Two thoughts

On today's decision:

1. "Oh ffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffudge."

2. I'm seeing some spectacularly ugly and unseemly spiking-the-football going on. THAT is why I hate so much of politics. It's not enough to "win," you must "win" and then say ugly things about the people who disagree with you.


I'm afraid that if things continue as planned, there will be a couple states winding up bankrupted by the required expansion of Medicare. That's the main thing I'm wrapping my head around right now. (I can't even think what this may mean for Catholic hospitals or for how I get my own insurance/healthcare). I'm concerned that states will either have to severely cut other things (road maintenance, education) or else steeply raise taxes.

Thoughts on the bus

Doubtless you've heard or seen the news story about the 13 year old boys who drove a 68 year old bus monitor to tears with their rude comments.

It was interesting to follow the story and how people responded to it as it developed. Early on, people were tossing around stuff like "This is what our culture has become" and "These kids are dead inside" and "How uninvolved must their parents be, for them to be able to do this?"

And I admit, the comment about sticking a knife in her belly was pretty horrifying. (And I thought the kids were GIRLS at first, but then again, that might be my experience speaking).

My reaction was a little different: "These kids are 13. Thirteen is a BRUTAL age to be. Thirteen year olds can be so mindlessly cruel it will amaze you."

I remember being 13. I remember the hatefulness I got from my classmates - and I remember, to my shame, doling out some hatefulness myself, mostly to kids less-popular than I was. That's one of the things I will never understand as an adult, and about which I fully expect to be sternly questioned On The Other Side. I don't KNOW why I did it. I look at it know and I'm horrified by it: how could I be so nasty to another kid, especially when I knew what it was like to be called rude names and be belittled myself?

I guess the only explanation is that 13 year olds can be really, really immature. They know what to say to hurt someone's feelings, but they've not yet developed the tact or compassion to not want to say it. And they want to be accepted by their peers, sometimes at almost any cost.

That said, I don't remember being that openly cruel to an adult. Oh, my classmates and I tried to goof on substitutes when we had them, and probably contributed to the early burnout of some substitute teachers (and again: why did I do that? I suppose it was because I felt taking part might win me a few moments of acceptance from the "pack," and might temporarily deflect the teasing away from me). But regular people - bus drivers and hall monitors and teachers, generally I was pretty respectful of them.

I do think the whole pack mentality was another thing that came into play in this incident. It's a pretty powerful feeling as a teen (and sometimes even as an adult) to want to fit in with the group and be part of the "pack." And it can drive you to do things you wouldn't ordinarily do - things that, in the quiet of your own room later, you (even as a teen) smack your forehead and go, "Why was I so STUPID?"

All of that said: what those boys did was wrong and cruel. (Though my own grandma, if they had done it to her? She was a pretty tough lady and I bet she would have figured out a way to make those boys regret what they had said and even cry "uncle"). It's really ugly to hear what they're doing to the lady, and it made me cringe and recoil.

However, I don't think - unlike some commentators I've heard - that these kids should be sent to Juvie. That will only teach them to be meaner and more violent. I suspect in a way, some of them have already suffered the best discipline they could have: the public embarrassment of being revealed in their cruelty, of people saying things like, "What kind of a coward bullies a 68 year old lady?" And it sounds like, in at least one case, the parents are going to make sure the kid thinks twice before doing something like this again.

I do think putting the kids off the bus - I don't know how much more of their school year remains, but put them off the bus for the rest of the year, and maybe the first half of the next year - so they can think about what they did might be a valid idea. Yes, the parents are taxpayers and they pay for the bus service. But I think these things should STILL be viewed as a privilege and not a right, and by behaving badly, the boys violated their privilege.

Or make them get up and publicly apologize to the lady, and talk about how what they did was wrong.

I don't think these kids are "lost," unlike what some commentators are saying. I think they do have the capacity to become "lost," if no one intervenes and teaches them, or if they face no consequences of what they did - but from what I've seen, that may not be the case here. It's possible for people who are pretty nasty teenagers to grow up to be decent adults if they are molded a bit and are shown some discipline.

The other thing: I don't think they were that much worse than kids were 30 years ago when I was that age. Riding the bus when I was a kid was brutal and I have blocked much of that time out of my memory - stuff like getting your lunch and homework stolen, or being refused a seat, or being called really awful, dreadful names or having ugly things said to your face: that's kind of part and parcel of the bus ride for middle schoolers, and it's been that way for a long time. Would the nasty kids on my bus have bullied a grandmotherly bus monitor? Some of them might have; some of them were pretty rude to the driver. Which is why I'm not quite so quick to say that these kids' action is a symptom of society suddenly becoming much worse or more violent. I don't know if thirteen year olds in the 1920s or 1870s or 1730s were as rude and unpleasant as they were in the 1980s, but I know thirteen year olds were pretty awful when I was one myself....I could be pretty awful as a 13 year old. So I don't think it's that "everything is suddenly worse," I think it's more "For all our talk of anti-bullying efforts, there still will be bullies." They may just turn on different people...

O RLY

I dealt today with one of those Smugtrons. You know the kind: the people who think they're better than everyone else by virtue of the purity of their diet, or how small the carbon emissions of their car are, or what extreme lengths they go to to buy all "sustainable" products.

This was someone claiming that her body was "really, really smart" because it "told" her not to like things bad for her (I think processed sugar was an example).

Because I am in large part a lady, and also in large part not interested in getting involved in an argument where at least one parties' positions are purely emotionally held, I refrained from chirpily telling her, "Oh, then broccoli must be really bad for me, because I hate it! My body's so smart, I never eat it! I should listen to my body more....oh, hey, it's telling me I need a cupcake."

But yeah. I really get tired of people with the holier than thou attitude.

my dad

It's Father's Day.

I was thinking about all the stuff I've learned from my dad over the years. I was one of the lucky ones; I had an involved dad who took part in the parenting, and who was concerned that his kids grew up to be good citizens. (I'm also lucky in that I still have my dad, and yes, I called him today).

He taught me how to read maps when I was a kid...as a result, I'm rarely lost.

He showed me how to manage money and not spend wastefully....as a result, I have zero debt.

He told me "I know you can do this" even when I suffered a serious reverse the first time I was in grad school....and as a result, I picked myself back up, started again, and eventually was successful.

He never thought I could do less than a boy could when it came to math or science, and on the other hand, he never expected me to get special dispensation because of my gender...and as a result, I grew up tough enough to say, "Yeah? That's your opinion" when someone makes a sexist comment to me.

