing those things, then you're not! None of this showing up to class but not paying a lick of attention to the content. (Yes, I'm aware that using the phrase "lick of attention" makes me sound 80 years old, but oh well.) I also took the advice of a colleague and noted in my syllabus that, if a student hasn't logged into the course site in two weeks, I will block that student from accessing the site and will only allow access to the student if he or she contacts me directly and explains the absence. So much more straightforward than the ones who disappear from class and, just when you think they're gone for good, they show up again, expecting to get an A!

On the other hand, I don't feel like I really know my online students. It bothers me a bit that I could walk past them on campus and never know. Two students, maybe three, came to meet me in person this semester. Most of them declined that option. Sometimes I feel like I'm just sending information out into the void ... I don't get much feedback on what is working or not, so it's hard to believe that I'm teaching effectively.

Of course, every time I've taught a class for the first time, I end the semester feeling like I won't really have the hang of it until I teach at least one or two more times. I need to try out several different strategies before I have a good sense of what really works. At the end of a semester, I also immediately know that there's some parts I would want to change, and others I would keep. Then the majority of the class format, assignments, etc., could go either way.

I am glad that I've had the opportunity to teach online. I think that what I've learned about the benefit of short, weekly assignments will definitely affect my traditional classroom teaching strategies. I'm just sorry, from a pedagogical perspective, that there's going to be a break between teaching online and going back in the classroom. From a grading perspective, I'm ready for the break!

A Pause in Gainful Employment

This is my last week of the summer semester. Since I'm taking off the Fall for the arrival of Little Sibling in October, I won't go back to work until January ... or possibly even later. I'm still not sure how childcare is going to work with two kids: one a 3-year-old who is going to AM preschool Mon/Tues mornings, and the other a newborn. Add that to a class schedule that will definitely NOT be Mon/Tues mornings and it just seems so messy. In theory, I do want to go back to work. I know that I'll miss it. In reality, me going back to work for one or two classes in the Spring may cost us more money that I would make. We'll see what happens.

I want to be excited about being home full-time. I was more excited about it, when it was further off. I'm starting to get worried, though. Honestly, I just don't know what kind of stay-at-home mom I'll be. From my perspective, being a SAHM seems like a LOT of hard work—a lot of unpaid, underappreciated hard work, 24/7. I foresee my patience constantly being tested, and very little time away from home and children to refill the inner serenity pool.

Balance is something that I am constantly seeking, but rarely find, in my life. Work/home balance. Spending/saving balance. Time for self vs. time for others balance. It seems like there's an opposite side of the coin for nearly all important aspects of my life ... and one side always gets short-shrift. I'm afraid that the idea of balance is going to get even further out of my reach when I'm home.

I know; I'm looking at this all the wrong way. I'm looking at the negatives, and not the positives. I know there will be positives, too. There'll be more time to run errands, so I won't be as stressed to get them in. We'll have more lazy afternoons and spontaneous trips to the playground or museums. (That part I definitely am looking forward to.) What I'm most looking forward to is not constantly splitting my attention between home and work. As a teacher, I don't get to leave my work at the office. So, every naptime, I'm always asking myself, "Do I try to get work work done, or accomplish something around the house?" I'm greatly anticipating the lack of that question, and being able to be happy, at the end of the day, with getting things done around the house and not worrying about all the work work that may be lurking on the computer.

This is the point where my own wise mother would probably tell me to "cross that bridge when I come to it." There's no point in worrying about being a SAHM until I am ... and then I can really find out what annoys me. I'm (mostly) looking forward to it ... I think!

Hunkered down in the virtual classroom

Okay, so I've made it through my first week of online teaching. I was feeling pretty good on Thursday morning. Tired, from many late nights on the computer, but good. I was through with the initial launching of the class phase, and should be into the regular maintenance phase. The workload would become so much more reasonable!

By Thursday night, my feelings of well-being had worn off. We're going on vacation this Friday to the Outer Banks for a week. This will be wonderful, and I'm really looking forward to it ... except last Thursday night, I sat down and took a look at all of the assignments, lectures, quizzes, etc. that I'll have to prepare before we leave. It's even worse than my original To Do list. It was so depressing.

I feel like I'm getting a glimpse of why online classes, particularly during the summer, can be a very bad idea for students. They like the idea of fitting in class on their schedule, around all of their other activities. But do they (or I!) realize how much work it entails when we're unwilling to spend time in the classroom. When we insist on fitting in class around everything else that we'd rather be doing, or need to be doing, it will most likely necessitate late nights and long, working weekends.

