Something funny

Escape-artist babies. I know this is all over the web but it made me laugh.

I particularly like the one towards the end of the toddler who gets out of her crib, goes over to her sister's crib, lowers the side so her sister can get out and then *puts the side back up to avoid detection*

"Trial of the century"

(I've been really busy with summer classes. Trying to teach AND do research is craziness)

Anyway. The other night, when Morsi fell in Egypt, I wanted to see what was going on without firing up my archaic home computer. So I flipped on the tv.

Every news station (And I MEAN every - I even checked MSNBC) was showing highlights of the Zimmerman trial. (CNN apparently even has theme music for it)

This frustrates me on a couple of levels - first of all, what's going on in Egypt now is likely going to have a greater effect on our lives in the long run than some trial of a guy who killed a kid who may or may not have been attacking him. What happened in Florida was unfortunate and ugly and regardless of whether Martin was a "bad kid" or whether he attacked Zimmerman, he's still dead and his family is still mourning him. And Zimmerman's life has been disrupted; he's been painted as a vigilante and worse in the media.

The other thing that I really dislike is the thought that this is the new reality, that every big spectacular trial gets its own tv show. Surely this kind of thing is going to interfere with how justice is done? All we as citizens really need to know is (a) the case is going to trial and (b) the verdict (and sentence, if there is one) after the trial is over.

I don't know if it's that there are sufficiently large numbers of people lacking drama in their lives, that they feel they need the real-life soap opera of following a trial as it happens (I know people who watched almost every minute of the Casey Anthony trial). Or if people have somehow become convinced that watching a trial is doing some kind of civic duty akin to actually serving on a jury.

I don't know. But I worry about the ability for justice to be served in really high-profile trials, where there has been so much media speculation before the fact, and then the whole thing is on tv - so on some level, the attorneys and the court officers and the witnesses and perhaps even the jury know that millions of people are watching them - in some, that may raise an impulse to grandstand, a sense that "this is my ticket to fame (or at least to become a 'consultant' for Fox News)"

I tend to think putting a camera in front of most people changes their behavior, and not necessarily in a good way.

a progression

Just a strange little thing I've noticed driving around. Often, every small town has one particular type of business. Over the past 20-some years, there's been a progression:

late 80s-early 90s it was movie-rental shops - every wide place in the road had them
mid to late 90s - tanning salons
late 90s to early 2000s and somewhat still today - nail salon places (though more and more, you're seeing those as little outrigger shops inside larger grocery stores or places like Wal-Mart)

and now, it's those "e-cigarette" places (or "vape shops" as they seem to be called around here). I have no idea how popular these things are and if there's enough demand to keep the places open - it seems the prior incarnations (movie shack huts, tanning places) tended to die out, at least in the really small towns, as either the fad died down or the technology changed.

Makes me wonder what's coming next. Maybe 3-D printer shops, that let people come in with an image file of whatever they want, and they'll make a plastic replica of it?

Unseemly

I used to occasionally watch Paula Deen on the Food Network. She was nuts, her show was one cliche after another, but it was more fun than watching the news when I had just come home from work and needed to let my brain decompress.

Then I heard about the "incident." At first, I heard it played up like it happened yesterday - like she went around regularly using a discredited and ugly term for a black person.

Um, no. Turns out it was one instance, about 30 years ago.

And I admit, I felt bad about her (I think, though, there's a segment of the population who like to look at the things non-elites enjoy, and spit on them, and try to ruin their enjoyment of them) and decided not to watch anymore. Because it does feel a little skeevy to me to think about someone saying that, because usually, the stuff coming out of your mouth reflects what's in your heart.

But now, I don't know. Apparently it was one incident. And she made the comment about "Have any of you never said anything you'd like to take back?" Oh, hell, I KNOW I have. I regularly say stuff - no, not the word in question, not terms like that - but I say stuff that I realized hurt someone without my meaning it to, or I make a joke that's stupid and taken the wrong way, and yeah, I'd like to take it back. And I'm sure I said some really stupid stuff 30 years ago, which is about the time frame when she is alleged to have said what she said.

And the whole thing is just such a giant cluster, and such a weird thing: why does one famous person get to say nasty, hateful things (Alec Baldwin, I'm looking at you) and seemingly gets a pass, and another one said one bad thing decades ago, and it's time to get out the tar and feathers? (It's not politics: Deen, as far as I know, is an Obama supporter; I think she was also a Hilary Clinton supporter). Maybe it's the "you're a racist" thing; it seems now that even implying someone is a racist is about the worst brush you can paint them with these days. (Even worse than their being a misogynist. Or being someone who has been multiply unfaithful to their spouse. Or even someone who does questionable things with their sex organs - Anthony Weiner may wind up as the next president of NYC, despite his Tweetmeltdown)

I suspect some of it is that there's a segment of the population who sees folks like Deen as being uppity, and deserving of being taken down a notch: Why, she's a stupid Southerner! She promotes unhealthy food! She's icky! And there does seem to be a certain level of glee at her downfall. And I find that really unseemly. It's like there are some people that it's approved by some elite to "like" and to forgive if they mis-step, but if they're not on the list - well, then they can go to hell, and we'll laugh all the way as they go.

