Finally getting in gear

This weekend I have a handful of papers to grade. (Will I get them done? Who knows?) Finally I'm getting out of the phase of doing continual overhead and setting up, so I can actually teach courses. Over the last two or three weeks, I have averaged something like 15 hours a week on plain old "overhead" tasks. (Making copies, trying to figure out the latest software glitch, revising courses to conform to the boss's last-second changes, etc.) That's, of course, in addition to 18 hours of actual in-class time per week.

My most vivid task at NCSC appears to be dealing now with all the students who approach me in a breathless panic:

• "MY CAR DIDN'T START THIS MORNING!!! ARE YOU GOING TO KICK ME OUT OF CLASS???"
• The assignment said to write about my reaction to the essay and I used "I" and "me" but the writing center said I did that all wrong. Am I going to fail the course?

I guess I should welcome this. It's quite a contrast to the football players' attitude that all they have to do is sign up for the class, look bored, and occasionally turn in a late paper and — because they are so incredibly valuable to the team — they will pass and get a diploma that will make them rich.

Still, it just wears me out. Apparently these students had teachers who didn't know how to teach or grade, so they picked on the most trivial secondary issues (The printer printed this on both sides of the paper. Will it fail?) instead of trying to actually teach content. Once again, I find that my main task is dealing with the psychological damage. And that's not even taking into account the bias in Freshman English courses toward course designs that flunk people. (Yes, I failed two last semester because they couldn't figure out the software necessary to submit an electronic portfolio. That's the way the course was written by my superiors.)

War on Coal

When I drive back to Washington, I go through the mountains of Pennsylvania, and I often see signs demanding that Obama stop his war on coal. (Our president must be a very busy man to do all the things the Ultra-Right accuses him of doing.) On the same journeys, I run through a lot of areas where we are fracking for natural gas.

The problem with coal is not that the president hates it. The problem is that it is (to quote someone who was writing about steam locomotives) an ugly, dirty fuel. People die to get it out of the ground. It needs to be transported in huge trains. When it's burned, it releases sulfur and mercury and a lot of soot. And finally, of course, it leaves ash which must be disposed. It corrodes its boilers and generally causes a mess. None of those problems occur with natural gas. Yes, the fracking process is questionable, but once the stuff is out of the ground, it's a lot easier (and cheaper) to live with than coal, not to mention less likely to injure the people who must live near the electric plants.

At the moment, we also are being told that Obama is making war on the fracking process. Is this the same as raising legitimate concerns about safety?

Now we have the Charleston, WV issue of a mystery chemical that's used to clean coal getting into the water supply. I'm just waiting to see how this one plays out. According to one source I read, this chemical is quite obscure and nobody knows what it does to people when it gets into the water supply. Given the far right's tendency to personalize everything and to make every problem the result of an evil decision on the part of the President, I suppose they will have him kicking a hole in the holding tank the chemical came from. But won't that boost the fortunes of natural gas?

No, the real war here is between an older, more problematic technology and a newer one that promises to be cheaper. That's all.

In spite of

One of my Facebook contacts posted one of his inevitable comments today about true patriots opposing taxation. I was about to call him to task on this, but I went to www.dictionary.com to look up the definition of "patriot." There it was, the second definition:

a person who regards himself or herself as a defender, especially of individual rights, against presumed interference by the federal government.

That got me to thinking. So a true conservative patriot, by this usage, is someone who thinks the government of our country is evil. I guess in light of the the first definition

a person who loves, supports, and defends his or her country and its interests with devotion

this means defending the actual land mass, or perhaps the assorted like-minded people, against the USA and the Constitution.

Perhaps I think too much, but again I remembered the Conservative Bible Project, a movement to use public opinion and crowd-sourcing (presumably from the right kind of people, not those evil liberals) to rescue the Bible from liberal bias. Presumably, Jesus will turn out to be an anti-government capitalist who favors hunkering down in one's fortress and accumulating weapons. We will discover that Jesus was actually on the side of the Pharisees, not of the woman caught in adultery. We will discover that the basic gospel message was all about accumulating wealth. And in the garden Peter will be commended for cutting off the man's ear.