He took me to church...which formed a lifelong habit for me that has enriched my life and made me a better person.

He listened to me cry when I was a little kid and the other kids at school were mean to me...and helped me to know that I wasn't a reject, that sometimes people are just jerks to other people.

He often said, "Do the right thing even if it makes you unpopular"....and I hope I will have the strength to do that if it ever comes to it for me.

He modeled honesty and hard work and kindness...and I hope to live up to that myself.

I love my dad; I think he knows that. I'm grateful that I got the chance to know him as an adult as well as knowing him as "Daddy" when I was a kid. Some of my friends were not so lucky.

Summer labs

It is surprising how different the summer and regular-semester students are.

It was our first lab, "Scientific Measurement." While I did have to show a few people which side of the ruler was metric (ack), I didn't have anyone shutting down and going, "I don't need to know this crap. I'm going to run my own business. I don't need to care about metric."

That kind of attitude frustrates me because there have been several occasions in my life where knowing "outside" information - that is, outside my basic field of study - has really helped me greatly. Most stuff you learn will not be wasted.

This group, though some of them may not have known which scale was metric (which surprises me a little, but then again, I was part of the "Metric by 1985!" generation, and maybe the educators have since given up on metric), once they figured out what they had to do, they did it without complaint.

One guy actually said, "Oh! I get it now! I never got it before!" when I showed him how you went from one decimal unit to another - like, centimeters to meters, or meters to kilometers. And he showed me that in fact he DID get it, by doing the rest of the questions correctly and showing me how he got his answers.

I don't know. Is there some kind of nativist sentiment against metric I don't know about? As a scientist, I use it all the time and have a decent handle on roughly what a meter is, a kilogram is, a liter is, etc., in terms of "how big" it would be. I often have to get after even my upper-division students because they want to measure things in feet and inches, and some of the formulas we use don't WORK with data in feet and inches. (If they do report the data in feet and inches, I make everyone in the class do the conversion with the data. For one thing, it's handy to know how to do it, for another, it might give a little positive peer pressure to the people NOT to do the measurement that way next time.)

I will say I don't have problems with the English or Imperial or whatever you call it system being used alongside metric, for some applications. - apparently some countries have effectively banned that system, but there are cases where it's useful. I still think of buying fabric in terms of yards and fractions of yards, and I do quilt cutting using inches. And in a lot of case, rejiggering a pattern to make it metric either would not work, or would not work smoothly. But I'm not sure I see why people can't think in and use both systems.

But metric is pretty much expected in the sciences! You don't have to like it, but that's the way it is.

You know what?

I'd be not at all opposed to imposing the death penalty on serial child molesters.

Yes, I'm talking about the Penn State scandal, but I'm also talking about several ugly cases in the news here locally. One guy was arrested, bonded out after giving a sob story to the judge...and then molested another kid (allegedly) while he was out on bond. (He's pleading not guilty, but it looks like a pretty clear case from what I've seen).

This summer's teaching

I didn't teach last summer, and I had forgotten how fun it could be.

On the one hand, it's a crazy-fast pace: we are traveling at twice the rate of the regular semester, which means you have to be fairly organized to remember to be on top of things like doing necessary lab-prep work, or having tests ready in time, that kind of thing.

I am in the classroom 18 hours a week, if the lab classes go the full four hours budgeted for them. (They do not always do so). That's more than during the regular semester most semesters, and I'm teaching a smaller number of courses.

However, we don't have classes on Friday...they instituted some kind of budget-saving measure so offices are not open Fridays. (The amount of time total they are open over the course of the week is about the same; the expectation is they open a couple hours earlier and close a couple hours later M-Th). I assume it's to save electricity because I've noticed when I come in to work on Fridays that it's a lot hotter in the building - they turn the airconditioning to a higher temperature when we're not having classes.

It is kind of nice having Fridays off. I can come in and catch up on grading or prepwork, or do research work, and not worry about someone NEEDING me for something. Or, I don't have to plan to head off to class and teach. (Teaching takes more energy than you'd think. I'm usually pretty tired after class). And yet, I still have Saturday for errands or just living my own life.

I don't think the four-day-a-week schedule could work in the regular semester but it's really nice for summer.

I also like my summer students. I still shake my head over the fact that one of my Physics profs (I took Physics in the summer at a local community college - it transferred to my university, it was cheap for me to do, and it meant I didn't wind up taking Physics and Organic Chem together, something numerous people had warned me off of) claimed that he "knew" why people were taking the class in the summer - that it was because they could not pass in the regular semester and thought summer would be easier.

(And from that, I got a big lesson in What Not To Do When Teaching A Class: never, ever assume a class is stupid or slackerish, and never tell them you think they are even if you kind of think they are. It's just really ugly and offputting, and it makes the diligent students angry).

Because, I find my summer students tend to be more motivated. By and large, they are taking summer classes because they want to graduate early - or because they can make more room in their semester schedule for things like internships or higher-level specialized classes. Or they're incoming freshmen who want to get a head start on their distribution classes.

Oh, once in a while I have someone who can't hack it, or is a blow-off, or acts like a jerk to the other students, but mostly the students I get in the summer are good students and nice people and I really enjoy having them. (The money is nice too. Secondary, but nice to have. I could survive without a summer paycheck but having one means I have more flexibility and don't have to budget so tightly during the year).

This semester I have one upper-division and one lower-division (nonmajors) class. The upper division class is small - 8 people - but they let it run because two people need it to graduate this summer. (Normally, classes with enrollments below 10 are cancelled). I know it's not economically feasible to run such small classes, but I really love teaching them: you can give more attention to each student, you can get to know who they are better. And I feel more comfortable and relaxed and able to joke around with them and go off on tangents if someone asks an interesting question or stuff. Also, in a small class, it's really hard for a student to "hide" and not pull their weight in lab or discussion. And I also think there is some positive energy that goes on: someone has to be a real jerk to be able to fight off the "positive peer pressure" of a group fo committed students in the class, and continue to be apathetic and rude.