And you know? When someone who is famous, who is perhaps even looked up to by some, mis-steps and falls, it makes me sad. Even celebrities I generally dislike. (I'm watching with dismay now a couple of cases of NFL players - one who used to be a Patriot, one who is still a Cowboy despite being jailed - who have committed (or allegedly committed) crimes that led to someone's death. Actually, it seems that there have been quite a lot of arrests of NFL folks recently, and that's unfortunate, because they're sometimes held up as an example of men for boys to look up to....)

I don't like the glee at someone's downfall, even when it is someone who otherwise was a total jerk and maybe, just maybe, deserved it. (I once talked with someone who had met Deen. His impression of her was that she was a genuinely nice person, which is why it makes me all the sadder to hear of this incident.) I don't know what kind of a life a person has to take such pleasure in watching someone else's pain, watching someone else's career unravel thanks to a very ill-advised thing they did years and years ago....

And, I don't know, maybe instead of rubbing our hands together and cackling over stuff, we need to stop and realize: that could be me. I could say or do something wrong at some point and face those consequences. Would I want other people to treat me the way I am treating this person, my weaker brother or sister?

Dear "Weather" Channel

You are the WEATHER channel. Not the CLIMATE channel.

When I turn you on in the morning, I want to know how hot it is going to be today. Not how hot some theorist predicts it might possibly be 200 years from now.

If I want to find out what current thinking about climate change is, I will read peer-reviewed articles from sources I choose, not listen to some alleged "expert" I've never heard of nattering on the TV box.

You started to fail as soon as NBC bought you. I'm tired of your crappy reality shows, your need to be like every other network (hint, you aren't, your focus is WEATHER), and your occasional alarmism.


If I had a pot of money, I'd start my own weather channel and focus on just that - WEATHER. With detailed explanations of what was going on, forecasts for around the world (I haven't seen a European forecast on TWC for MONTHS), and with, at most, six-month speculations on what the climate will do.

Smiley and frowny faces

I got to thinking about this when I was grading a round of quizzes. One of my students had written "I didn't study" on the top of her quiz and drawn a frowny face. (And yeah, her performance kind of bore that out).

What I wondered about was: do teachers still draw frowny and smiley faces on student papers? When I was a kid it was fairly common practice (at least, smiley faces were. I guess some students did get frowny faces...) Or has that gone the way of lots of other things that could be seen as "mean" or "exclusionary"?

I will say that for some kids, frowny faces would not be a good motivator. I know for me they would not have been; if I did poorly on an assignment or quiz, even as a fairly young student, I would have felt bad enough about it without the added insult of a frowny face. Too many of those and I'd start to hate the teacher and hate the subject. Or are some students motivated by them? Or do some students need them, do some need the emphasizing that their behavior is not up to par?

(Perhaps that's why so much of the "health news" - lots of which sounds like nannying to me - infuriates me so much and doesn't seem to bother some other people. Perhaps there are people who are really unaware that exercise is good for you, and so, while I am snarling at the television, "What? Do you now want me to do TWO hours a day? When exactly am I supposed to sleep?!?!" there may be people that the message doesn't get through to. (Though a second question arises: how much is it the responsibility of the news media for the populace to "be healthy"? I would say almost none, aside from reporting about things like disease outbreaks or food recalls....)

I don't know. I've never drawn a frowny face on a student paper. Once or twice, in rare occasions, when it was a class I could joke around with AND someone earned a 100% on an exam (which is really rare in my classes), I'd draw a smiley face on it, partly to be funny (they are adults and should not need that motivation).....but that's rare, as I said.

Amazon: doin' it right

I know there are people out there who don't like Amazon for various reasons, but I love them. And I realized two more reasons why I love them:

1. Now, for many of the things you order, there is a link to tracking information right on the e-mail confirmation. No copying and pasting 12-digit alphanumeric things onto the UPS or USPS website - just click and it tells you where your package is.

2. Even better - I realized the other day lots of places I've ordered from (a couple online fabric shops, Caswell-Massey, and some of the gourmet food places), unless you specifically opt out of e-mails, they will e-mail you EVERY STINKING DAY practically, to remind you they're there. And Amazon doesn't.