I'm going to be fine. I'll complain a lot about how tough my life is, and how much work I have to do, but I will get it done. I'm sure that some of my students will, too. And I'm just as certain that some of them won't. I already have 4 students who have never signed in to the class (keeping in mind that we've already completed 3 assignments, and 1 of 10 weeks in the class). Two others have signed in once, but not actually completed any work. I'm sure there's a few others who may be involved now, but will drop off as the reading and writing piles up and there's so many other activities going on.

Or maybe the students will be like me, and keep fooling themselves into thinking that it's going to get easier any minute. I told myself it would get easier after the class started, and that didn't quite come to pass. But now I'm convinced that, once this week is over and we're on vacation, it will get better. By the end of this week I'll have 5 of the 10 weeks completely finished. And, of the remaining 5 weeks, 3 will be focused on a novel that I've taught in the past and have a lot of material for. So it will all be a breeze for the second half of the semester, right? Right. Let's stick with that, for now!

Entering the Virtual Classroom

Today is my first day in the virtual classroom, teaching College Composition online. So far, I'm not liking it.

Other professors who have experience teaching online had warned me that a significant portion of the prep work needs to be completed before the semester begins, as opposed to addressing issues all throughout the class. The reason for this is twofold:
1) It's not going to come up in class. Any questions students might have about your writing expectations, how to find information on the site, what the goals are for the class ... these need to be clearly spelled out, in writing, from day one so that students feel comfortable (as much as they can), and like they know what they're getting themselves into. As a professor, I need to try and anticipate students' concerns and address them upfront.

Similarly, I need to provide samples of writing. When I say, "You need to write a comprehensive discussion board post for full credit," what does that even mean?!? As a student, I wouldn't have known how to interpret that. Therefore, since I won't be modeling the behavior during class, I need to demonstrate what I'm looking for before they even start the assignment, so they know what they're working towards.

2) To my mind, it's reasonable to assume that online students are busy people. I think there's a misconception of online students trying to "get away" with less work or less time spent in class. I'm sure that describes some of the online students, but the majority of students I've met who are taking online classes are doing so because they need to fit the classes into their schedules somehow. And between work, family, often second jobs, etc., online is their best option. Many of them say they wish they could be attending class in person, because it's easier to learn and collaborate and it also takes some of the responsibility off their shoulders in terms of remembering assignments and due dates. Showing up to a lecture is a lot easier than figuring out the material for yourself, I think.

So anyway, if you agree with they assumption that online students are busy, then you might also agree with me (and my more experienced contacts) that it's important to give online students longer deadlines, so they can fit in the readings and assignments around everything else. When planning my traditional classes and it went down to the wire (as it usually did), I knew that, at the very least, all I really needed to have is a lesson plan for the first day. Which isn't even a lesson plan; it's going over the syllabus and expectations. Instead, for the online course, I'm trying to have the first two weeks of lectures completed (as narrated PowerPoint presentations, which are taking me forever), as well as the first two weeks of assignments, quizzes and any other activities.

Point being, it's the first day of class and I'm really tired. I've only been getting 5-6 hours of sleep a night for the past week, once I started to realize there was no way I would finish all of this in time. I just barely got up the first lecture (plus a nearly hour-long Intro presentation that I hadn't even thought about before, introducing students to the class and the site). I'm hoping to have Week Two's lesson up by tomorrow, so that I can get on a regular schedule of having the Week 3 lesson posted the first day of Week 2. And now that the class has started, the grading will become a factor, too!

I have been assured that, once the online semester starts and class is moving along, it actually becomes much more manageable. I'm clinging onto this hope, because I definitely need the workload to lighten up a bit. Or else this isn't going to be much of a summer!

Plagiarism Top 10

I think I briefly mentioned it in passing before, but the Spring semester is over! Finals were last week, and I have a mere two weeks before Summer session starts. (Well, just over one week now.)

Final papers this semester were pretty atrocious, overall. Individual students were fine, but in both my classes I had wayyy too many obviously plagiarized papers. For anyone who's wondering, here's a few ways to tell that a paper is plagiarized.