It's simply a question of who is the boss. The true conservative says, "I, myself, am the boss, the standard of the Universe."

My Teaching Schedule

I am editing this in March, 2020, six years after it was originally posted. I had thought of deleting it, but it will stay. I kept it because it's a good record of the kind of teaching I was doing back then.

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My weekly schedule is finally nailed down, and very unlikely to change. I have added travel time to the times below, to show when I'm really unavailable for much of anything else (and it's worth noting that the big gap Monday and Wednesday afternoon is so awkward that I will probably find somewhere to hang out and do more school work).

• Monday: 7:30 to 12:30 @ Ashland; 4:00 to 7:15 @ NCSC
• Tuesday: 10:30 to 2:15 @ NCSC
• Wednesday: 7:30 to 12:30 @ Ashland; 4:00 to 7:15 @ NCSC
• Thursday: 10:30 to 2:15 @ NCSC
• Friday: 7:30 to 12:30 @ Ashland

There are Spring Breaks (which, of course, do not match up), and the whole thing is done by mid-May.

Survived the First Day

If you've never taught before, you don't know the odd variety of stage fright one gets before the first day. I've been doing this since 1995, and I'm still convinced it will all crash, that they will hate me, and so forth. Bring out the tar and feathers.

Actually, the second-semester class based on The Soloist went quite well, in spite of the 8 AM time slot. One gets a feel for these things, and the vibe in the room was a good one. I always assume that second-semester developmental classes will be the people who didn't make it the first time around; in fact, this one (as usual) has several non-traditional students. I like non-traditional students. They tend to be more mature and work harder. And they lack the arrogance that often characterizes freshmen who are highly gifted in non-academic areas (for example athletics).

The afternoon was spent at NCSC. Another thing non-teachers wouldn't realize is the incredible number of administrative details it takes to fire up a semester. They all got crammed into a very brief time because of the weather delay and because I picked up this last-second course. This is Wednesday afternoon, and I'm still not quite sure I'll have everything nailed down for the Monday start. Deep breaths. The last-second course is only eight students. We really could run that one as individual tutoring. The big groups are entirely figured out. Poor Tony in the copying department—I hit him hard with work today, about 1000 pages.

The next couple of days I'll still have my nose to the proverbial grindstone, trying to get that last course nailed down.

Right Wing Rants

I guess it's the cold weather that has everyone inside and playing on the Internet. And everyone is getting cabin fever—which brings out the worst us, especially in the right wing Facebook people, already a gang that can pick a fight over the most trivial comment.

Anyhow, so far:

• A friend posted a picture of an electric lineman (we used to call them "stump-jumpers"), and I made the comment that they are worth every penny we pay them. This (obviously) led to a right-wing blast saying that raising the minimum wage is a Very Bad Thing, implying that the poor stump-jumper either doesn't deserve all the money we pay him to climb that pole in sub-zero weather or that somehow his wage got cut when the guy at the McDonald's counter got more money.
• I made a comment about how wild things were at Kroger the day before the big freeze. Obviously this led to a rather elaborate thing about the government crashing. I should have seen that one coming.
• Slate magazine ran a picture of people making snowmen in Washington, DC. That led inexorably to a comment about how the cold snap is Obama's fault, followed by a response that all politicians are terrible.
• And, right on schedule, one of my Facebook contacts posted his weekly "everyone stockpile your guns and ammunition" posts. The government is about to fail, he says, so apparently we need to be ready to murder a lot of people.

I draw several conclusions from my two days indoors playing on the computer:

1. Ultra-conservatives are always in a terrible mood, always ready to pick fights. This is a special reason to fear their "everyone get your guns" strategy.
2. No innocent comment, jest, or observation is immune from being politicized, even if it requires a total change of subject.
3. Facebook posts are normally made in anger.
4. I was wise to set this blog so responses are always moderated.