Look, Caswell-Massey - yes, I shower regularly but it takes me some time to use up soap. Same thing with talc, even though it's eleventy-hundred degrees here in the summer and I need it so I can feel a bit fresher during the day (though I am probably more like one of Harper Lee's "teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum" by the end of the day). I don't need you to e-mail me regularly and say "Hey, hey, I'm still here! Hey, hey, want to order something from me?" It's like having emotionally needy friends.

Yeah, I have to go through and find the opt-out screens for a bunch of those sites and just prune the danged advertising e-mails I get (about 5/6 of the e-mail I receive....).

Amazon doesn't do that. They e-mail me when I've ordered something, they e-mail me when the thing has shipped, they e-mail me if I've sent someone a gift - but other than that, they leave me be. They don't send out weekly mailings with some kind of minimal percentage off to tempt me into buying. They know that I know they're there; they don't need to expend energy in reminding me.

(Frankly, I think way WAY way too many companies have bought into the "Constant Contact" model of business, where they have been told that customers won't use them unless said customers are constantly reminded of the business' presence - or that customers are so needy and desirous of attention that they need coddling every day.

"Call the midwife"

I've been watching this show (it's a British import, on PBS) off and on for a couple of months. (Off, because I am not home some nights when it's on, and also sometimes I am involved in doing something and I forget).

I like it, even as there are things about it that annoy me. (The "free contraception is a necessity" subtext of one episode, for example - the whole "here's an issue we're going to slip in and make it very palatable and appealing to people because it involves a sympathetic character." Maybe not the issue so much per se, but my feeling that my emotions are being manipulated in a certain way, that annoys me. While the "issues" aren't as heavy-handed as in some shows, they're still there). Still, I like it, partly because it's set in a time and a place (largely working-class Britain in the 1950s) that I know little about. And I enjoy this kind of show - which largely focuses on people doing their jobs, and what those jobs entail - more than shows like "Downton Abbey" that has a lot of rich-people-being-idle in it. (Some of my friends are really into Downton Abbey but I just can't get into it. Perhaps you have to have been watching it from the outset - I don't know who most of the characters are or why I should care about them).

But I do think the "doing useful work" vs. "being largely idle" distinction makes a difference for me - in the novels I read, I find the ones where people have careers they go about more interesting than the rich-idle-person novels.

I don't know if this one rises to something I want to own on dvd. (Yes, I know, many services have it available as streaming online, but I never bought a Roku box sort of thing (figuring I'd have to get a service call from the Creepy Techs at my cable company to help set it up) and my home internet connection gets slow and flakey at the end of the day, so....I'd almost rather shell out the $30 for a season's worth on dvd.)

I think part of what I like about the show is how the midwives, by and large, make the best of a bad lot - the difficulties in their lives, the challenges of living in just-shortly-postwar Britain (I think food rationing had probably ended just a couple years before the series is set, if I remember correctly). Dealing with really difficult people - the women they serve, and their husbands and other relatives, often tend to be the sort of people that Jesus talked about "loving your neighbor (even when it's bloody difficult)" about. (And some of the nuns - the midwives work out of a hospital staffed by nuns - are also rather difficult people.)

I may also find it interesting in that a number of the women I knew growing up had worked as nurses. Some of them were of the era where you were fired (! yes, forced to stop working) upon marriage; others were still working as nurses.

But I do tend to find shows like this -set in a different place and time - more interesting to me than the average sitcom or legal drama that's on the airwaves otherwise.

(I guess my viewing habits are strange: 1/3 or more cartoons, a few news and commentary shows, a few cooking shows, and then stuff like Call the Midwife.....there are whole shows on the major networks that I've never seen, and when someone mentions them, I'm like "that's a show?" Television has really changed since I was a kid and we got something like four or five different stations and cable and satellite were for "rich folks.")

It would be interesting

If it weren't so sad and scary.

I mean, the current big big scandal, the one involving the place sometimes called no such agency, and the fact that they allegedly now know that I've called my dad on my cell phone while doing my taxes in order to have a bitch session about how awful the IRS instructions are, and how they should just get rid of it and replace it with a flat tax....

But if it weren't so scary, it would be interesting. I have friends from all sides of the political spectrum who are outraged about this, who are either aghast that their government would do something, or who knew it all along and this is just proof. And apparently the ACLU is involved. And some commentators are saying it's not such a big deal - and again, it's people on different sides of the spectrum.

