I was up at 5:00 this morning because I either slept well after taking cold medicine last night or slept poorly after taking cold medicine last night–I can’t tell–and looked out the bedroom window onto the fire escape and saw nothing. Nothing. No dusting of whiteness on the fire escape or the trees. No flurries apparent. I almost started crying. The thought of having to go to school for peer review day, for which I’ve already received several of their emailed drafts (that was the plan in case school was closed) and was already feeling a headache coming on thinking about dealing with this issue–yes, you got your draft to me on time, but you see, campus was not closed; classes were still in effect. You still lose points and are still counted absent. It also meant that I would have to get up soon because I needed to be on campus before class because I had my annual review meeting with my chair.
At 5:30 my phone bings. It’s my friend at school who does the press releases. I get insider information before the rest of the world that classes are canceled. Hallelujah. For the first time in my life, I know someone on the *inside.* I had the info before the news had a chance to get the word out. It’s out now, but I had never been so happy in my life to get a text at 5:30 in the morning.
This information has indeed greatly improved my mood. While I’m still up at the crack of dawn, I can’t go back to sleep, and I really just wanted to sleep in today, and of course can always go back to bed if I feel tired because I am still a little sick, but I don’t feel as bad as yesterday, and I think a day off is going to do some good. Just knowing that I don’t have to get ready and drive out in this and get to campus today really does wonders for my headache and my overall feelings of malaise. I could be close to back to normal by tomorrow. It would be nice, and I don’t want to ask too much here, but if we really do get all this snow we’re supposed to and if this blizzard warning that is in effect until tomorrow morning does produce the foot and a half of snow they are predicting, that would be great, too. I mean, not to have school. I suspect I might have to get up still to make my training appointment, but if there’s no school, then I can take my time and do cardio after meeting with the trainer. If I’m feeling better.
I know I complain a lot about my teaching and my students and how much I dislike teaching comp, how much more time I feel I have to spend on it, how much I do generally *loathe* it, and how I do wish I were somewhere else with a different teaching load and that allowed me to teach solely in my field. Don’t most of us. What I do like about my job is that I do indeed have fabulous colleagues. I really do. I can tell that a couple of them really value my presence there and are really genuinely pleased that it was me who was hired for the job. What concerns me is that some of them are wicked smart but beaten down by this job, and I don’t want to get to that point. There seems to be some genuine congeniality across the division and the campus as a whole–I haven’t sat through a contentious meeting yet or seen a single outburst by anyone during a meeting or any sort of rudeness for that matter, even during the entire campus faculty meeting, which strikes me as a little odd. I’ve seen a little bit of defensiveness, but nothing major. It’s little things like this that make me like my job and where I am, teaching load, students, and salary aside. I am fortunate to be in a nice place with nice people. Is it worth a lighter teaching load and more money if you hate your colleagues and where you are? Probably not. Do I wish I had all of these things at a “better” job? Yes. I’m not sure what that says about me.
I do like the group of majors I have for my “field” class. A little quiet at times, but generally we do not have a lack of conversation. We had our first presentations last night. I’m conflicted on how to grade them though. Technically, they did the minimum, and what they were supposed to do, which should be a C. However, they were the first ones to go, and presented after only having three classes and little time to prepare. And truthfully, I wasn’t expecting much. The other issue is, I think even if they wanted to go “above and beyond,” they couldn’t because we don’t have the technology in the classroom to do so. They didn’t even have the chance to do a powerpoint or bring in any sort of image or anything I would have done because there is no technology in the classroom to do so. For presentation purposes, they are limited to just a handout. I think I’m leaning toward a B+ because the one other thing I would have liked to have seen was a stronger connection of how their author fit or didn’t fit into the movement the class is based on. I think I gave this class a pseudonym as the Sock Movement. There are several Sock Movements–a few in Europe; one in America. So, I think the one thing it lacked was a definite connection in the presentation to how the author fit into Socks. They posed a question to the class at the end “how does this fit into the Sock Movement?” and when everyone was hesitant to answer, I jumped in. What I should have done is let the presenters explain this because they did throw it out there. Maybe I shouldn’t penalize them for my own excitement. But I do think they should have had more in their presentation about how Author fits into (or doesn’t) the Sock Movement. I was thankful though that we had this presentation yesterday because that was so much less work for my sick ass to have to do for class. And they did hit on some very key concepts that I wasn’t expecting them to, too. And while they only needed to run class for about 40 minutes, I think their questions led to over an hour’s worth of discussion.
Sometimes I hate grading. Well, in general I do, but I hate what seems to me to be difficult grading decisions, grades where I want to be nice and encouraging but also maintaining a standard.
It doesn’t look like it’s stopped snowing since it started. On that note, I guess I’ll go read or write or do something otherwise productive while relaxing in my pjs.