For example, a C student who relies on words like "things" and "stuff" turns in an essay that starts, "Mary Shelley was cleverly inspired by the theme of an uncontrollable creature wreaking vengeful destruction upon the heads of his monomaniacal scientific creator and his world is sustained in a way that makes the book a powerfully unique presence in English literature." This is a dead giveaway for several reasons:

1. The last name Shelley is spelled correctly. The majority of the time, the Frankenstein papers, even though we've been studying the book for several weeks, refer to the author (Mary Shelley) as Shelly, Shelby, or something else just off enough to show they don't really care.
2. Not only was "wreaking" used correctly in the sentence, but it was also spelled correctly.
3. This sentence is quite long, but it's still grammatically correct. For most of my students (the ones who are in the position of plagiarizing their final papers, anyway), there is no way that a sentence this long wouldn't be a run-on or have random commas or a complete lack of parallelism between parts of the sentence.
4. Frankenstein is English? Well, I'll be damned. I wonder if I asked the students, how many would give the correct answer to Mary Shelley/Shelly/Shelby's nationality?
   
5. Monomaniacal? You couldn't even change it to something a little less obvious?

Another giveaway is when the paper explains to me why Frankenstein is a good example of Gothic literature. Um, we didn't cover this AT ALL in class, and none of the assigned paper topics even come close to asking students to address this topic. So you usually can't even be bothered to show up for class, but now you're going to do extra research outside of class to identify the genre of the work?

Finally, when a student cites a source like Sparknotes or Free Essays.com in the Works Cited, but has never cited these sources within the essay. And yes, this has happened.

I'm not sure that two weeks is enough time for my end-of-the-semester cynicism to wear off.

My Favorite Way to Grade

Especially when it's rainy and cold, like it has been lately. But of course, when not pregnant, there's also a glass of red wine on the table next to me.

I'm getting to the grading part of the semester. Only one month left to go. The rest of the lessons are (mostly) planned out. The assignments are created. Now it's just grade, grade, grade!

Student-Inspired Haikus

We were talking about haikus in class the other day, and I watched this one student play with his phone the ENTIRE time. It was very .... inspiring.

Cell phone still in hand,
Despite many warning glares,
He blithely texts on.

---

Is there a teacher
Anywhere in the world, who
Doesn't loathe phones out?

---

He texts with intent,
Warmed by the small screen,
As the rest of the class learns.

---

The flower in bloom
Becomes a butterfly, but
The texter missed it.

Spring Break! ... in Cleveland

Today is my first day of Spring Break, and this is what it looks like. Keep in mind that, as of yesterday afternoon, all of the snow had melted. It had been raining for two straight days and the backyard was a total mudpit.

So, on the plus side, I won't be spending my week off wiping down Beckett twenty times a day and occasionally throwing him in the shower.

But, on the downside, SNOW!! More freakin' snow. It doesn't feel much like Spring. Or look like that. Oh well, no matter what the weather does, it's still a week off from classes. So the "break" part holds true.

The Happiness Project

I've had a lot of ideas swirling around in my brain lately (and clearly, not making it into the blog) and I feel like they are coalescing into The Happiness Project. Or my own quirky version of it.

My Mom has had this book for a while, and apparently I pick it up every time I go over there. My Mom actually bought another copy for me because she saw me eying her copy all the time. It just seems so decadent. A whole entire year spent devoted to finding my own happiness? But when would the grocery shopping get done? And how could I sleep?!? I feel like I spend so much time just trying to make it to the next day that it's hard to imagine devoting much, if any, energy to The Big Picture. I'm stuck looking at my feet instead of down the road.

Which is related to another blog post I started composing in my head and never actually finished. How much time do I spend making myself miserable RIGHT NOW, with the hope/promise that my life will be easier later? And how often is it actually easier later? Or do I just find something else with which to fill the time that I struggled so hard to free up?

So of course, I'm up late to grade papers. And instead, this is the time that I choose to step back and think about The Big Picture. Because I have been miserable lately. I want to be happier about my choices in life and instead I feel the stress levels building again. Last night I dreamed that I had a new job. It was still part-time, in a small office, and was incredibly laid back and low key. No late nights here!

So in this dream, I was explaining to my new co-workers why I quit teaching. Even though I enjoyed it and felt passionate about it, I also thought it was very stressful and didn't feel part-time at all. It felt like I was teaching full-time and taking care of Eleanor full-time and the rest of life—anything else I needed or wanted to do—was fit into the little bits of time left. As I explained the situation to them, it was as if a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders. I suddenly realized how light and relieved I felt.

And then I woke up.

And Eleanor woke up, an hour ahead of normal. And then we dove into another frantic, crazy, out-of-control day.

