Sunday, October 19, 2014

Week 9: Is This Semester Over Yet?

I know there's always been the stereotype of the absent-minded professor, but for me, I've (generally) thought of my professors as competent, professional people who work hard to keep up with everything they're doing.

I feel less and less professorial and more and more like I'm still a grad student barely treading water.  What, the letters Ph.D. are after my name?  Yeah, I'm not so much feeling it right now.  I know that part of this has been because I've been sick over the last week.  On the other hand, though, part of it is because of my grading.  I keep asking myself--did I really do this bad a job of teaching?  Failing midterms, pervasive plagiarism problems (not intentional, just a clear lack of understanding about how to summarize), having to continually drop students from my class due to attendance, and other concerns have me wanting to pull my hair out.  More than that, they have me wanting to go to the faculty council and demand a fall break, just so I can catch up.  I'm beginning to absolutely define the phrase 'absent-minded professor' simply because I don't always know what day it is.

In the meantime, I've been snowed under with grading, and I don't anticipate that stopping between now and the end of the semester.  I have conferences coming up with my 1301 and 1302 students, which means I need to calculate midterm grades for them.  I'm giving serious consideration to revising some of my assignments so it's easier for me to grade.

And as we go along, I still have these moments of distinct hate for Texas.  My mother-in-law is wonderful and sent us several packages of country ham in the mail because country ham is not a thing down here.  (I asked in the grocery store if they had any and got "What's that?" in return.)  The highlight of my week last week was parking behind a car that had Fayette County license plates, because it meant that there was someone from Kentucky on campus with me!

I've also been sick this last week.  Stress--even though I don't really feel all that stressed--is eating my stomach alive, and ginger ale and lemon drops have been my constant companion.  (I've had several people ask me if I'm pregnant--apparently that combination of things is a dead giveaway?  I'm not, though.  I checked.)

We did have some good news this week--potentially good news.   The job Dear Husband got turned down for at Del Mar apparently didn't work out with the original person they hired, so they contacted DH this week to see if he was still interested.  His background check form was turned in on Friday, so hopefully we won't have too much longer to wait before hearing something official.  He was very glad, particularly since he found himself watching Rachael Ray this week while he was cleaning the downstairs.  Apparently, that is the point at which a man begins going stir-crazy.

But for now, I'm taking a break from grading before my head explodes, and Cat and I are going to hang out and do something fun.  Maybe read something fun or play a computer game.  I'm sure whatever we do, she'll be right there with me.  She always is.







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