The lower-division class I have is about 20, and it's harder to get a handle on them. A lot of them are absolutely new freshmen, and they're scared to death. I try to be reassuring - if someone is a diligent student and they give a darn about learning and they're working, I'm not going to go after them for some tiny little infraction (A guy brought coffee to class and asked me if it was okay for him to have it. I said sure, as long as he didn't leave a mess). With the nonmajors class I do have to be a little careful; I find more than any other class I teach this is the place where I get the 'too cool for school' people who don't want to work and don't want to discuss and don't care about the material, and it's hard to keep them from checking out. (And sometimes I wonder: is it really my JOB to knock myself out to keep them from checking out, or is it more my job to teach for the people who do care?) So far, this crew looks pretty much okay but I will have to go through a full lab period with them to see for sure. (You learn more about how a person is when they are working in lab....some people who are not so hot in the lecture part of class are really good with the lab stuff, and some people who seem pretty smart in lecture turn out to be really apathetic about actually doing stuff in lab.)

But so far, so good.

Hobby farm daydreaming

My mom gets a couple of magazines I don't get, and when I was up visiting my parents I spent some time reading the back issues.

One of them is "Grit." Yes, Grit still publishes, they're just not in that newspaper format any more. (I remember even when I was a kid, they still advertised in the back of comic books: the idea was, I guess, that kids sold Grit door to door. I hated selling anything and I was smart enough to know that a farming magazine would be met with bewilderment or disdain in the bedroom community where we lived).

Grit is a very practical magazine. They talk about how to build stuff or repair stuff or how to can food or grow food....they have features on different livestock breeds. And they do have some fun stories on people's reminiscences about growing up on the farm. It's a nice magazine, I feel like I can learn stuff from it.

I admit it: I still hold some dreams of someday owning something like a hobby farm. I know I couldn't do it now, not as a college professor, because some days I can barely manage to feed MYSELF, let alone find time to feed chickens or goats or something. But it's an appealing idea.

Oh, I know, in reality, that farming is really hard work and it's probably not feasible for a single person to try to run even a small farm all on their lonesome - too much work, too many chances for stuff to go wrong. And the whole economic-insecurity thing would be scary: I like having a regular paycheck I can depend on.

But there's also something attractive about it. The immediacy - the fact that you can see what effect your work is having as you do it (whether it's weeding or canning or something like that). I like the idea of growing at least some of my own food. (I have a tiny garden and grew beets and green beans this spring, and I have tomato plants but they've not made fruit yet. And I keep thinking someday I'll try growing sweet potatoes). If I had more space in my back yard, I'd put in raspberry canes or grapes, even if I'd have to remember to cover them as they were setting fruit to keep the birds out.

I also like the idea of earning my bread by MAKING something...something tangible, something people could hold in their hands, whether that something is soap or tomatoes or lavender or whatever. Don't get me wrong: I still love teaching, it's just some days it really does feel like I'm just pushing invisible imaginary things around and there's nothing that feels very "real" about it.

I think I may also (rightly or wrongly) think that success in having a hobby farm is, to a greater degree, the result of one's own hard work. In teaching, if you get a difficult class, or you wind up with an administrator who has problems with your discipline, or if the school's budget gets cut...you can see your job go from "wonderful" to "awful" in a short time. (Of course, with farming, drought, insects, natural disasters....all of those are beyond your control).

The other magazine is called "Mary Jane's Farm." This magazine has some good stories and good information, but....how do I put it? Sometimes it gets a bit precious for my tastes. There's a lot of talk about organic gardening/organic produce and while some of the reasons and justifications are true, others of them border on "woo." For example: I choose organic salad greens because I figure there's enough pesticide residue (at least, based on what I've read) possible on the conventional ones that it's worth it to ME to spend a bit more and seek out the organic ones. And I tend to think the "cage free chicken" eggs taste better...but I'm not going to say that everyone has to do this. And sometimes the "organic lifestyle" folks get a little evangelical about it, like "if everyone did this one thing, IT WOULD SAVE THE WORLD" and of course things are more complicated than that.

(Also, I wonder: is the state of the art of organic farming such that it's even possible to produce all food using standard organic methods? I mean, I might occasionally buy a box of cookies made from organic flour...but I wonder if all the flour used in the world or even the U.S. could be produced using small-scale methods? I kind of think that small-scale farming, like what my great-grandparents did, kind of wouldn't be capable of producing enough to meet demand. But I could be wrong; I haven't tried to calculate it out).

All the "woo" and evangelism aside, though, one idea in both magazines I like is this: that there are a lot of people out there (apparently) who ARE doing small-scale specialty farming, and they're providing a product to people who want it. (And in some cases, the product is considerably better than the conventionally produced kind). I've said before that I enjoy shopping at farmer's markets and small businesses and u-pick farms and places like that....it's more fun than going to a giant brightly-lit supermarket for food. (Though I admit I can do without the "oh, aren't we so much better than the hoi polloi" I see from some farmer's market/natural-foods-store attendees.)

So, I don't know. If I had a hobby farm, what would I raise? What would I raise for market, what would I raise just for myself? I think if I had enough land and space I'd want to raise chickens for the eggs. (This provided I had a good way of protecting them from predators, and also sealing up the feed so I didn't get rats....one problem with some "city chickens' is that the feed can attract rodents). I might have goats, though it would be for milk rather than meat. (Then again: there's apparently a growing market for goat meat, and while I might not be up to slaughtering and butchering my own...the animals could be sold). No, I've never had goat's milk and of course I'd have to try to to see if I liked it. (This is all in the realm of daydream for me right now).

In terms of crops....where I live, a lot of the things I like don't do so well. It's mostly too hot and too dry (unless you have a good well) for berries. And often tomatoes are a disappointment: it gets so hot the plants won't set fruit.

But herbs seem to do well. If I had a decent market for herbs, either as culinary herbs (I know in some areas, fancy restaurants buy their herbs from small farmers) or something like lavender that is used in scent. I admit I like the idea of running a lavender farm, as impossibly unprofitable that might be in real life.

Or maybe I'd learn how to keep bees. (Or do that in addition to having the herb farm...then I could sell lavender honey and stuff like that; in some specialty markets you can get really good prices for "fancy" honeys).

Again, I think a lot of this falls into the realm of "If I weren't teaching, I'd want a career where I felt like I was 'making' something." And at any rate, as I said: it's probably not realistic. I don't live near enough a really wealthy area that doesn't already have a market saturated with specialty food sales or such.

But it's nice to daydream about.

Poetry break

Sometimes you hear what you need when you most need it. One of the hymns we sang yesterday was "Dear Lord and Father of mankind" by Whittier. (Thank goodness my particular congregation hasn't decided to use the "updated" hymnals....where all language has been made gender-neutral and "less warlike," some of the new wordings are really clunky and unpleasant to sing).

Whittier is a poet I don't know too much about. I know he was an abolitionist in New England and was generally considered to be a "good man." I also think some of the critics derided his verse as not sufficiently deep or simplistic. I don't know; in some ways I am a simple woman and I have to say I like this poem.

