Archive for the ‘The School’ Category

Despite the barking-cough-of-death and the fever that prevented me from being upright for most of the day yesterday, I went to class. Only, I should add, because we had a quiz planned and we get to drop our lowest quiz grade. I’m not sure if you remember, but um, I got a zero on one last week and I’d kind of like to drop that one. A lot. Did you know a zero out of twenty makes a serious dent in your quiz average? It does.

So I went. And I coughed. And coughed. And coughed. In case you wondered, the prescription cough drops do not work. As soon as I finish the homework that’s due tonight, I’m going to use all y’all’s recommendations and start shooting alcohol.

Anyways, Professor Incomprehensible stops the lecture and asks me what’s going on.

I’m sorry, is my coughing confusing? Does she think I’m giving birth? I tell her in my hoarse-ass voice that “I am sick.” She says that she has some red ginseng if I want it. Um, no thank you.

So the lecture resumes. As does the coughing. I left the room a few times when I knew I was due for a spell which would culminate in the cough gag, because really, no one wants to see that. And again, she stops lecture. This time because someone in my vicinity sneezes.

“What is going on?” She inquires.

“It wasn’t me.” What? It wasn’t.

“I know, but look, you’ve already made everyone sick.” She accuses.

Here’s where I offered to leave. If I was bothering her so much I’d be willing to go home right then. Really, no big thing. But no, she says it’s fine, she’ll continue “teaching.”

Ten minutes later, she stops again. I swear up and down in my head if she says one more word about my cough that I am just going to pack up my crap and go home. I have already taken my quiz and I just don’t need this grief at all.

This time she asks me to read something off the overhead projector. She does this often because her accent is so thick that you tune her out purely because what she’s saying is not words, but sounds with no meaning. And since she’s reading directly off the powerpoint, it’s not difficult to go ahead and teach yourself while she rambles. Though admittedly I paid attention last week when she kept confusing the word “element” with the word “elephant” because that was funny shit. Did you know that the sodium elephant will react with the chloride elephant?

I shot her a look of death and proceeded to read the slide with my pre-pubescent boy voice cracking every other syllable. If there was a way to imitate it through letters on the blog, I would, but just imagine a 13 year old boy trying to read in front of the whole class.

She thanked me for reading and then, with a very confused look says, “Kathryn, are you sick?”

If my earlier blog didn’t indicate it, this job thing has been weighing me down. Earlier today, during a mix of stress from my chemistry exam studying and the job situation, I stopped what I was doing and had a conversation with God. I’m not sure we’ve been on great terms since I perhaps said some unkind things after the incident in Hawaii, however, I prayed. For the first time in a while. I didn’t ask for my job back, and I didn’t ask for an A on my exam, I just asked for resolution. If I wasn’t going to get an A or a B in chemistry, I just needed to know now so I could drop the class before Thursday. If I wasn’t going to get my job back, I needed to know so I could start applying elsewhere. I wasn’t looking for miracles, just resolution.

And then I left for my class.

First, I took my chemistry test. It was on 2 chapters, one of which I understood solidly and the other I did not. Not even the tutor who came in to help us could answer the questions I was confused about. It was rough. And I’m not going to say I rocked that because I truly have no idea how I did on it. However, I was able to come up, through my calculations, with one of the multiple choice answers for each question. This is almost unheard of. It doesn’t mean I got them all correct by any means, but last week’s test involved a lot of situations where I would choose the answer that was closest to my answer, and inevitably, I missed quite a few problems. So if nothing else, I at least guided my own grade this time. I’ll know probably know my grade tomorrow.

While I was taking the test, I got a call from my old work.

I have a job.

I have a GOOD job.

I’m actually teaching a subject I’m semi-educated in, as well as the one I’ve been teaching. This is fantastic, beyond just the getting paid (and therefore being able to eat, pay rent and keep the a/c running), it also means I get to keep my health insurance, it means I’ll get a Christmas holiday in which I get to go home to California to see my newest cousin’s birth and several other things. It’s also going to give me the opportunity to teach a new subject, which while somewhat scary, is a good thing. It’s going to give me a chance to re-evaluate and be sure that leaving teaching is the right decision. It’s going to allow me to clearheadedly differentiate between not liking teaching and not liking teaching the subject I’ve been teaching (I didn’t hate it, and I don’t mind teaching a couple sections of it, I just didn’t have any passion for it).

With this schedule I’ll get to teach some of my students from my first year at this school, which should be nothing if not interesting. The school is even going to give me the normal pay increase that I’d have received if I hadn’t quit at the end of this school year, which is so incredibly generous of them. I was fully willing to take that pay cut and am so pleasantly surprised to not be. I start the first full week in August, which is right after I finish with the GRE.

I’m not going to lie, it was an awful lot of good news all at once, and I’m not going to get holier than thou art, but honestly, I feel like there’s got to be a plan in place. Maybe there was a reason all of our things were stolen. I think we’ve already gained a really great new perspective on what’s truly important in life and I can only imagine that there’s another lesson waiting for me in this next year of teaching.