(FWIW: I objected to warrantless surveillance under Bush and I still object to it today. It totally shreds the presumption of "innocent until proven guilty" and it could be construed as a violation of the fourth amendment)

And I know, some folks are arguing, "But we don't have an oppressive government, so if you're not breaking laws, you don't have to worry" but I would at a big YET to a couple points in that statement....we never know what the future holds, and who knows? If there's someone in the IRS who allegedly thinks it's a good idea to move slowly and keep asking for more and more intrusive information on particular groups asking for tax-exempt status, or perhaps even to reveal the names of certain political donors - well, surely there are other suck ups in other agencies who look at which way the wind is blowing (or their own personal hobby horses) and who decide to play fast and loose with the rules themselves.

Maybe, I don't know, there's someone in the Medicare office who looks at requests for treatment, and drags their feet for someone because, meh, they're old, or meh, they're fat, or meh, they belong to a certain political party? And while I'm sure most people who work for the government offices are reasonably ethical - it just takes one jerk to ruin your whole day.

I don't know. I will say I am increasingly wondering what's going on, and has this been going on since 2001, and is there anything we can do to decrease it?

I know of the argument that it is "keeping us safe." Well, you could also argue that locking every citizen up in a prison cell would end street crime, but there's a point where "safety" becomes so constricting that you cease to desire it....

Spotted at the Target

So I had to run out and do some shopping (bigger than what I can do in town - we have a few decent stores but our grocery choices are not great).

In the process, I went to the Target. Now, it was warm here, but not nearly as hot as it's gonna get. Well, anyway, I wound up parked very near a Toyota Prius. And I noticed something that made me think....the person had left it running, presumably so the AC could stay on and keep the car cool. (My habit, partly because I worry about someone breaking into my car and stealing it, it to always turn it off and take the keys with me. Yes, it sometimes means getting into a hot car but that's kind of life.)

I shrugged, went in and shopped. Some 40 minutes later when I came out, there it still was, still running.

I just hope the owner isn't one of those people - like some hybrid-car owners I've met - who likes to go around lording it over everyone else how much BETTER for the environment his car is....I mean, I suppose it was running off of battery there, but STILL.

trying to get stuff done, ugh.

Summer school is busy. We have a four day week, which means each of those four days has 20% more stuff in it than it does during the regular semester.

ALSO, offices are supposed to be open from 8 am until 6 pm - to get in the 40 hour work week. But a lot of them still have people taking long lunches as I am learning from trying to work on paperwork during my (brief) break between classes.

(Interestingly, there seems to be an inverse relationship between how much someone is paid and how much of their actual "office commitment" they fulfill - so our secretary, who makes fairly low wages, is ALWAYS here, whereas some of the high mucky-mucks pulling down six figures AREN'T. (nor are even their secretaries, apparently)

The classes are going fairly well though I have one person in one of them that I suspect of being a snowflake-in-training: they are going ON VACATION in the middle of the summer semester and are just counting on making up the work. (Including having me write a make-up exam for them).

However, on the upside - one of my colleagues who isn't even TEACHING one of the classes I teach this summer volunteered to set up its lab for me, because she "curates" the material used in it.

How grateful am I for that? SO grateful. It's a smallish thing but it really, really makes my life easier on an otherwise busy day. It's a huge thing to have good colleagues. I don't think I'd still be in academia if it weren't for the colleagues I have. I know there are many departments where there are factions or people who are really hard to work with all the time. We're too small for factions, and the one or two people who tend to having difficult personalities aren't difficult all the time, and their being difficult is less difficult than many of the difficult people I have dealt with over the years. 

More thoughts on MOOCs

(Back, after a travel break. Summer classes start next week.)

I read, in passing, of a school somewhere that wants to offer a "hybrid" degree (part traditional teaching, but largely using these MOOCs - Massive open online courses) that is sharply less expensive than a traditional degree. (More detail: Georgia Tech, the degree is claimed to cost $7000 rather than the $20,000 or some a traditional degree would cost. Not clear what proportion of the coursework is MOOCs) On my own campus, there's a movement afoot to offer a "three year BGS" degree (BGS = Bachelor of General Studies, meaning there is no specific major. When I was a snooty college kid in the STEM field, we used to refer to the BGS majors as "The Future 7-11 Managers of America." Not that there's anything wrong with managing a 7-11, but you shouldn't be spending upwards of $10,000 a year (yes, even back then) at a Public Ivy for it)

I don't know about this. I worry about the idea of making a "second class" of college degrees. From what I have heard of people's experience in MOOCs (students who have taken them, a friend on another campus who is doing one for fun), they are fine for enrichment learning, and they work okay if you are very self-motivated and have the necessary background...but I think any of us who teach know that those students aren't all that common. (And of the ones I've had, in informal conversations? They vastly prefer traditional in-person classes.)