The hymn version of it (at least the version we sing) does not use all the stanzas in the poem, but here is the complete poem:

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
forgive our foolish ways!
Re-clothe us in our rightful mind,
in purer lives thy service find,
in deeper reverence, praise;
in deeper reverence, praise.

In simple trust like theirs who heard,
beside the Syrian sea,
the gracious calling of the Lord,
let us, like them, without a word,
rise up and follow thee;
rise up and follow thee.

O Sabbath rest by Galilee!
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eternity
interpreted by love!
interpreted by love!

Drop thy still dews of quietness,
till all our strivings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives confess
the beauty of thy peace;
the beauty of thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy coolness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm;
O still, small voice of calm.

I particularly needed the "Take from our souls the strain and stress, and let our ordered lives confess, the beauty of thy peace" part of it, yesterday. 

Not happy news

The minister of my church is leaving.

The reason for this is understandable: he and his wife have a special-needs child, they cannot find the kind of help they really ideally need for their child here, and he has been offered a position somewhere in a city that is much larger, and probably has more cutting edge research done on the child's particular need.

But it's sad. I think this is the fourth minister (counting the "interim" we had on two occasions only once) in the 12 years I've been here. I know, in some denominations, ministers get moved around by the church hierarchy (I think the Methodists do it that way?) and sometimes ministers only stay four or five years at a given church.

But every other Disciples church I've belonged to had relative stability....ministers staying more than 10 years, in some cases, more than 20 years.

And I anticipate difficulty calling a new minister. We are a small congregation, and money is ALWAYS a problem. I don't know if we can offer a competitive salary...especially considering that this can be a hard part of the country to attract people to.

Almost worse than their plans to leave....I mean, I will miss them, I liked them, but I completely understand their reasons for leaving....is what I expect will be the reactions/comments of the other congregants. I saw this last time a minister left:

"What have we done that is so wrong that God is punishing us this way?"
"This is going to be the end of us. We'll just have to close our doors and fold." (And I admit, I worry about this too).
Or people will start talking about how they didn't really like this minister's style of preaching, or that they found  him pushy in some way, or something. And I HATE that. I understand why people do it - they are justifying the leaving, they are trying to make themselves feel better over it by saying, "It really wasn't that good of a situation after all" but I just HATE it because it feels like talking behind someone's back.

And there will be the ongoing comment of "We need to get new members, the 'right' kind of new members" (meaning: people who can pledge money to the church. I remember there was actually some criticism in the past when we got new members who didn't have a lot of money. That's just WRONG. Wrong in so many ways.) And I expect there will be an "every member needs to evangelize" thing....and I'm sorry, but that's just not one of my gifts. I can do many things but tracking down people I don't know and asking them to come to church is just not something I can do. And among my friends...as I've told people many times, either they already have a church affiliation, or they are actually hostile to the idea of religion, and I'm not going to make it less likely for them to ever come around to the idea of considering faith by being "pushy" to them.

So, I don't know. I hate this. I've been through this now three times....once, we had to search for a new minister after the congregational split. Then the person we found, as good as he was, left...again, for personal reasons. (He and his wife divorced, he felt that he could not stay in the same town, and he felt that her career was less "portable" than his, so it was best for him to leave). And now this.

(In the Disciples denomination, each congregation forms a search committee and vets potential ministers and calls the minister itself...there's not really a bishopric or anything to help or to send a minister. We have a regional ministry that can provide guidance, but most of the call is up to us.)

I will say if this does end the congregation, if we break up and disperse? I might take a couple months off from church. I've put a lot of effort and a lot of volunteer hours and a lot of contributions into this congregation...and to think of it not surviving really hurts, and also on some level feels like that nothing I could do was good enough.

And again, some of the things people say in the wake of a minister leaving? Reminds me of why Christians are so often a poor advertisement for Christ. I don't want to hear all of the handwringing and the recriminations and everything....I just want to move forward, and there are often people who want to stick back and replay everything that happened.

I suppose I'll eventually look for a new place (if it does come to pass that we break up). I don't know. I've never had to "church shop" before....try to find a new denomination that fits my faith. I've always just gone to the Disciples church in the town where I lived and that was that. I suppose the Presbyterians are the next closest group....but then again, there's an Episcopal congregation that I know a couple people in, and the rector seems to be highly thought of. The next nearest Disciples' church is an hour's round trip, and I just don't think I can do that.

I really hope I'm "borrowing trouble" on this and I won't have to think about that. But it tends to be my nature to consider the worst possible path, and plan for that...so I HAVE a plan, so I'm ready for the worst if it happens.

And, I'm done

The semester is over. Graduation was yesterday. I didn't see my Special Snowflake walk but I am trusting that he is really, truly, not just merely graduated, but sincerely graduated. And that he doesn't have any little brothers or sisters that will come my way.

This guy just about killed me this semester and is why I think we need to be very, very careful about both 'college for all' and about how we speak to people with mental/physical/learning disabilities. This was someone with multiple disabilities who had somehow been taught he was a victim, that everyone else was against him, and that the only way he would ever survive was to demand stuff, and to go and complain loudly to people if things weren't going 100% his way. And unfortunately, he was so good at being unpleasant that he did manage to get his way much of the time. I know I caved to him more than I might to someone more polite (or someone without an IEP and an administrator in his back pocket).

Tomorrow is the day that I used to refer to as "screw you guys, I'm goin' home" day, back when I used to watch South Park....there was one episode, I can't remember what it was about, but Cartman got upset about something, and so he said, "Screw you guys, I'm goin' home" in true Cartman form. (And later, he shortened it to "Screw you,...home.") I'm going to visit my parents for a couple of weeks to try to rest up before the summer semester and to try to clear my head.

Graduation this year was unimpressive. Some years we get fantastic speakers, but this year...not so much. The main take - home lesson was "Words have power. So you need to ALWAYS BE POSITIVE with your words." And you know what? Screw that. If you're having a bad day, if something's upset you, it's not healthy to paste on a big dumb smile and go, "Oh, I'm so happy!" Yes, I understand: it's nice not to lose sight of the good things you have. But to pretend that everything's always peachy-keen seems foolish, and also probably not healthy for a lot of people. I know I swallowed a lot of anger this semester, I didn't say things I REALLY wanted to say to people...and I could tell I suffered for it. Keeping up a "nice" exterior when there are parts of your personality that aren't very nice is tough. I know I lack patience sometimes, or I am quick to anger sometimes, or I can't suffer fools lightly....I try to be "nice," because we're told to be so, but there are times, I admit, I just want to go around dope-slapping people like Leroy Gibbs. (Man, that would be SWEET if I could do that and get away with it).

