Today was the first day of the fall semester where I work. Last night, a circling helicopter kept me awake until after midnight. I finally fell asleep after 1:00 or so. Then I woke up at 5am, though my alarm wasn’t set to go off until closer to 6.
I dragged myself to the 7:30 class I teach. The campus was a zoo. Enrollment is up, money is tight, and I can’t add all the students who need a class. Just driving in and out of the campus is nightmarish.
I went home for a while, then had to go back by 1:30 for my second job–scoring assessment test essays. There were stacks upon stacks of them, and who the hell knows how all these students are going to get classes unless they put it off until winter or spring or maybe next summer or…what the fuck, maybe next fall.
Then the a/c went out around 3:30–in twelve buildings. They expected to get the part and get it fixed by 7pm. By 4:30 I was barely able to function, and we had to stop reading anyway. I had to get a few things from the grocery store before heading home.
It’s been hot and sticky and now I’ve got a sore spot because, um, I’m chafing.
And I had to drag all the trash barrels out. I am running on little more than fumes now.
It’s too early to go to bed.
I know this is all lame and weak, but I lack the energy to do better.
Anyway, please jump in and pit school, budget cuts, parking, the weather, or anything else. We might as well share the misery.
Sorry. With one exception, my first week of school went very well. Of course, that one exception was a doozy. Seems the administration decided to schedule all the 504s for the first week of school, since “we don’t teach that week anyway.” Yes, they actually gave that as a reason. Schoolwide rebellion led to a quick “Mea Culpa,” and the rest were rescheduled. But we have seen that admin have been out of the classroom for too long, and are not to be left unwatched.
Don’t get me started on budget cuts. My debate team may have to knock over a few liquor stores to get funding this year.
I accidentally went to Target on move-in day. I would have turned right around and gone home, but I needed toilet paper and kitty litter and those are not things you can do without.
It was awful. If I heard one more girl have a fight with her mom…
My first day of the semester was last Monday, so at this point I think that most of the kinks in the actual classes have been worked out. Random weird shit is still happening with the scattered student, but my classes have gone relatively smoothly so far (knock on wood, lest hubris attract the wrath of the gods).
Of course, we’re seeing an approximately 25% increase in enrollment in community colleges in CO, with concurrent budget cuts of $81 million (to be backfilled with stimulus money). Classrooms are completely full, and facilities has thoughtfully left stacks of folding chairs in the halls for the overflow students who don’t have desks.
It will be interesting to see what the new semester brings. My wife is tenure-track faculty in the Cal State system, and i’ve been hired to teach a couple of classes at her university this Fall.
All Cal State campuses are feeling the budget crunch pretty heavily. The most obvious consequence for faculty and staff is a 10% pay cut, accompanied by a bunch of furlough days. The pay cut is quite a hit, especially for the lower-paid faculty; the UC system graduated its pay cuts so that lower-paid workers suffered smaller cuts than those who make more money, but the CSU system decided on a flat rate across the board.
Along with this, student fees have risen about 15%, so students this semester will pay more than ever before, and will actually get less instruction as faculty take their mandatory furlough days during the semester. Pretty bad situation all around.
As for me, the main struggle right now is getting my syllabus together. I was only hired to teach these classes a few days ago, so i now have less than a week to put a syllabus together, order books, check out my classrooms, write lectures, etc., etc.
Of course, the first class will also bring its usual array of problems, including a whole bunch of students who will beg and plead to be allowed to enroll in the already-full class. While some faculty members are sometimes sympathetic to such requests, this semester such pleadings are likely to fall on deaf ears. In a year where their pay has been cut 10%, and in which there are rumblings about even higher teaching loads in the Spring, faculty are unlikely to voluntarily take on any more students than absolutely necessary.
Oh phew, I thought this was going to be some student whining about how hard it is that they have to wake up at 10 a.m. and actually read stuff once a week again now. Carry on!
I don’t mind the reading or the work but this is the one thing I’m not looking forward to next week. I’ll have to get up at 7 am to get to class on time Tuesday and Thursday. Then I’ll have my usual fall job corn sorting starting at 6 am on the weekends. Have a Thursday night class that goes to 9:30 PM.
I’m not a morning person.
That said, reading ahead on my text books I can’t wait. It looks to really be some cool stuff, especially the networking class.
They are mandated, must-attend meetings. Necessary, but time-consuming and admin scheduled all of them during class time, rather than before of after school.
I work at a convenience store adjacent to the local college campus (right down the street fromt he dorms). Sunday we got our first crop of hungover students stumbling into the store en mass around noon (same time as the church crowd). This is also the time of the month we get BARS (aka “Being A Responsible Store” and state stings to ensure we aren’t making underage tobacco sales). This translates to lots of spoiled brats (who likely are of legal age) who can’t be bothered to bring their IDs (and not college ID doesn’t count) and whining/pleading/begging/cursing at us when we refuse the sale. And they’re so fucking stupid when it comes making a 3rd party sale.