I get that online classes serve a lot of purposes: people in remote areas, people who work odd hours (at least, if it's an asynchronous class you can "attend" at any time), people with medical issues that makes leaving the house difficult, possibly stay-at-home parents....but for the traditional college student, I think there are some hurdles they have to be able to clear.

Way back when, when I was a student, I had to take biochemistry for my degree. (Actually few biology degree programs, unless it's something really jazzy like Biotechnology, seem to require that any more. As an option, yes; as a requirement, no). Anyway, I had two choices: I could take the 15 minute walk three days a week to the med school campus and take a traditional lecture class, or I could do something called "Keller plan" which was, I guess, self-paced with modules you learned from. (Kind of like the old SRA reading program from grade school, at least that was how I envisioned it). I thought about it - hiking a 30 minute round trip early in the morning vs. Keller plan. Ultimately, I went with the med school and the hike. I chose that for a couple of reasons: first, I knew I was going to be busy that semester and with something I was "doing on my own time" it would be far, far too easy to put off doing the "modules" and wind up scrambling at the end of the semester to get done (and thus, not really learn the stuff). And second, I knew if I did the route with "real" professors, if I had a question, I could stop by their office hours. I'm sure there was some kind of help structure built in with the Keller plan class, but I knew about going to office hours and asking questions and was comfortable with that. (It turned out I did not need it; the professors were all excellent and I learned really well from them)

So anyway: if someone with the level of time-management ability and maturity that I had knew she couldn't handle a self-paced course well....

But my concern with these "hybrid" degrees is the impression the schools are giving is that they are just the same as a regular degree - that there's no difference in taking maybe half (I'm guessing here) or more of your classes as MOOCs rather than in-person classes (or even small-format online courses, where the prof behind the computer might have 75-100 students, rather than the thousands that are in a MOOC). I'm guessing "individual attention" totally goes out the window in those cases. And a lot of students need some level of individual attention - I'm not even talking about the students who are "snowflakes" or who have some kind of emotional issues that affect their learning, and who need regular building-up and reassurance from a professorial figure - I mean just your regular, garden-variety, resilient student, they run into problems and need assistance. And I suspect it will be harder to get, and involve more red tape, when the professor "teaching" the class is at a different campus and has thousands of students all over the world....

My worry is, we're going to wind up with "Neiman Marcus Degrees" and "Wal-Mart Degrees." You go to a store like Nieman Marcus, you know you will be spending a lot of money. However, you expect good service and you expect a quality, durable product for what you are paying. You also might expect something a little different, a little more special, than the ordinary. When you go to Wal-Mart, you're going because it's cheap. You know if you need help you probably won't get it (or at least, I have found it very hard to get ANY help when I've needed it). The store might not be as clean as the Neiman-Marcus, it won't be as nicely lit, the music won't be as nice. You know that the product you buy will probably be cheaply made, not last all that well, and it may be made in factories whose labor conditions you'd really prefer not to know about. But it's cheap, and it's quick, and it's all that's available to some people.

The problem is, when someone begins pretending that a....I don't know, a blender....from Wal-Mart is JUST AS GOOD and is TOTALLY EQUIVALENT TO one from Neiman-Marcus. Oh, they both blend and whip and frappe, they both make milkshakes....but maybe the one from Wal-Mart breaks in a year and a half. Or maybe the blades stick after a while.

The problem isn't that there's Wal-Mart and there's Neiman-Marcus, the problem comes when there's nothing in between - no little mom-and-pop stores, no traditional department stores, no appliance stores. So you have the choice: spend a lot of money and get something that is most likely top of the line, or spend much less money and get something that's not that great, but hey, it was cheap. And so we wind up with the few who can afford a pricey degree from a Harvard or some such, and everyone else who has to do most of their coursework as distance-learning as part of an enormous cohort of students.

And while we're not there, I could see that beginning to happen, as smaller schools decide to "outsource" a lot of their subjects to MOOC creators....and the pressure for "cheap" and "fast" degrees grows. (You have heard the old engineering dictum? "You can have something good, fast, or cheap. Pick two." Though more often, it's pick ONE). I just worry that we will wind up with legions of people who earned quickie online degrees, or BGS degrees, and they STILL can't get a job with them....is it really that much less of a waste if you spent three years of your life rather than 4, and $10,000 rather than maybe $25,000?  You still don't have a job....you still might not have the preparation expected.

I'm not saying "don't do this ever," I'm saying "Let's think about this a bit more before we rush headlong into it."

Graduation report

A few things:

1. They didn't send us an e-mail of when and where to show up this year. I thought I was running late when I saw the full parking lots, but I turned out to be one of the first faculty there.