Ah well. Summer semester is typically better because that's when you get the "gunners" who want to graduate early, or the people coming back for continuing education who are out in the workforce (and therefore, have more perspective), or incoming freshman who are really eager to get started....A couple weeks' rest and I'll be ready to go again.

I think I scared one of my classes a little last week, we were talking about final exams and one guy commented that my final was his "last final EVER" and one of the women said, "Don't say that! Some of us have two years to go." And I remarked that I had 17 years to go, if I retire as soon as I hit the "rule of 90" for retirement...seventeen years. (It scares me, a little. I've just completed 12....) I hope I can see it through, I hope I don't get too many more super-entitled people, or at least I get a little support when I tell them they need to grow up and apply their backside to the chair and work.

It's terribly, terribly juvenile, but

I've preserved my sanity more than once this past week by looking at this little .gif and imagining it being directed to all of the people who have vexed me.

None of which, unfortunately, I could actually do this to:


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Dissections

This is going to be something completely different. Be forewarned: I do discuss (very generally) dissections here, so if you're super-squeamish, you might wish to avoid.

A friend and I were talking about dissections. She wanted to know what the most disgusting thing I had to dissect was.

And I got to thinking about it. There were dissections I've done that I found hard to do, but not really any that horribly grossed me out. (Of course, I wasn't teaching the Intro Bio lab the semester they got a batch of clams that had been improperly preserved and were spoiled. I think that would be pretty awful.)

The hardest dissection I actually ever did was a preserved rat. Rats are a lot like humans in terms of internal anatomy. So it was like looking at the insides of a human, just a lot smaller and inside a different "casing." I found that kind of hard to do, I mean, emotionally, because there was the feeling that "this was a being not that much different from you." I'm totally not an animal-rights activist in the sense of "no dissections ever!" and I've set and emptied rat-traps when they got into my garage....but still, there's something a little strange and sad about looking at the innards of another mammal.

We never did cats. I think I would find cats much worse, emotionally speaking. For one thing, they're larger, and therefore closer in size to a "real" human. But also, having HAD cats all my growing up years....I'd probably be able to gut up and do it if I had to but I know I'd find it hard.

I never took Gross Anatomy. I've seen the human cadavers, both the ones used in teaching here, and ones I got to observe more closely, years ago, when my AP Biology class (the class I took. I've never taught AP Bio...) went to one of the nearby medical schools to observe.

I think I would find dissecting a human cadaver very, very hard. (There's a reason I knew I didn't want to become a medical doctor). I know: the cadavers are the remains of people who chose this as a way of dealing with their mortal remains. And I know that the "person" that made that body a "person" has now moved on....that the body that remains is just the shell, just the machinery. But I still think I'd find it eerie and sort of sad.

I know my AP Bio teacher talked about, and my colleague who does Gross Anatomy here emphasizes, how important it is for the students working on the cadaver to treat it with some respect. This was a person. This was someone who had relatives, family, friends. I don't know what the ultimate fate of my department's cadavers is, but I know the ones at the med school I visited in AP Bio, they said they cremated the remains after the cadaver had been used up. And they held a non-denominational/multifaith memorial service. And if any of the relatives of the person who left their body to science were around to be contacted, they were invited. I suppose beyond the simple measure of respect, there's a lesson in empathy and in seeing others as human - ethics - there for the students.

We did dissect fetal pigs in AP Bio. I didn't find that particularly difficult but I was younger and more callous than I am now. Also, the pigs had been injected with latex - red for arteries, blue for veins - and that made them seem a little unreal. (Several of us got pigs where one of the blood vessels had burst during that process and there was a blob of latex surrounding the internal organs). One of the guys in the class got in big trouble because he removed the snout and put it in his girlfriend's student mailbox. (He got in trouble with the teacher, and I'm also fairly certain his girlfriend broke up with him. I think I would have, in her situation). I think that falls under the "not treating your sample with the respect due to what was once a living being."

(Now that I think of it: there was at least one Jewish and one Muslim student in that class: I went to a pretty diverse high school. But I don't remember anyone complaining or saying they shouldn't have to touch the pigs. I wonder how that would be handled now.)

I've never done a frog. And, thank God, I've never had to pith a frog. I do think that's something I would not be able to do.

I've also dissected perch, but didn't find that hard: I fished as a kid and already kind of knew the internal anatomy (friends of my family owned a large plot of land with a pond, and we were invited to go there and fish. I remember the woman of the family helping us clean fish and she pointed out a lot of the internal stuff like the swim bladder and told us what they were for). Also, fish are pretty different in terms of anatomy from mammals. Of course, with dissecting a lab-sample perch, it's been preserved, so you can't fillet it up and cook it, or fry up the egg sacs if it has them.

I've done lots of invertebrate dissections.

To be honest? Starfish are pretty cool. The internal organs are simple and easy to find, and there's just something interesting about starfish because they are so different.

Crayfish can be kind of interesting, but if they're not well-preserved, they can stink, and also, the internal parts all kind of look the same. If you're one of the hard-core lobster eaters where you've taken apart a steamed lobster to get the tomalley, you've pretty much done a similar dissection.

Other arthropods....we used to do big grasshoppers - they're kind of hard to work with because of the exoskeleton. We also did a lot of external-anatomy stuff on different things. Arachnids, for example. It's interesting in sort of a horrible way to do them with a class, because you learn who is terribly arachnophobic (won't even approach the specimen), who is sort of arachnophobic (will do it, because they know the specimen is dead, but are not comfortable with it), and those who are not at all arachnophobic. And yes, I am sensitive to the people who can't do it, and I have strong-armed a couple of the non-arachnophobes when they wanted to try to force the scared people to confront the specimens.

(I once had a student who was afraid of birds and would not approach the bird specimens we had out on the table. It takes all kinds and unless someone is terrified of a species and yet plans to go into a career where they will have to regularly work with the species - which just seems strange to me - I don't press the issue)

Clams are disappointing, or at least I found them to be: everything on the inside looks more or less the same. Also, after years of dissecting clams I find I cannot eat mussels or oysters or any kind of shellfish that is "intact" because I think of all the gonads and stomach and stuff like that inside the animal and it grosses me out. I can still eat scallops because they are just one of the muscles (the shell adductor muscle, I think?), and it's the same with 'clam strips." Or minced clams in spaghetti sauce or chowder. But whole shellfish, with all their unfortunate inside bits intact? Sorry, not for me.