It gets back to what I said before about having margin. I don't really know what I need to do to fix it, but I know something needs to be done. So I'm signing up for the 2011 Happiness Challenge, and hoping desperately it doesn't just become another item on my to-do list.

It's Not Your Problem

Apparently, I've gotten to the point of being a little too comfortable with last-minute lesson plans. I get my lesson plans "mostly" finished, and then forget about them.

Like for Tuesday, I planned the lesson the night before and was set. I got to campus early enough to sit for a few minutes at the adjunct office, check my email and mailbox, print out a few files, and then leisurely wander down the hall in plenty of time for my class. I was so relaxed!

Until I got to class and, looking through my lesson plan about a minute before class started, I saw that I was intending to look at three articles to talk about the research papers. We would work on paraphrasing vs. summarizing vs. using direct quotes, and then the students would need to create a Works Cited entry for their articles. Did I remember to print these articles beforehand, when I was sitting at the computer checking my email? No. The night before I had meant to send myself an email with links to three articles, but apparently hadn't even managed to accomplish that.

While I had the students working on a short literature response, I ran down the hall, found 3 relevant articles, and printed off a few copies of each. I didn't even have a chance to skim the articles so that, when I asked them to summarize the main points, I could be certain that the students had, indeed, focused on the actual main points of the article. Instead, when they told me about the main points, I nodded and smiled.

So anyway, when I was scampering down the hall to belatedly finish my lesson prep, mid-lesson, I passed a guy on a cell phone. All I heard of his conversation was, "Look, that's not your problem. Don't worry about it! I will take care of it."

And I was immediately jealous. I would like many, many things in my life to not be my problem. Granted, shoddy lesson planning should be (and is) my problem. But there's a lot of other issues—like when our house is falling down around our ears or Ohio is thinking about stripping public employees (like teachers) of collective bargaining rights or this country's dependence on fossil fuels and refusal to financially support public transport—that I really wish didn't always feel like my problems to solve.

Is there any way that I can send myself a repeating email? Maybe a reminder on my Google calendar that pops up a few times every week saying, "This is not your problem! Don't worry about it." Or at least stop worrying about it long enough to finish your lesson plans.

Survey says ... Good job!

My final class was this afternoon, and right now I'm grading the last of the essays from this semester. Less than 10 to go!

Of course, even with the finish line in sight, I'm still dallying. Watching a bit of "Bones," grading an essay, posting a blog, grading an essay .... you would think that I'd feel this super urgency to get through the grading and be Done. Done for a month! But the lethargy of grading wins out. There's only so many essays I can read on the same topic without zoning out.

One really nice thing about the end of this semester has been the class surveys. I created a basic survey to find out whether my students thought my teaching was effective or not, and maybe give me some suggestions on what to change or keep. Overall, I've learned:

1. No one agrees on whether they liked the readings or not. The feedback on nearly every one runs the gamut from "completely ineffective" to "best ever!"
   
2. No one agrees on whether some online activities were helpful or a waste of time. This was something new this semester, and I was really hoping the surveys would clarify whether it worked or not. But clarity is not to be had.
3. They like me, they really like me! Even the class that was the most challenging (cell phones out, staring at me when I asked questions, not wanting to do activities) gave me overwhelmingly good feedback. The answer to the question, "What should I change?" was almost always "nothing," or something very minor. What students wanted to change most often was themselves: "I should have been in class more" or "Paid more attention!"

My first reaction, of course, is to float on Cloud 9. I will always keep these surveys. It definitely ends the semester on a high note, and actually makes me look forward to the next semester (which doesn't usually happen for a few more weeks).

On the other hand, as a pseudo-scientist, I doubt their objectivity. For several reasons:

1. I am their only ENG-1010 professor. (Not true for all, but for many.) It's hard to rate me compared to other ENG-1010 profs or compare this course when you don't have experience with anyone else. Particularly when, for many students, this is the first college-level English course they've taken.
   
2. I handed out the surveys in class, stayed in the room while they filled them out, and collected them at the end. They may have tended toward positive remarks either because they didn't want to hurt my feelings, or they didn't want to hurt their grades.
   
3. The students who had really bad things to say about the class most likely didn't make it to class, had given up on participation points long ago, and just emailed in their essays.

It's a good feeling. Everyone loves positive feedback! But I am taking it with a grain of salt. There were differences in all three classes, but all of them said to not change a thing. I think that students like what they know, and because this was their English class, they want to believe that it was a good one.

