(Artist's impression)
My Wednesday and Thursday were made up of a series of complications, self-inflicted disasters, and booby traps that made the whole 36 hours incredibly frustrating. Apparently other people had the same challenges, although not necessarily at the same level. Thursday evening was supposed to be the first night the comet (PANSTARRS) was visible in the evening sky. It was too hazy to see the thing on Thursday and Friday was simply cloudy. So I haven't seen it, but I know it is there. In antiquity the comets were considered omens; in the Middle Ages they were full scale omens of disaster. I don't know if there is broader meaning here, but Thursday was a lousy day all around.
Follow me beyond the orange croissant of doom for my adventure.
The 36 hour challenges went from the serious to the ridiculous. I was off-kilter on Wednesday, flustered by a student in my noontime class who cannot seem to sit still in class, or even stay awake. On Wednesday he walked back and forth across the front of the room repeatedly, snored, and again asked a question outside of the scope of the class. All the things about classroom behaviour I have told him earlier in the semester have been forgotten by now and/or ignored. Usually I can handle it, and get back on track, but I got really flustered on Wednesday, and spent more time after the class trying to get myself together. I have discovered that I am certainly not the only teacher who has had this sort of behaviour evinced by this particular student in the classroom. Most of the rest still seem to shrug it off. I can't just do that. Walking around in the middle of a lecture is just not appropriate. It distracts me, and the other students in the class sometimes find it hard to concentrate -- I can see them watching him rather than paying attention to the content we are discussing.
So I was unevenly tempered later that day, and I wanted to cheer myself up, and I thought maybe a treat from the vending machine would be in order. The thing I wanted was salty. And there were (joy of joys) Ruffles potato chips -- just plain, wonderful Ruffles. But the chips jammed coming out of the I didn't get them. I should have recognized it as an omen, but nothing else went wrong the rest of the day, so I kinda forgot.
Wednesday went on okay -- a bit off (the university's computer system time stamped emails 8 hours earlier, so I couldn't find any of my messages I was sending because they looked as thought they had come in much earlier than they had, so I ended up sending emails several times, but that was again a rather minor annoyance), but it was survivable.
Thursday, THE DAY OF THE COMET, dawned clear and cold. Very cold. I had planned to walk in but when the temperature at 9 am was 26 degrees, I figured it was just too unpleasant to contemplate. After all, I don't live in Canada anymore.
When I got to work, I met with my Teaching Assistant for the introductory interdisciplinary class first thing, and we had a decent conversation, and went into the classroom. That was when things started going down hill. Two of the students weren't there, and thus were not there to hear about the papers I was handing back -- the feedback was on the papers, but there were overarching thematic issues I wanted to talk to them all about. Some of the students were clearly upset by the grade on the papers, and there were some very sullen faces. One just rubbed her forehead the whole class period. I then started to go into the next paper assignment, and that was when things went wrong. From the looks on their faces, I suddenly felt as if I were speaking a foreign language. Did they not know there would be another short paper assignment? Had they not looked at the syllabus? The Japanese student (who relies on written material because his fluency in English, while far greater than in Japanese, is problematic) came up to me after class and asked me about that assignment, seeming a bit confused about the due dates. And in a quick look over the syllabus I was shocked -- I couldn't see the paper due date for the assignment I had just spent 20 minutes talking about!
But this confusion was just the culmination of the classroom experience. One of the missing students showed up 20 minutes into the 80 minute class, and thus missed all the discussion of the paper. He has a tendency to come late, but this was later than usual, and this is the same student who was pretty seriously ill earlier this semester and missed a month of class, so he needs to make every effort to be stellar for the rest of the time. Things were just not going well, and then I managed to pull the table I sit on at the front of the classroom over, almost on top of me. I did get out of the way, but the unopened can of soda water got a pin-hole prick in it (how, I do not know) and started to spew all over the front two rows of the classroom and the students seated in the front two rows. I picked it up and promptly got soaked, glad I was wearing a sweater over my shirt, or I would have been in a wet tshirt contest outfit! The papers that had not been handed back were spread all over the floor, also getting soaked (and with inkjet print the text was running). Whatever. Late student got a runny-looking paper back.