Snails and slugs are kind of gross. Not horribly so, but they kind of shrivel in the preservative and take on the texture of really worn-out rubber, like the eraser on a pencil that's been sitting in a hot car for six months. So they're hard to cut neatly.

Earthworms are actually kind of neat. You can usually see the different structures pretty well and earthworms have  a fairly interesting anatomy. They can be hard to dissect well, though, because again, the outer skin gets kind of leathery in the preservative.

Roundworms are simple but kind of boring. There's the gut, there are the gonads. That's about it.

I don't think we ever actually dissected jellyfish though we did have preserved specimens of them. They're a lot more interesting when they're alive and swimming.

Another thing necessary for success

But not just in college. In life.

And that's the ability to take freaking RESPONSIBILITY for yourself. To man up (or woman up) and go, Okay, I have x number of things to do in the next three days. I am going to budget my time and do those things. And to say, when you screw up, "I screwed up. What can I do to fix this?"

It is not being responsible to sit down and not do those things and then whine and moan that it was too "hard." It is not responsible to find someone - anyone - else to blame for your mistakes/failures/lack of preparation.

It IS responsible, if there really is no way to do everything, to either ask for an extension on something, or, sometimes, you just have to half-ass stuff. I hate half-assing stuff but I admit I do it sometimes. More often than not it's stuff like yardwork or cleaning the house or preparing food - stuff that mainly only affects me. Or I'll beg off a meeting where I really don't have to be there to give input. I hate doing that, but sometimes you do have to say "I'm sorry, I'm really overwhelmed but I need to cancel, is there something I can do to prepare for a later point in time?"

What you don't do is wait until the last minute, and then whine and complain about how unfair it all is, or leave people hanging, or get someone to be your bully for you and call someone and tell them you need an extension.

I had a student needing an extension. He finally fulfilled it, but not without telling me at length that (a) the project was too hard, (b) he had to stay up all night the night before it was due, and (c) I wasn't there to help him when he "needed" me.

I have an answer for each of those:

a. Yes, it is hard. But hard work prepares you for life in the competitive working world. I've had students do this project over the past 10 years; you are the first one ever to demand a week's extension and then whine about it. (I have, in the past, given extensions of a day or two. Or, once...in really serious circumstances, I gave an incomplete and let the student finish the paper in the summer. BUT. She came home one day to her soon-to-be-ex husband throwing all her stuff out on the lawn, and he had stolen and hocked her laptop, on which the project was. And she showed me the police report. And she didn't whine, she just said, "Is there any way I could have more time? I have some issues right now...")

b. You know what? You have my sympathy. But that's life sometimes. I've had nights lately when I did not sleep but it was not because I was working, it was because I had insomnia. The physical effects are much the same. Yes, sometimes you have to pull an all-nighter and it sucks. (I don't remember ever doing so as a student, however). You did know about this assignment from Day 1 of the class, and you did know in the last two weeks of the term that you were not as close to being done as you should be. You could have asked for help or an extension earlier.

c. When I asked you, "When did you come by?" you named times when I was in class. Or when it was late in the day and my office hours were over. I'm sorry but I hold 10+ hours of office hours a week and people cannot expect I will stay in past 5 pm when I arrive on campus around 7 am. I have other things I must do in the time I have. I am also happy to make appointments. In fact, I seem to remember you making a couple appointments....and not keeping them. Funny how that didn't come out when you went and complained to one of my higher-ups about my lack of availability.

All I can say to this dude is, best of luck in the working world. You'll need it. Most bosses don't put up with "I didn't feel like it" as a reason for not doing something, or "But it's too hard" as a refusal.

Alternatively, I hope you learn how to be responsible. It's a tough thing to learn and best learned as a child, I think. But I know of adults who have really grown up in a short period of time and went from slacker to decently responsible person, so I know it is possible.

I get so fed up with people who can't take responsibility for stuff. People for whom everything that goes wrong is everyone else's fault but their own. People who expect others to pat them on the head and go, "Oh, poor you! How about we remove all the deadlines and responsibilities you have?"

Okay, my one bit of responsibility here? Perhaps I should have ridden the students harder, perhaps I should have required multiple progress reports rather than just one. But you know? Chronologically speaking, all my students are adults and I think it would be insulting to do too much hand-holding. But maybe that's how it is in the Brave New World in which we inhabit - soma holidays for everyone, and a minder to tell you what you need to be doing when. Fine. You can have your Brave New World; I'll take Galt's Gulch.

This seems so obvious to me

Tenacity is necessary for college success.

The problem is, how do we teach it? I think that learning tenacity is something kids get when they're little - so it's the parents' responsibility. But I think the current atmosphere of bubble-wrapping kids and "protecting" them from failure works against a tendency to develop tenacity.

I've heard about studies where parents had kids who were learning to walk or run, and the researchers asked the parents to react differently when the kids fell down. Some of the parents helped the kid up, brushed him or her off, and basically said, "Go back to it!" Other parents rushed in, swooped the kid up, and made a big fuss about "did you hurt yourself, oh no!"

The result was, when the kids were allowed to run around kind of on their own, the ones whose parents had offered encouragement to get back up and try again, when they fell, they got back up and tried again. The ones with the make-it-all-better parents would look around for an adult, and then start bawling.

I see college students who are like this. Some, when they mess up in class, their reaction is, "Okay, that didn't work. I'm going to try something else to see if that works." Or they come to me for advice on what might work. Other students shut down and figure the class is "too hard" for them, or the professor is "mean" or they just drop the class. Sometimes they change majors. (I know people who have changed majors four times).

My mom often said, when I was a kid, "Anything worthwhile is hard work." That's true, and I'm glad I was able to internalize that lesson. I just cringe a bit when I see people who are parents of young kids wanting to "protect" them from having to do things that are hard.

Having a hard time letting go

I had a horrible student in my class this semester.

Now, granted, I occasionally have students who are "horrible" in the sense of being irresponsible or earning bad grades. But this person took the cake. He would not follow directions given and then claim I never gave those directions. Or he would claim I never said something - like announcing a due-date or an exam - that I know I had said. I couldn't tell if he just had very selective hearing or if he was doing it specifically to throw me off base, make me think I was crazy, and make me give in to his demands.