But I'm not completely a Debbie Downer, I swear. It was really important to me that they all felt like I was available outside of class and that my expectations (and subsequent grades) were clear, and those issues were definitely affirmed.

Anyway, that's probably all of the dissecting of the surveys I should do. I could keep going, except it would read like a 12-year-old girl's Pro/Con list for asking Sean to slow dance on Friday night. Every positive would have a negative, the list would never end ... and all of the i's would be dotted with cute hearts.

Back to grading. After I get a glass of wine ....

Christmas Ornament 2005

This ornament represents kind of a best and worst moment in my life. It was purchased in November or December 2005, from the Ten Thousand Villages store in the O'Bryanville area of Cincinnati. This ornament might look quite familiar to some, because we bought a lot of them and tied them onto everyone's gifts that year.

We were living in Cincinnati at the time. Since February, I had been working at a job that made me completely miserable. I was so depressed, actually, that I was taking antidepressants for the first (and still only, up to this point anyway) time in my life. I cried all the time. When I tried to enter the work building, I could feel the tears building up. My boss was horrible, there was too much work to do, not enough time to do it in, and no recognition that I was given an impossible task, with an impossible manager, and doing the best I could with hardly any training or support.

I stuck it out for as long as I could—much longer than was reasonable, because I'm stubborn like that. But I finally handed in an ultimatum at the end of November to the department head: You've been promising me for months that you would remedy all of these complaints, which you have agreed are an issue. I'm tired of promises, so either fix it or consider this my two weeks' notice.

She called me in for a meeting the next day and said she accepted my resignation and it was effective immediately. She gave no acknowledgement that the situation was in any way her fault or responsibility. I was unreliable and a quitter was the undercurrent in the room. I had the rest of the day to clean out my desk and get everything in order.

I started crying because I was so shocked, even though I shouldn't have been. I was not treated well the whole time I was there—why should it start now? But I got myself together and went back to my desk. I only told one co-worker what happened and asked her to keep it quiet, and then spent the rest of the afternoon working away on my computer and pretending like nothing had happened. I hung around until after 6, when most people had already left. This wasn't unusual, since I had regularly been working 50-60 hour weeks ever since I started. I cleaned out my desk, said "good-bye" to a couple of people who were still there, and left.

I went home and told Keith and cried. I had no idea if I was relieved or upset or which way was up. This horrible job had been consuming my thoughts and emotions for months—many days it felt like it was consuming me—and suddenly it was gone. What next?

What does one do after essentially getting fired? Go shopping, of course! Keith took the following day off work and we went Christmas shopping. We had a really nice day together, because every time we are together we enjoy it, and we bought most of our presents from small shops close to our apartment. We walked, we talked, we shopped, we ate.

Slowly, the anxiety that had been squeezing my chest into a knot 24/7 started to ease. I began to think that there would be life after this horrible job. Something would work out .... and no matter what it was or how long it took, it would be worth it because I wouldn't be at that place anymore!

This ornament reminds me of just how dark that time was for me, but how far I've come since. I learned a valuable lesson that if the whole situation seems bad from the beginning, it probably is. I should trust my instincts and move on! And I should also know that I'm a good, hard worker. If I'm trying my hardest and I can't meet someone's expectations, those expectations just might be unreasonable. So instead of working myself into the ground to meet them, I should take a step back and think about what's feasible, and recognize that I need a work/life balance (emphasis on the "life" part) to be content.

Random Acts of Kindness

I'm sitting at a coffee shop on a bright, sunny morning. Usually I teach on Thursday mornings, but it's a holiday due to Veteran's Day. I still had the child carer come for her usual 3 hours, but instead of getting up and out the door by 7:30a, we bumped back the time to 9.30a. I walked to the local coffee shop to sit and grade papers instead of driving to campus and teaching class.

I've been very low energy lately, so I'm happy to have a day off to catch up on grading and, well, to not be "on." To not have to present ideas to a class and present them with enough energy and interest to get the class interested as well.

So of course, with less than an hour of my time left, I haven't even cracked open the grade book. I've caught up on emails and blogging, chatted with another professor who's sitting a table away, and generally just enjoyed not being on campus.

While sitting here not working, I saw a grandmother and two young girls trying to enter the coffee shop. The grandmother was pushing the baby in a stroller, and a toddler was trying to open the door for all of them. However, she kept pushing against the pull door with all of her might and wasn't getting very far.