And I’m wildly looking forward to finding out what it is.

Oh. my. hell. This week is eating away at my soul.

First the job. My first attempt to contact my work was last Tuesday, July 1st, at 4pm. My second attempt at contact was Sunday morning. I then called Monday morning and found out that the administrators were at a conference and wouldn’t be back until today. So this morning, I sent another email because often if it’s been more than a week since an email was sent, it never ever gets read. There’s a black hole of emails that has a motto of ignorance being bliss.

I got showered and dressed with the intention of driving down there in person today, but I called first, wherein I found out that they wouldn’t be back to the office until tomorrow, so I stayed put. And completely lost my mind. I can 100% deal with not getting this job back, but I have to know because I have to get another job if I don’t get this one back. And the school year is rapidly approaching (the school year begins early august here) and there are already very very few teaching positions available in non-public schools (I’m not being a snob, I’m not certified to teach in a public school here- Louisiana doesn’t have reciprocity with California teaching credentials, because, you know, they hold their public schools to a much higher standard…).

I also haven’t seen my husband since Tuesday and I only saw him for about 15 minutes then while we scarfed down dinner and then I dashed off to class. He’s on a rotation now that requires him to be up at 4 in the morning, so he’s asleep well before I get home at 10. While I know this is what needs to happen for his education and I support him whole-heartedly and am proud of him for working so hard, I also just miss him. You know? It’s not like I can’t go a few days without seeing him, because I can. But it just sucks that he is home at night, he’s not out of town and yet, I can’t spend any time with him.

And of course, the summer school class continues to rape my mind of any and all focus. I’m finding the math part to be really enjoyable, it’s the memorizing it for daily quizzes that I’m hating. And of course, the complete irrationality of my professor. We’re taking the course at a satellite campus from the main campus and she told us she would post the answer key to the test outsider her office at the main campus so that we’d have to “work to get the answers.” I’m not going to lie and say I was polite about disagreeing with this. It makes sense to ask us to spend time studying and to spend time reviewing the answer. It does not make sense to ask us to spend 30 minutes each way in the car to copy down an answer key that could just as easily be posted outside of the door of the CLASSROOM WE’RE SITTING IN. I won. And also, last night, she declared that she’d be grading homework for completion, so double victory. I think I’m next going to suggest that she just give us all As and call it a day.

Anyways, so I’m going to go back to half studying while compulsively checking my email just in case there’s any news. Which there won’t be. Because this is my life.

In the middle of the chemistry class, in a move that I can only imagine was purely motivated by the fact that the professor had NO idea what the answer to a student’s question, our professor told a joke. Or rather, attempted to.

She asked us why 9 was afraid of 7, to which the answer is because “seven ate nine.” Ah ha. Ah ha.

However, the actual joke is: why is 6 afraid of 7, because as the punch line indicates, 9 is no more and thus would not have fear of 7.

She could not grasp this. No matter how many times we explained that 9 was gone, or dead, if you will, she just didn’t get it and instead kept telling the same wrong joke over and over again.

And the only thing I remember from the entire 3 hour class was her exclaiming after a period of reflection, “Wait, nine is DEAD? How can it be dead?!?”

Oh yes, friends, a new rant. I’ve had to put the wedding pics on hold until I can figure out how to deal with the faces I can’t share and because I finally have the actual pictures I own the rights to, so that I don’t have to (illegally) post the water-marked pictures anymore. However, I still have to get these pictures onto the computer, but it will be done soon. Like possibly tomorrow soon. So for now, onto other news…

My night class is killing me. Not necessarily with the material, but the professor. I’ve tried to refrain from ranting too much because I was trying to reserve judgement, but the (very polite and respectful) argument we got into last night all but ruined any chance of that.

The class is Chem II and it is condensed from a semester into 15 classes, 3 hours each. It’s intense to say the least and since the class started last Tuesday, about half the students have dropped. The professor does not speak English. And generally, this does not bother me because we all come from different backgrounds and half the time I can’t understand the people here who are speaking English. However, she REALLY doesn’t speak English. I spend about 2/3 of the class trying to decipher the words she’s saying, which in the end, really doesn’t harm my learning since all she’s doing is reading slides and deriving formulas, both of which I happen to be proficient at. She can’t, however, answer anyone’s questions because she doesn’t understand us either.

We have homework each night, a quiz each class and a test every 3-4 classes. All of this is again, very intense, but really, it’s doable and its reasonable for the amount of time we have to get through the course. Here’s where my real problem is. The first night she assigned us homework, which was fine and well. She told us to make a copy of it so we could correct it AFTER we turned it in. A little weird, but okay. Then we get to class and the first thing she does is distribute the quiz, without going over the homework at all. When we asked about it, she said she’d go over the homework at the end of the class. Huh? So we do the quiz, we listen to the “lecture” and then we go over the homework, and lo and behold, half the class did about half of it wrong, which is a really good indicator of how we probably did on the quiz.