He also complained, apparently to several people, that I was "unavailable." Which actually means that he showed up to my office outside of my office hours and I was busy working on something else, or he showed up when I was in class, or he showed up late in the day after I'd already gone. As TPTB on my campus are ALL ABOUT "availability," I am afraid this is going to bite me hard, and even though I know and my chair knows this guy's tricks, he seems good at buffaloing people who don't actually have to work with him.

He's already wangled a week's extension on a project. And even though I was pretty clear I said a week, I'm fearful he will have "heard" that it was two weeks - pushing the date back to the due date for grades, which is also my "Screw you guys, I'm goin' home" day (I am going to visit family for a couple of weeks).

I actually called my campus voicemail at 8pm last night - after spending an afternoon running errands I had put off - because I just had this *feeling* that there would be a "What the Hell? It's 4 pm on the last day of classes WHY ARE YOU NOT IN YOUR OFFICE WAITING FOR ME TO COME IN" message.

Of course there wasn't, but this is the point to which the student's problems have become my problems.

People should NOT be allowed to treat other people this way, to the point where the other people become fearful. I took to closing my office door when my office hours were over....of course people knocked and I opened the door, but I was hoping maybe he'd be deterred by "oh, maybe she's not here."

(I was fantasizing about how much trouble I'd get in for drilling a hole in my door and installing a peephole.)

This person made me begin to wonder if I was crazy. Or if I was an awful person and a terrible teacher. I DON'T LIKE FEELING THAT WAY. The thing is, it's really hard for me to shake.

Every colleague of mine who has had this student in their class has commiserated with me - has said, "You're NOT crazy. This person makes other people freak out." But I'm having a hard time letting it go. I'm jumpy and unhappy and I can't enjoy working on the other stuff I am working on.

One of my colleagues, who apparently has NOT had this student, was all, "You need to suck it up and tell him to go take a flying leap." O RLY? And will you then field the call from his pet administrator when he goes to her all upset?

I feel now like I understand a bit better what someone in certain types of abusive relationships goes through - the self-doubt, the wondering if YOU are the problem rather than the other person, the occasional other who says, "Oh, it CAN'T be that big of a problem, just suck it up."

I woke up in the middle of the night with the WORST nightmare I've had in maybe a year. (Unrelated to the issue - essentially, the Sun was expanding, it was getting unbearably hotter, and we all knew we were going to die in a few days AND THERE WAS NOTHING THAT COULD BE DONE. I realize there's an old Twilight Zone episode about a similar topic, but it's been a very long time since I saw it). I am sure the nightmare was related to the stress I've been under. I had to get up and stare at The Weather Channel for a while before I felt like I could go back to sleep again.

The thing I'm afraid of - if I go to anyone else on campus, HR, the campus counselor, anyone, I'll be told to suck it up and be an adult. But if I wind up with this guy in my class again, I WILL need to be seeing a counselor or therapist to be able to cope. (Or maybe, after they hear the situation....they'll tell HR, "No, she cannot have this person in her class again. Sorry.")

I really feel awful. I feel worse - more worn out, more burned out - than I've ever felt at the end of a semester. Normally, the day after the semester ends (before exam week) I'm all happy and excited and feel like I've successfully put another semester to bed. I don't feel that way this year. I don't even have the energy for my traditional jaunt to Boutiqueville. I just want to hide in my house and not talk to people for a long, long time.

A proposal

One of my colleagues comments that he considers 4% unemployment to be "effectively full employment" because he believes about 4% of the population is simply unemployable - their work habits are too bad, they are too difficult of a person, they are too prone to screw up instructions - something.

This got me thinking.

I had a HORRIBLE Special Snowflake person this semester. Like, make-my-head-explode, make-me-begin-to-doubt-myself horrible. Like, at a couple points I was wondering "Am I going crazy? Did I just think I told him these things that he is now saying I never told this person?" This is someone who claimed some instructions were never given, and who made up instructions that were NOT given.

It turns out the person in question - who has an IEP- is either really adept at playing people (my chair tells me this person has driven three other colleagues "crazy" when they had him in their classes, and apparently one person even threatened to quit if this individual showed up in her section again) or is so messed up they can't function and really only remembers what they want to remember of conversations.

(I honestly believe it's the first of those two, but whatever).

At any rate: this person has been so difficult, and so unpleasant (mostly to me, but also on occasion to classmates) that I cannot imagine subjecting a boss or co-workers to this person's presence.

So here's my proposal. It's not quite modest, but whatever:

Even if we are reforming other entitlements (and I think we should), we create a new one. Come up with a fancy name for it but it's basically the I Don't Want Anyone To Have To Deal With This Person entitlement. Pay the 1% or whatever of the population who are just thoroughgoing jerks or whiners NOT to work. Bosses or professors or even parents could nominate people for this entitlement. There'd probably be a battery of tests to see how the person follows instructions and copes with boredom, repetitive tasks, and how they treat other people. People who fail - who can't follow instructions, who whine about being "bored," and who harass other people around them who are trying to work - get put on this plan and are effectively paid to stay out of the public's hair.

I do see one problem with this. I can see lazy people acting like jerks or whiners to get it. So there'd have to be some limitations on it. I'm not sure what. Maybe limitations on things like, "You can't go to the movie theater on the opening weekend of a movie, you're not allowed to harangue grocery cashiers ESPECIALLY if there is a line behind you, and so on).

Periodic thoughts on education

I'm tired and kind of stressed out so this is going to be disjointed.

I do thin there's something gone wrong with education in our culture. Part of it is an attitude, part of it may be the structure of how education is administered.

The attitude from some students (not all, by any means) seems to be, "I have to be here, I don't want to be here, so I'm miserable and I'm going to make others miserable." Kids act out in class (it even happens, though to less of a degree, in college classes). They don't understand or recognize that learning is important.

Part of that is a maturity thing (though part of it may be what education has become).

I don't like high-stakes standardized testing. Yes, it's the cheapest fastest way to assess student "learning," but it leads to all kinds of abuses - teaching to the test, cheating on the part of faculty, so on and so forth. I don't know of a good way to assess student learning. Maybe there isn't one. Maybe giving parents school choice would take care of that and parents would move their kids away from the crap schools and into the good schools.