2. The speech was not memorable. A couple moments were, though:

a. Non-traditional (i.e., fortyish) woman student graduating. As she walked across the stage, from out of the stands, a teenaged- or pre-teen- girl voice: "WHOOOO! GO MOM!" Made me smile.

b. Young man walks across the stage, his (large) family (seriously: like fifteen or 20 people, all dressed in identical t-shirts) jumps up and starts cheering and hollering. As he walks back to his seat (with his back to his family but facing the faculty), he facepalms and shakes his head in an "I'm so embarrassed" expression.

c. A young woman in a wheelchair, wearing leg braces, even though they had made the stage fully accessible, got a couple of her friends to lift her up and stand beside her as support so she could actually WALK across the stage (one of the marshals rolled her chair around the back of the stage so she could get back in after she crossed). The "I did it" look on her face was priceless. (And a lot of us were holding our breath, hoping she would make it).

d. A Nepalese student I had in several classes (I think from some things he has said that he is Buddhist) did the traditional "namaste" gesture of respect, very briefly, before the president handed him his diploma. He also did it again walking past some of us who had had him in class.

As much as I bitch on here about some of my students, there are a lot of good and heartwarming things that happen on campus.

Here's hoping summer semester (which starts in 3 weeks) is a good one. (I just found out that I will, in fact, have a TA, and it's likely someone I taught with before who is a good, responsible person)

it's not Friday yet

But here's my FO for the week:

People who always have the need to one-up. To show how they are "better" than you. Or more important. Or that they are "purer" in terms of diet or resource use or not buying things made in sweatshops or God knows what.

Look, I try. I try to be a good person. But dammit, I'm not perfect. I don't need your supposed superiority ground in my face like Jimmy Cagney ground that grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face. Because it hurts and it's not useful to our working relationship and it only makes me think that you are a giant ass for pointing out all the ways you think you are superior. It does NOT make me want to emulate you and go vegan/start writing books instead of doing research/change up what has worked for me in teaching to match what you do/whatever.

Just flip off. I'm tired, I've worked hard this semester, and I just can't deal with your 'tude right now.

Responsibility

I don't carry pencils to final exams any more. I don't carry any writing utensils, for that matter.

Partly because I got sick of losing them - you loan someone a pencil, and unless you are there breathing down their back as they finish up, they often walk off with it. And good pencils (the only kind I will use, and it's increasingly hard to find good pencils, now that Ticonderogas are made in China out of some kind of super-breaky graphite now) aren't cheap.

But there's another issue here: Is it really too much to ask an 18 to 22 year old (or sometimes older) to bring a freakin' pencil with them to the exam? I regularly have people show up to exams with no pens or pencils and frankly, I don't want to give them the test when that happens. Because, how prepared for an exam are you gonna be if you didn't think to bring a  pencil? (These are people who do not ordinarily take notes in class - so they don't show up with notebooks and pencils).

One of the classes I teach gives exams as a Scan-Tron test. This is a Gen Ed class with a common exam, so it has to be machine gradeable. Now, I'm not a huge fan of all-multiple-choice, but it does make the grading easier on me. I tell the students: bring a #2 pencil. I put it on the review sheet: Bring a #2 pencil. I put it up on the class webpage: Bring a #2 pencil.

And I still get people who whip out an ink pen and are set to do the Scan-Tron in ink pen. (Oh hell no. I am NOT hand grading scan trons just because someone didn't have the right writing instrument).

But I mean, really: I grew up reading fairy tales where if you broke one little magical rule, you were in big trouble. Or if you happened to have the right thing at the right time, showing your preparedness, you were rewarded. I also remembered being told the story of how J.C. Penney (the man, the one who founded the store) once hired a person partly on the basis that he bothered to taste his food (during a restaurant meal) before salting it, rather than automatically salting it, and Penney assumed that meant he was a prudent man. And later, I remember the story of - was it AC/DC? - who had the clause in their contract that there were to be no brown M and Ms in the bowls of M and Ms in the dressing room, and the idea was that they could tell at a glance if the other things - safety related things - they asked for had been followed by checking the M and Ms.

So I pretty well learned young that Following the Directions Is a Good Thing. And what's more, when I was a kid, there were consequences: If you showed up without a pencil, there was a good chance you would not be allowed to take the test, and the teacher would brook no whining about it.

But now, sometimes, I feel like people are not allowed to suffer consequences for things - and I wonder if that just leads to an increasing number of bad decisions.

This really frosts me

Numerous colleges and universities - including, if I read the agenda for our faculty meeting this week right, mine - are going to a program of limiting adjunct hours STRICTLY (including grading time and preparation time) so they can duck the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.

This just....I have no words for this. How many colleges agitated for this Act, even though lots of people said there would be bad unintended consequences? Well, we're beginning to see the unintended consequences.