An older black gentleman with black glasses and salt and pepper dreadlocks was sitting with his computer at a small table right by the door. As soon as he realized the situation, he got up and opened the door so the family could enter. He exchanged a brief, warm smile with the grateful grandmother.

So many times, I feel like I complain about being in public and seeing all of the stupid, insensitive things people do. Being "off" for a day is helping to recharge my batteries, but I also think that witnessing random acts of kindness goes a long way towards recharging my soul, too.

The Antithesis of NaBloPoMo

Yes, I am pretty much the opposite of the people participating in NaBloPoMo, who promised to post a blog entry every day for all of November. Nearly November 11 and my first post.

I always get nervous, the first post after a short (or long) hiatus. What do I have to say that makes it worth hanging around? Surely I've been doing something in my time of silence, right?

We're getting to the novels in my classes. I'm teaching The Things They Carried in two classes and Frankenstein in the other one. It's exciting to teach novels that I've taught before, which might sound like the antithesis of exciting, but not to me! I've already read the books multiple times, I have summaries and discussion questions and essay questions prepared.

I'm really learning to like the 2nd or 3rd time teaching a subject. I feel like the classes are so much more mine, more engaging, deeper. I can only imagine what the 4th or 5th time would be like, and I can't imagine the 10th or 20th!

Hey, maybe this relates to the start of this post, after all. Maybe it will get easier, the first post after a hiatus, with practice? Or is it more like the first day of class, that I think will always be exciting and nerve-wracking?

My Lesson

My teaching lesson for today: A lesson plan is merely a teaching tool. It can become a cudgel for destruction or a hammer for building, depending on the class that wields it.

My morning class was awful. They kept just staring at me as I tried to get them to discuss the reading for today. It's always a struggle to get them involved, but today actually felt like there was an invisible wall between myself and them, and I couldn't break it down. One student was clearly texting. I told her to put her phone away and she flat out refused; she put it on her lap, so she could easily pick it up again as soon as I looked away.

After that altercation, I tried one more time to engage them in discussion and was met only with blank faces. At that point, I told them instead of discussing the reading, they had almost 40 minutes to write an essay response to the reading, which they would then hand in to me. I didn't have any revolters walk out (I held my breath for the first few minutes), but it was just a miserable, boring class with little actual teaching and learning going on.

And yet, I intentionally did not change one thing about my lesson plan for my other class that evening. I went in, taught the exact same lesson, and had a completely opposite response. The students were engaged; we laughed, we learned, and time passed quickly.

I am still the same teacher. It was still the same lesson content and presentation. But the students in the classes are totally different. I totally underestimated how much student personalities can affect the class dynamic. Just a core group of 3-4 students can effect a change on the class for good or for bad. If they are involved and class leaders, the lesson plans become the start for a mutually beneficial experience. If they're disengaged and unhappy, the lesson plans become a cudgel that rains down painful blows and clunky, boring lectures on myself and the class.

It's fascinating and frustrating. What am I supposed to do about it? Student personality is definitely something out of my control.

I think that I need to continually learn and refine techniques to minimize the damage from the cudgels, and encourage building behaviors. Maybe, over time, I can reduce the gulf between the "good" and "bad" classes—keep the good classes improving, and hopefully bringing the bad classes up from "awful" to "could be improved."

Still buried, but digging

I'm still completely overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do this semester.

This isn't really all that unusual. I felt the same way—much worse, actually—at this time last year. The difference is that I think I might have reached the point where my efficiency can go no further.

I have done so much since I started teaching to improve my processes. The class I'm currently teaching is one I've taught not once, but twice before. I know the book, the lesson plans, and the assignments. True, I'm tweaking because I'll always be tweaking. But it's not the deer-in-the-headlights, what am I doing tomorrow? feeling it once was.

And yet, I'm still always behind. I still have too much grading and not enough time with Eleanor. And I'm starting to think that this level of work is not sustainable for me right now.

When I started teaching, I was told that there's a cap on how many hours a part-time adjunct professor would work. I immediately assumed I would be working right at the cap, and calculated my budget accordingly. Looked good!

But this is the first time I'm actually at the cap, and I'm completely miserable. I think I need to start rethinking the budget, because it's not worth the time I'm spending away from Eleanor, or that I sit next to Keith on the couch in the evenings, ignoring him because I'm doing work again.

I actually feel a little bit better, having decided that it really is just this much work. It's not me, it's not something I need to be doing differently to be better, faster, smarter. It's just a fact, and I need to figure out how I'm going to deal with it.