Don’t fucking stand right in front of the clerk and tell them your friend will buy them “cause he has his ID”, don’t stand in front of the clerk and tell your friend that you’ll buy it for him (“cause I have my ID”), and don’t bother claiming that they were for the person with ID anyway. If the clerk calls you on any of this don’t pull “Well I just happen to want the same thing so you have to sell it to me anyway”. No, I don’t.
Not really a pitting, but can I say (or may I say) my English Comp. class terrifies me? The last time I wrote a paper, I did the research on index cards in the library, and typed the paper on a thing where I had to figure out the tabs and margins and hit the return key. I’m scared to death.
If you’re a student, just be glad you’re there starting school and not sitting in your parents’ basement unemployed after graduation. And sending out resumes without a single nibble. Like some ex-students I know. All the hassle and the expense and the back-to-school drama, all in the past now, and for what? Life sucks.
My pit actually happened in July and is continuing. I live in Pennsylvania and work for the state which was/is in a budget impasse. We didn’t get paid for all of July until August 7th. Then we finally got paid, but they took all of the taxes out at once. Then they wanted us to participate in a blood drive. Then they gave us more work to do because another department was extremely behind in their work. So the way I figure it is that first they don’t pay me, then they want my blood, then they want me to work harder at something for the next three months that isn’t even my job to be doing. I thought it was going to get better until yesterday. I was told to come into one of my boss’ office for a talk. It seems that I hadn’t turned in a file regarding the extra work. I wanted to say, “Um, sorry, I was doing MY JOB, not someonelse’s job!” They told me I wasn’t being disciplined, rather, I have to be more timely in turning in the files. Sure, I wasn’t being disciplined. It’s just he first step in disciplining someone with a verbal warning…
I had projectors work in only 2/3 classes, and the bookstore is understocked in basically every book I ordered but only let me know today (and then textbook companies wouldn’t get the backorders here until November, for some reason. So I get to tell my students to head to Amazon or something.) And I still don’t have a key to my office so I have to harass a receptionist every other hour.
Oh, and there’s not a decent bike parking space left. I’ll be glad when more people start ditching class.
Just from what you have written here, I guarantee that you have better writing skills than most of your classmates. That alone will stand you in good stead with the instructor.
Silver lining to the CSU crisis: the students who failed last semester are unable to re-enroll to retake the course without my permission.
Arsenic lining: all of my department’s lecturers are being let go next year for reasons completely unrelated to performance or seniority. So, job market for me! I can’t get too upset with 12 months’ warning, but I could do without the stress.
I’m scared to go back to school this year for several reasons. First, it is inevitable that I will pick up some virus (H1N1?) from some twit who refuses to stay home from class when they’re sick. Even if I’m lucky enough to be sitting far enough away from the perp, their hacking and sniffling always drowns out at least a third of what my prof is saying, which is almost as frustrating as them deciding to share their germs with the whole lot of us in the first place. Second, it’s my last year so I have to decide whether or not I’m going to go on to do my masters. This is complicated by the fact that I’m a “mature” student (they obviously don’t know me all that well to grant me that title, heh) and at this point I don’t know if I want to keep going or just get back into the work force. A masters in anthropology is probably just as useless as my BA is going to be, so I don’t know if it’s even worth my time and money to pursue it any further. Finally, my school is trying out a new schedule this year, and while I know it’s going to be one big clusterfuck, I also know that everyone is going to use it as an excuse for EVERYTHING that goes wrong on campus, and that’s going to get annoying fast.
When your welcome literature states pick up from the after school program is between 5:30 and 6:00, and I show up at 5:55 don’t get all stick up your ass huffy and “remind” me pick up is at 5:30. If you change the agreement and don’t inform me, you can have some graciousness when you get around to advising me I have to immediately adjust my work schedule to accommodate your inability to keep to your published intent.
I’m debating between driving a metal spike through my head or going to my calc two class, I got a boring teacher. It’s his first time teaching Calc II, I’m sure he knows what he’s talking about but… ugh, today was my first day of that class and the one and a half hours felt like 6 years. He doesn’t even ask the class to participate he just drones. On. Endlessly. Maybe he’s just getting his bearings.
This probably would be more bearable if I’d ever had a boring math teacher before (bad teacher, yes, boring one not so much), I’ve been pretty lucky as far as teachers go.
Oh well, one bad pick out of the lot isn’t bad, my Japanese teachers seem to be really cool and it’s a possibility that the honors students may get paid for our group final project application in my comp sci class. I’d probably be ranting about the whole computer lab going Ubuntu because of budget cuts, but since I know how to use it I don’t really care. The only thing that really peeves me in a “matter of principle” sort of way is that anyone that wants to drop a class after the one week mark has to pay a $25 fee because of the budget cuts and recession fallout. My friend says it violates the Arizona constitution for various reasons, while I wouldn’t go that far I do think it’s bullshit.
All the hassle and the expense and the back-to-school drama, all in the past now, and for what? Life sucks.