I am lucky there were only four days this workweek, because if I’d had to deal with any of this crap on Monday, too, I would be a quivering pile of tapioca right about now. As it is, I will sit back and sip a glorious and much deserved whiskey-soda while you can read all about the accumulation of small stresses and slights that have added up to make the past four days so frakking heinous.
Tuesday: I had to go back to work* a day early after the Labor Day Weekend because the school had scheduled an Honor Committee hearing about one of my plagiarizing students. There is no more relaxing way to ease back into the swing than the prospect of confronting an angry and somewhat emotionally unstable student at a hearing where you will be speaking against him, in the early morning, on what is usually your day off*. (I’ll post all the details about how this went soon!)
Wednesday: The two instructional librarians assigned to my Writing classes wanted to meet with me in person to discuss our plans for the library research sessions we’d be having this semester — this was a change from the usual carefree and casual emails we had exchanged to serve the same purpose last year. We met at the end of the afternoon, after I’d spent all day in the classroom and was already exhausted. Due to one librarian’s inability to end a conversation or to read my conversation-ending signals, the meeting dragged on for approximately 3x longer than it should have. Forty-five minutes into it, at the peak of my frustration, the librarian (whom I’ve been working with for a year already) referred to me as a grad student.
Thursday: On my other day off*, I decided to come to campus for a couple of hours to do some reading so I could meet up with my friends at 5:00 and head to the big faculty reception for our college. In academic jargon, “reception” equals “cocktail party,” so how could I go wrong? Indeed, there was much fine food and fine wine, and it was — interestingly? — the second time in as many weeks that I had been served a form of grits disguised as hors d’œuvres at a school function. On the other hand, the room was packed with hungry Liberal Arts professors elbowing their way around the inexplicable round buffet tables (NOTE: round buffet tables are geometrically unsound; this is science), and the various speeches were interminably long and overwhelmingly loud in the enormous marble hall. Standing in heels for two hours on a marble floor, by the way, was also not fun.
Friday: I had a lovely teaching day all through my first three classes, but I have unfortunately reached a breaking point regarding student participation with my fourth class. They are stubbornly silent no matter what I try to do, and I am already able to name the make and model of at least eight students’ cell phones. Things are not great with them. At one point today, they were supposed to be comparing two different writers’ descriptions of, let’s say, tulips. I was thrilled when one of the perpetually silent thugs in the back of the room raised his hand to make a contribution to the discussion. “They’re both about, um, TULIPS,” he said. At this point I had honestly lost my patience, and my response was ridiculously sarcastic. Standing at the front of the room where I was making two lists on the board, “Writer A’s Tulips” and “Writer B’s Tulips,” I said something like, “Oh, they’re both about tulips, how true. Should I write that on the list? Oh wait [circling the word "tulips" in the heading to each list], I already did write that. Because I am psychic.” It was not pretty. At least they laughed, though, proving that (despite most appearances) they are not all completely dead inside.
*A note on my “days off” - I don’t have to teach on Tuesdays or Thursdays, which means I normally get to lie around the house in my underwear sipping coffee and picking my nose, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have to work. I am usually reading, writing, grading, or prepping in between nose picks. So, they’re not really days off at all — I just resent the indignity of having to actually dress and go into school where I have to be pleasant and collegial with the people in the hallway and am not allowed to take breaks to watch One Life to Live.
Oh my GOD, librarian! I hope you corrected her with a curt, “Dr. Vague to you, lady!”
Also, not to gloat, but my first day of being the “real teacher” (even THOUGH I’m still a grad student) of an upper level Lit. course went amazingly well. Let’s hope the room of women and one brave man take as kindly to Gatsby as they did to Edna Pontellier. But really, when I tell them to think of him as a young Robert Redford, what’s not to love? That seals the deal, yes?
I can offer liquid therapy. Mix the following:
150 ml beer (blonde)
10 ml of grenadine
100 ml of lemonade
(or you can use 100ml of beer if you like it more lemon-y)
Drink from a tumbler.
It’s all the rage in France at the moment. If you’re not drinking it, then, according to the French girl that served it to me, “On n’est pas sur la page”. Or perhaps on est sur le plancher…
AUGH LIBRARIAN! What is it with the librarians and the grad student thing? I am glad to be at a school with no grad school, so I do not have to suffer such indignation. Here, I only suffer with being labeled “THE EYETALIAN.”
Belated thanks for the sympathy and the drink recipes. I forgot to follow up on this post.
Also, E-Bo, I love your handle. It makes you seem very hip to the urban demo!