What I would like to see in incoming college freshmen: An ability to read at a 12th grade level with sufficient comprehension. An ability to read a book, magazine article, or webpage and determine whether the material seems trustworthy or if it raises red flags. An ability to write an intelligent and well-reasoned persuasive paper that does not descend into the realm of emotional argument. An ability to do at LEAST algebra and geometry level math. A basic understanding of chemistry, physics, and biology...not a great deal of knowledge but enough that the intro science courses won't shock and horrify them. A knowledge of history, including a knowledge of the Constitution of our nation and how government works. The ability to balance a checkbook and budget (though I'd argue that's something parents should teach). Life skills stuff like how to wash clothes and how to obtain and eat food without developing a vitamin deficiency (Again, I think that's a parent thing). An ability to treat their fellow humans with civil respect (at a minimum) and how to work with people that they may not really like, but to do so without being rude or snarky.

A lot of those things are hard or impossible to test.

Sometimes I think we should reduce the age of where compulsory education should end. Maybe reduce it to 12. But make some sticking point, some conditions so we don't wind up with people who chose (or whose parents chose) not to get an education who are now unemployable and must be supported on the taxpayer's dime. (I heard a commentator suggest that people be eligible for three years of food stamps or welfare in their lives....and after they've used that, sorry, no more help. Disability would be a different issue, Social Security a different issue - those would not have the limits).

Teachers would be able to expel students and make it stick. The idea would be that education is a privilege, not a right.

I'm not quite sure how the not-educated people would support themselves. That's my one big issue....some 12 year olds might be mature enough to realize, "Hey, if I want a job, I have to stay in school even if I think it sucks" and probably many parents would get that and keep their kids in school. I don't know. Picking fruit on farms? Doing landscaping? I don't know if there's enough of a market for unskilled labor that it could absorb a large chunk of people who left school at 12.

Or maybe, make entrance to skilled-trades type school at that age possible. If you can read well enough to understand safety manuals, if you can do basic math...okay, we can teach you the rest as you work. That might be a solution for kids who are not academically inclined but who know they want to do something with their lives and who maybe have a talent for fixing stuff or making stuff. (I knew kids like that when I was in school - they were smart kids but some of the stuff just bored them to craziness).

I think also maybe there need to be more alternative-type schools. Not everyone learns in the same way. And a kid who can't learn in the traditional way can make it difficult for those who can. Again, letting parents choose their school - and expecting parents to take responsibility for it.

I also frankly think we need to bring back tracking or grouping or whatever. It's BS to expect the "high achieving" kids to pull the rest of the class up, or that the people who lack background in a subject will be able to catch up.

Sometimes I think we've become so concerned with not hurting "feelings" that we've gone to ridiculous lengths. One of my friends has a daughter with a learning disability, who isn't doing so well in school. (She's like in the first grade). My friend is agonizing over maybe holding her daughter back. All the teachers at the school say that holding her back a year would help her a lot, and that they do hold a number of kids back each year. But my friend is afraid about her daughter's feelings. I wanted to say, but did not, "Is it better her feelings get a bit hurt now, or that she is still struggling in high school?" but I didn't.

I think one of the things that people overlook is that there is feeling-hurting stuff going on ALL THE TIME and maybe there's value in, in some circumstances, just accepting the fact that the kid will get his or her feelings hurt - you can't bubble wrap people, and doing so leads to highly dysfunctional adults. (I know. I've had a few  bubble-wrap kids in my classes and it's scary how little they can cope with)

I also think - and I know I've said this before - we need to make trad schools and the skilled trades "respectable" again. It needs to be seen as an equal choice after high school with college and military service. We will always need plumbers and mechanics, and you can't outsource fixing a sink to China. (And frankly, if I had to choose between doing something like small engine repair or sitting in a cubicle filing TPS reports....sign me up for the mechanic's classes. I think I'd actually enjoy being a mechanic, there's an element of problem-solving to it that appeals to me).

Yes, entrepreneurship is possible as well....but I suspect that there are comparatively few Bill Gateses and Steve Jobses out there....and that for every person who talks big about how "All these accomplished rich people didn't need college, that proves college is useless" there are a dozen people stuck doing some job they hate and dreaming of how they can raise enough funds to go to trade school or college.

I don't know. Right now, I get the feeling that lots of schools are training kids for cubicle-work, which is probably not going to be that viable a kind of work in the future - as companies go to a leaner, "higher productivity per person" structure.

I also sometimes wonder if we need to push farming, especially small-scale farming, as a more viable career choice. There is specific education that will benefit someone who wants to farm....there's a growing market for "locally grown" and heirloom varieties and stuff, and while it's a niche market - a person with a small landholding and a willingness to work hard can make a decent living. (Again - that's something that might appeal to me to do.)

I love learning and I mostly love teaching but there have been some problems that have crept into the educational system....

Tired of being an adult

First: Sheila, that totally makes more sense. I guess I had briefly seen that Tumblr but had forgotten it. Okay then. (My remark about my administrator still stands: he's the kind of guy who WOULD humiliate someone in public with a nasty joke).

I'm ready to hand in my Adult Card. I've pushed and pushed, I've tried to be helpful and friendly and accommodating, but some people just will have nothing of it. It's a total "If you give a mouse a cookie" situation, where nothing I can possibly do will satisfy or even mollify the person in question.

Being an adult sucks, you know? So much responsibility, so many people yelling at you, no time for fun. I don't get why kids are so all-fired fast to grow up.

I really want to be a Special Snowflake for a while. I want to be fussed over and doted on and have my whims catered to. But when you live alone....catering to your whims takes a backseat to the laundry. Or mowing the lawn. Or getting that grading done. (Part of my problem is that I don't have anyone, like a spouse or housemate, to go "You've worked all day long. Put that up for now and play Wii with me." And I don't have a child or even a pet to require my attention and make me go, "No, this individual needs me to care for them right now, the grading can wait.") So I get mired in what I "must" do. (Yes, I know kids and even pets are a lot of work....but they do reward you by showing you love. Or at least pets like cats or dogs. I'm not so sure about fish.)

I'm tired and I sometimes feel like I'm getting old before my time.

a follow-up

My head's going to explode.

I got told by an administrator to do something I essentially cannot do.

I'm fed up. This one person has taken up all my energy and good will this semester.

If I had some other skill, and if the job market wasn't pure crap right now, I'd be reading the want ads and wondering what else to do with my life. (Sadly, in most jobs you wind up dealing with special snowflakes that make your head explode).

NO ONE ever cuts me slack when I NEED slack. I have come to work with migraines, major cramps, and at the tail end of stomach viruses where I still could not eat. I've given up my free time, I've cancelled doing things I wanted to do, I've come in early and stayed late. No one gives a damn. Life is unfair and if you're a responsible person you get screwed royally all the time.