School starts tomorrow, and I’ll be in the classroom first thing in the morning, wowing my 30 unsuspecting students with my intimidating brilliance and sparking wit. Er, or something, anyway.
I know, I know, you’re all thinking "What? School starts tomorrow? Isn’t that a bit late?!" Well join the club. Frankly, I loathe this quarter system business. I would much prefer two fifteen-week semesters to the three ten-week quarters we get now, but the end-of-September start to the year and the mid-June finish actually do suit the Zemblan Summers much better than the East Coast schedule would.
Here’s the thing though. All throughout the month of September, I have to field countless calls and emails from people on the East Coast all "Hey, Alfina, so, how is school going," and I am all "Ha HA, you hooplehead; I am not in school yet." The same thing happens again in mid-May, when those same people think I am done for the year–and then, the joke is on me, because I still have a month to go.
And it’s not that I think everyone should keep my academic calendar in their minds at all times, or anything, so I guess it’s no big deal when people forget that my university doesn’t start at the same time theirs does, or at the same time as the local public schools in their area, or whatever they are basing this assumption on. But it’s another thing entirely that when they have to act so damned shocked about the whole thing, all "WHA? HUH? NO SCHOOL FOR ANOTHER MONTH? WHA?" Because, people, hello, I HAVE BEEN AT THIS SCHOOL SINCE 2000. This is the SEVENTH SEPTEMBER we have had this conversation. You would think after seven, I repeat, SEVEN years, this would get a little easier. Ahem.
So, anyway, I seem to have gotten off track. Where was I? Oh yes, school is starting tomorrow. One huge implication of that is that my regular paychecks will be a-rollin’ in with great fanfare. You can expect me to do some kind of elaborate celebratory dance each and every time those (small, teeny, lovely, intoxicating) little deposits hit my checking account. Those, combined with the light-but-steady trickle of temp paychecks, will put an end to the Horrifying Summer of my Discontent. Bills shall be paid! Fun shall be had! Maybe this heartburn will finally go away!
While we’re talking about money, which I hear polite people do not do (but who are we kidding here?), I’d like to say a big fat Thank You to the nice people who helped make a wretched time better by using my little "Donate" button. You are all so kind to help out a cranky stranger like that, and I appreciate it so very much. And another big Thank You to those of you who bought me beers, listened to me bitch, or were otherwise just your awesome selves. Mwah!
While the financial stress is fading into the background, I expect this year to continue to be pretty gut-wrenching. It is (fingers crossed) my last year here, which means I will have to finish my dissertation (when? WHEN I ASK YOU.) and go on the job market. Ugh. I can’t believe I actually typed that. Let us never speak of it again. The academic job market is a soul-sucking, cold-hearted bitch, and some of you already know what I am talking about. Those of you who aren’t acquainted with said bitch…well, be glad, I guess. I don’t know that I’ll be writing much about that aspect of life here.
Teaching, at least, can be guaranteed to go reasonably well–or at least to go wrong in predictable ways. Most of the problems I encounter these days are ones for which I have already come up with an attack strategy. Students don’t do their reading? They fail the reading quiz and get hot coffee dumped in their laps. They don’t want to contribute to discussion? I call on them and go all Socratic until they cry, then I take a picture of their crying ass and post it to their MySpace account, which I have hacked into. Their cell phone rings in class? That one’s simple: a punch in the neck.
Teaching, you see, is easy. I just don’t know if hiring committees will respond to such measures. Do you think they’re even on MySpace?
I’ve had a cracking idea. Given that a lot of kids aren’t interested in school these days, why don’t we put em to use performing valuable work for the good of society. We could set em on making rope, chopping wood, crushing grapes, that kind of thing. And to save money for the parents, we could house them all in a communal accommodation. We could call them ‘workhouses’ or something like that. Genius!
You should try what I did last semester. I refused to give grades until the very end of the class. They literally did not know what they were getting until I had posted their grades. Instead, (gasp!) I made them read the printed out comments I had written for them when I handed back their essays (now there’s a teacher who cares!). They actually had to read and discern what my critiques meant! The horror.
In the end, they attended class on a regular basis, acutally turned in their work and bitched endlessly about my policy. But as a result, the uncertain nature of the whole thing really did keep them in line.
But I like your idea better.
Why the fuck do people actually USE MySpace???? I find anyone older than 25 who has one of those accounts creepy (with no sense of design) and MySpacers under 25 are just sadly predictable. I mean Facebook I can kind of understand. Vox looks nice indeed. Why did MySpace catch on? There’s nothing about the site that hasn’t been done before anyway (tribe, friendster,etc).
Ok, I’ll stop now.
The students are flocking back onto the R(1) Cowbell campus as well. We staff take a big sigh as we go back to inflating the academic ego and having to share the student union lunchtime with text messaging, horny students. At each turn of this wheel, I become more and more thankful that I am not 20 years old any more. (Wouldn’t mind having my 20-year-old metabolism back, though…)
You mean my ?5 didn’t go to Battersea Dog’s Home?!!
Kieran– Cracking! Don’t worry about me stealing your idea, either, I’ll let you take all the credit on this one.
Oedipa– my thoughts exactly re: MySpace. Full disclosure, though, I did have an account there for a while, because several friends were blogging exclusively over there. Had to delete it, though, because the place pissed me off so much. I do love it when my students are on facebook–don’t think I don’t look at their profiles!
M– Man, I hate it when all of a sudden it takes an hour to get a coffee, or you can’t find a place to sit for lunch. School would be much better with just the faculty and staff, I think. Heh.
KotH– No! It went to me! Mwa ha ha. some of it inevitably went to dog food, though, so there’s that. (Some probably also went to the phone company, the electric company, and maybe also beer.)
Hey guys, look at me, all responding to comments. You’d thing I had work to procrastinate about!
Your cellphone solution is elegant, but it might cause you some legal problems. I had an econ GTF once who’d just answer them for the students. Walk up, take the phone, talk to whoever was calling for a second, hang up. The same student never offended twice.