Thank God I got a full-time job when I did; I suspect full-time jobs are going the way of the dinosaur and instead people are going to be working two or three less-than-29-hours-a-week jobs in order to make ends meet.

Also, this probably means our workload will be going up, as we can no longer rely on adjuncts for grading of the hundreds of GenBio lab reports. Oh well. I will give those lab reports all the attention in grading that the students give them in preparing them.

I hope the American public remembers this the next time we get offered a pig in a poke.

Something to take care of

What I really need is something to take care of, something that doesn't talk back or make unreasonable demands. One of the problems I have with other people is that they all too often make what I think are unreasonable demands. (I have spoken before about "ask" vs. "guess" culture - I have a mindset where I feel like if someone asks me to do something, they are actually EXPECTING me to do it, and saying "no" isn't really an option, which is maybe why I get to feeling so put-upon)

Anyway. I went home yesterday afternoon. Put my car away. Realized it had been warm and dry so I went out to the garden. I haven't hooked the hose up yet because we've gotten a few late freezes and it's easier just not to take it out, than it is to have to drain it again and put it away again. So I've been using a watering can on my very small garden. (I have beans, tomatoes, and I planted a few flowers. I'm considering planting something else - either trying a fast crop of lettuce (though it might be too late for that already) or some kind of squash). I filled the can and watered everything, checked over the plants for bugs, noticed that the tomatoes are already flowering (no sign of fruit set yet). And it made me feel better. I like having things to take care of that don't make huge demands on me - all the plants require is water, and occasionally some fertilizer, and removal of the weeds that come up. They don't talk back, they don't need things suddenly at the last minute.

I've said before my gardening-fu is not great enough that I could feed myself off of it (even if it was my only occupation; I know I don't keep up with the garden as well as I might but life gets in the way), but I like pretending that I could. I like the idea of telling the rest of the world to take a flying leap and just taking care of myself, without having to depend on anyone else. I don't know why that is; I don't know if it's because when you depend on someone they can turn and make unreasonable demands of you (or withdraw their help at any time). Or if it's just a stubborn, I-want-to-do-it-myself streak. But I've always kind of been this way - I loved the "Little House" books when I was a kid, with all their descriptions of how to smoke meat and dry fruit. And "My Side of the Mountain," which was about a boy who literally ran away from home and lived off the land. And while I realize I couldn't really do that (I'd probably go running back to civilization as soon as the t.p. ran out, or after realizing there was no way I could make my own chocolate or tea from plants I grew), still, the idea of living off the grid as much as possible has appeal. (I couldn't do it here, at least not utility-wise: I NEED air conditioning in the summer as AFAIK, there is no off-the-grid electrical generation that makes enough power to run that).

I think a big part of it is that I would like to tell the rest of the world, "Go soak your head" (or something stronger) and just go hang out in my garden instead.

And the follies continue.

I had someone "threaten" to lose their crap in my office.

(Yes, I understand that some people really genuinely have emotional issues, but from working with this person before, I get the feeling that they have been patted on the head and told "you're having a panic attack" or "You're so upset right now you can't function" or something every time they got upset over something, so now they believe it, and they use it as a strategy to get what they want. Because people don't like to see people get upset.)

And yes, maybe they do genuinely have problems and I'm being an awful person for my interpretation, but you know, I'm tired. I'm tired of always having to suck it up and be the big tough grownup who puts up with everything. This is someone who, literally every time I have dealt with them, has some HUGE PROBLEM that usually can only be fixed by me bending my rules or putting myself out.

I'm just fed up with it. I've had too many people over the years who have been enabled to use "difficult" or unpleasant behavior with others as a way of getting what they want. It's manipulative and unpleasant and I don't like it. I admit, the threatened "losing their stuff" is not as unpleasant and ugly as some student behavior  that I've had to put up with over the years, but still: I told the person in question that the problem they were presenting was fixable, I told them how it could be fixed, I told them it was okay, that they could go and fix it, that they were capable of fixing it....I am at the limit of my sympathy.

(Part of this is when I'm distressed, I have precious few people I feel I can turn to for some shoring-up. I may NEED it but I seldom GET it.)

Why am I doing this? Why did I go into this career? I hate dealing with people. I especially hate dealing with people who have been taught dysfunctional ways of dealing with other people or with the challenges of life. How are you going to make it in the world if every small thing makes you fall apart? I hope you have a strong spouse to shore you up. And yeah,. okay. I'm an awful person for saying that. But in some ways, I AM an awful person. I have certain things I am very intolerant of and people wanting to shove their personal problems on to me is one of them. Part of this is sheer jealousy: I have no one, NO ONE I can shove my problems on to. I have to deal with them all myself. Even logistic crap like getting the gutters fixed, I have to keep harassing the repair guy until he's arsed to show up. I don't have anyone to be my "muscle," I can't walk into the repair guy's office and start crying at him how it's UNFAIR he keeps me waiting. I just have to deal with it. And I'm damn tired of dealing with it. If my car gets a flat, I have to change it myself. If I run out of food at home, even if it's a Friday afternoon on the first of the month, I have to venture out to the gee-dee'd Wal Mart to get food - or go hungry.