I have classes back to back (and back to back to back) on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so I bring my lunch. Thursday I had leftovers from the night before, yummy sausage and sauerkraut. Guess what container decided to come apart in my carry bag (at least not a backpack, but one of the nice canvas totes I use sometimes)? Guess whose nice canvas tote now smells utterly of sauerkraut, and whose office was a bit stinky the rest of the day? Oy.
The next class (noon on T/Th) is one that I sit in on. I should have gotten a diet coke before the class started, as I could see the notes becoming less and less legible after the crash after the previous disaster of a class (had I really assigned a new paper that wasn't in the syllabus? I went over that in my mind again and again while the teacher spoke about Carolingian architecture). Otherwise the class was generally pretty good, a safer space, except for the fact that the bag of ice I need to calm down my back while sitting in an office chair for a long period of time sprang a leak,and I had to put it on the ground or I would have been sitting in a pool of ice water for the last third of the class. That momentarily really woke me up!
When I got out of that I went to take a book and some notes from a class I had substituted in for a colleague down the hall to her office. She had a note on her door that office hours would be cancelled from 1:30 to 2:30 because she had a class at that time. I realized then that the unexpected class was an off-schedule Senior Thesis class (we meet when they turn in papers, not every day that is scheduled for the class). I had completely forgotten we had gotten a paper and were scheduled to meet with the student. I had not even opened the file. I went back to my office and quickly opened it, made comments on the first three pages (of 15) and then ran down the hall to be in class. I apologized, but there was really no excuse other than I forgot. (oh, and I was still wondering about the extra assignment -- I hadn't had a chance to figure out where to add it to the syllabus, because I thought the students would benefit from writing it -- and if I didn't require it, but made it so they could substitute the earlier grade with the newer paper, it might go over okay -- would my teaching assistant still be willing to look over and meet with the students if it hadn't been in the original layout plans for the class? Oh, yes, let us talk about the 19th century artists' work that I haven't read your final chapter for...) I felt awful.
At 3 I had an exam I was proctoring for my London class. On Thursdays I bring in good tea (Fortnam and Mason Royal Blend tea, the best tea evah) and milk (must get more sugar for them as we are almost out). Because they were doing an exam I told them I would bring in cookies as well. I had been out of eggs so I went ahead and made shortbread (lemon) which used only flour, butter, sugar, and lemon zest. I had all the ingredients and the cookies turned out well. The exam was not a disaster. They all wrote for almost the full time I gave them, most remembered their teacups for the tea and had some tea and shortbread to keep them going during the exam, and all worked out okay. I was ending the day at 5:30, thinking all was finally calming down and I could go home, maybe catch a glimpse of the comet. No such luck; it was too hazy. And as I had driven in, it was a short trip home, and when I got in the door of my house I breathed a big sigh of relief.
That's when I realized I had left an almost-full quart of 2% milk on my desk at work, my grade book had gotten some of the sauerkraut juice on it, and I had left the heat up in the house all day (I usually turn it down to 60 when I leave, but it had been roaring merrily away at almost 70 since the morning). I crawled into bed, and fell asleep -- couldn't even stay awake for Project Runway.
When I woke up from my nap, I figured it was about time to get an email together about the invented assignment, and I went to the syllabus to get an idea of schedule so I knew when I would give them the optional assignment due date. That is when I discovered it wasn't optional, I had planned the assignment from the beginning of the semester, and what I said it would be worked well with what I had said in the syllabus (they have three 3-5 page written assignments and a longer major proposal to write, and this will be the third of the short assignments, which is about the future of the discipline in which you are majoring, using newspaper articles from the New York Times as a source of information and inspiration. I thought I had included this in their writing but suddenly in the midst of all the other disasters, I couldn't find it in the syllabus, and I thought I had made it up. I hadn't -- all was okay, and I was really relieved.
I wrote to my T.A. and told her what had happened and her response was that she had had a day like that too -- a friend of hers had said it was like "someone was pulling the rug out from under you as you were trying to walk on it." That was an apt description. Of course, I just blame it on the comet.
(artist's rendering of my day)