Vestry

I've been nominated for the Vestry at St. Matthew's. Because we don't do run-off elections, it's 99% certain that I'll be elected.

I was pondering this turn of events. I've been at St. Matthew's for about three years, and I'm now being asked to help lead things. I've taught Confirmation classes, run the website, and organized the youth group. Next Sunday, I'll be one of the people who counts the offering and prepares the bank deposit. I was at my previous church from 1977 to about 2010, about 33 years, and I got to teach a Sunday school class and do the PowerPoint slides.

Now, to be fair, the role of the Vestry is fairly narrow in an Episcopal church. The priest is responsible for everything related to worship and for the spiritual formation of the members. The Vestry worries about more "secular" stuff. (What will we do about fixing the roof? Can we afford to hire a secretary? How are we going to resist the plea to hang sappy religious art all over the newly-painted walls of the Parish Hall?) Vestry members are elected for a three-year term and usually do most of their meetings after church on Sunday. By contrast, at my previous church, the elders serve for life (which usually amounts to seven or eight years before they quit and leave the church) and they are responsible for pretty much everything. They do a lot of micro-managing, including a lot of conflict resolution between church members, and they have to run every small group in the church. It's a lot of work, and I am not surprised that they get burnt out. Maybe I'm glad I was never called on for that task.

Anyhow, soon I won't be able to complain about what "those guys" have done because I will be one of "those guys."

Snow Day

Ashland University has (astonishingly) shut down on the first day of the semester. It's currently one degree above zero, snowing, and the wind is 30 mph. The temperature has dropped 15 degrees in the last hour.

I remember when the weather was much worse—we were under an ODOT "Red Alert" (severe snow/ice/drifting), which meant it was actually illegal to drive—and Ashland stayed open because it was OK to walk from the dorms. Kind of macho with other people's lives.

When I was a kid, I loved snow days. Staying home and eating cookies. Playing in the snow. Now there's not enough snow to play in (unless one lives near the lake) and the wind chill is actually life-threatening. And I'm still struggling to get my courses set up for NCSC. It's going to be a working vacation.

Once More to the Battlements

For the fourth time since Thanksgiving, I'm putting together a course. Ashland starts Monday, and their two are all ready except for the final copying. (I hope the weather breaks up enough to allow me to do that on Friday.) Same story for one of my NCSC courses, and I have an extra week to worry about them.

Then there's the new one. A teacher at NCSC took sick, so I got the course at the last second. It's a basic writing (developmental) course, and I only have six students. I might possibly pick up one or two more, but I doubt I will hit ten. I've never seen the textbook, and I can't get a copy until Monday. The textbook publisher needs assurances from the school that I really teach there if I am to get access to the teachers' website. Apparently an essential part of the course is the PLATO online learning software, but I cannot get into it because I'm not yet registered as a teacher (and presumably, I am supposed to construct an elaborate set of online exercises and tests for these six students). And apparently, nobody has developed anything resembling assignments for this course.

This is the point where I begin to say, "C'mon guys! Isn't this a LOT of overhead for six students?" And wouldn't it be nice, for once, to be an insider, not an outsider to the whole educational machine?

Level Up!

Yesterday at the Y, my computerized workout tracker said I became eligible for a T-shirt because I had achieved another level. (They keep track of how many times I lift something, and base the levels on that. I think I've lifted something like 15 million pounds, but in lots of 30 or 40 at a time.)

One of the employees congratulated me, with a big smile on his face. I commented that I would have gotten my T-shirt a lot earlier if I had recorded all of my bicycling, about 2000 miles last summer. His jaw dropped. Now you've got to imagine an incredibly huge guy with big solid arms and really amazing pectoral muscles being blown away by the idea of biking 2000 miles in a summer. I pointed out that it's not that hard. All you have to do is several 50-mile days a week. His eyes got even more bulgy (if that's possible). And of course, the Bishop's Bike Ride (five 50s back-to-back) helped the total.

I'm just not used to being treated like an athletic god.