I'm NOT a nice person, I am only good at pretending to be one. I know that because I cannot feel loving and gracious towards people who make my life more difficult because they don't have their stuff together. I know I'm supposed to go "Oh, that's OK" but even as I SAY it I am seething inside because, once again, I will have to spend more time doing stuff I'd rather not do.

TL:DR: I'm tired and fed up and have no one to help me but I have seemingly hundreds of people nibbling at my elbow wanting me to help them. And I know the Christian thing IS to help them, but dammit, I don't WANT to.

Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiggggggghhhhhh.

This is our last week of classes. I collect a major paper in one class today, and lab books in another class today. So far I have had no freaked-out phone calls or e-mails about the paper (but that's my mostly-diligent class), so I'm hopeful there.

But the lab books.....a guy just stopped by wanting copies of all the lab exercises because he "didn't keep" his. I hope he kept a record of the results but I know some of the students in that class just write the results on their lab exercises.

Then he asked me: "So.....when are these due again?"

TODAY.

THEY ARE DUE TODAY.

WHAT HAVE I BEEN TELLING THE CLASS FOR THE PAST THREE WEEKS. THEY ARE DUE TODAY.

I swear, I am leaving campus at 3 pm to start grading my humongous papers, if I don't have all the lab books by then, too bad, so sad.

"Manatee gray"

There's a story making the rounds about two dresses sold online by Target.

The standard-sized one, in a gray color, was described as "charcoal."

The plus-sized one, identical in every way but size, was described as "manatee gray."

People were outraged. Target was attacked online, they took the description down with a mealy-mouthed, "Must have been a mistake; we have some seasonal items sold that are that color"


You know what? I can't be angry about this. Yes, I'm a bigger woman. Maybe not quite plus size these days (I am not sure how Target's sizing on this particular dress runs). But I'm far from being size 6.

And you know? I don't freakin' care if some intern somewhere wants to get his laughs off by referring to the colors of the clothes I would buy using terms to refer to large mammals. It's dumb, and it's juvenile, and it doesn't warrant me being bugged by. The fact that someone, somewhere, may have thought it was funny to refer to a plus-size dress as being the same color as a manatee tells me more about them than it tells me about the women who would wear that dress.

And at any rate: from everything I've read, manatees are pretty nice animals. They're slow moving and peaceable, they take good care of their offspring. They don't attack other animals.

Elephants, also: elephants are smart. They are excellent parents, and even the extended family gets involved. Elephants also appear to mourn their dead - suggesting they might have a higher level of emotional consciousness than the sort of people who think it's funny to compare a fat woman to an elephant.

So, I would just look at someone referring to me as a "manatee" or an "elephant" with a certain amount of pity, and think, "Really? That's the best you've got?"

What bugs me far more are the people who go all concern troll-y about heavy people. Here's a hint: We know we're overweight. You can't go to the doctor even to get a vaccination without them weighing you. And some doctors will deliver a lecture every time. (And it may become mandated that they do, under the new health-care laws: right before the talk about "Yeah, it's really okay for us to arrange to end your life for you if you get too old or too sick").

If weight loss were easy (and physiologically possible, in some cases - like that of people on long-term prednisone therapy), we'd lose weight. Just to shut your sorry asses up.

But it's not that simple.

But I'm not stupid. My carrying around an extra 20-50 pounds (depending on what standards you go by) does not short-circuit my brain. I don't need someone to tell me what I should and should not eat. I do not need someone to pretend to "care" about me when they really just want to control me.

I would allow my family to "concern troll" me, but they don't. They knew I try hard to eat a healthful diet and they know I exercise. And they also know that I come from a long line of heavyset people.

So if my family doesn't, strangers should not.

But anyway: I can't care about the dress I might buy bring "charcoal" or "manatee gray." Actually, "manatee gray" makes me think of the Florida Everglades, and it makes me think of the vacations I've taken there, and that makes me happy. It makes me think of going out for walks on the boardwalk and seeing roseate spoonbills and eating Key lime pie....it doesn't make me think, "Oh, someone is trying to demean me because of my weight." So yeah, whatever snarky little intern thought that might be a funny thing to do - meh, doesn't get my goat.