Fine, I let it go. I did okay on the quiz (I think, not that she’s actually graded it in the week since we took it…) and I was willing to move on. Until this weekend. She assigned homework Thursday that we had to email our multiple choice answers in on Saturday night. Great, I did it, it took me several hours and I was meticulous. And for a wonderful change, after all the homework was due, she posted the answers. I got a 50%. Upon looking at my homework, I figured out all my mistakes and really, had a much better grasp on the material. I would even say that for the first time since starting the class, I actually learned something.

Here’s my problem. Despite the fact that I spent 4 solid hours working on that homework, I’m getting an F on it. Someone who took the paper and chose answers at random may have gotten a higher score than me and this is not fair. Better yet, she outright refused to explain any of the answers in class (it didn’t so much matter for me), so the whole class was lost. And then she went ahead and gave us a test.

I’m sorry, this is not fair on 2 separate fronts.

First, you can’t give homework and not go over it or give an answer key until after you quiz on the same material. How the hell are we supposed to know what we’re doing? Which is exactly what I asked her (minus the word hell, I do have a small shred of decency somewhere). Her answer to this question and every single one that everyone else asks is that I should go to the chemistry tutor from 9:30 to 10:30 each morning and study for 6 hours. But this is a 7-10pm class where about half the students work and the other half have other day classes (note that I have neither…). That isn’t an acceptable answer to a class-wide problem.

My other disgruntlement is that you cannot give homework assignments and grade them for correctness if you’re going to turn around and give a quiz on the exact same material and also grade it for correctness. That’s 2 quizzes! That’s double jeopardy, especially if you don’t give the answers to the homework so you can check your work. As a former (and God willing, a future) teacher, I can tell you that’s just not how you teach. The whole point of homework is to learn the material, not to be punished for trying.

And I tried, oh how I tried, to politely convey this point. And the only responses I got were to go to the tutor and that this is an intensive class. After 30 minutes of trying to speak with her I gave up. I may as well have slammed my head into a brick wall for 30 minutes for all the good it did.

However, after I walked out of the building (for the record, I actually politely emailed her with my concerns earlier and she demanded that we talk in person after class, I’m not at all a confrontational person), I got a round of applause from all the remaining students.* So I may be whiny, but at least I’m in line with the popular opinion.

So basically at this point, I’m waiting to see what my test grade from last night is (God only knows when it’ll be graded) and then deciding if I need to drop the course. The last time this professor taught the class more than half of the students failed and she didn’t curve it, so I’m not willing to risk that. I’d rather take an incomplete and take it later for an A or B. And you know, if I don’t have class then I can actually sit in bed all day long without exercising a single muscle besides the one controlling the remote control.

(*A round of applause from every student except one, but that’s because she’s got a different vendetta. She’s the one person in the class of disgruntled people who has to express her disgruntled-ness all. the. time. And if I hear her say “well I have to work for a living” one more time as an excuse for not doing homework or not preparing for a quiz (hello, personal problem!), I’m going to cram my calculator down her throat. My favorite was yesterday when she was trying to pound home her point about how she had to work because “mommy and daddy weren’t paying for college like everyone else.” I almost killed her on the spot. What I wouldn’t give for a freaking job right now. And mommy and daddy haven’t paid for my education for sometime now, thankyouverymuch.)

And on to other news…

I called my former work today and it turns out my boss is at a conference. This is GOOD news. It means she’s not just ignoring me. I also contacted my former department chair and he is going to go to the mattresses for me and see if he can help me get my job back. If nothing else, I should have a definitive yes or no about my job sometime this week, which is really all I can ask for at this point.

In the meantime, I’m going to see what other jobs I can get with my bachelor’s degree in nonsense that will pay enough to cover my rent, bills, and spectacular credit card debt. Oh, and perhaps study for chemistry. And get my tired fixed since Pep Boys had a 2+ hour wait yesterday.

Okay, so still in Hawaii for another day and a half, but felt somewhat compelled to write something because the Father’s Day post was still staring at me (Slappy is still sleeping, for the record, so I’m not taking time away from him for this) and perhaps I have a small blogging/technology addiction. Whatever. I just wanted to give you a rough idea of what’s coming up both here and generally in my life, because after this beautiful Hawaiian vacation, things are going to hell in a specially woven handbasket.

We got our wedding pictures today (online) and eventually I’ll share a few with you. There will be at least a good couple of wedding blogs, many good honeymoon blogs (also with pictures) and then I’m sure several ranting blogs about what’s happening next.

After a few more days in Los Angeles, we will be driving back to good old NOLA. 3 days in the car, 800+ miles of mother freaking Texas, and then we will finally be home. Don’t get me wrong, this vacation and the time in California has been priceless, but I miss my home and friends and my cat and I’ll be glad to sleep in my own (I guess OUR own) bed. This plan puts us home sometime late next week depending upon how much of Texas we ignore the speed limit through.

Then on June 30th, I have a gynecologist appointment, a dentist appointment (3 cavities to be filled) and possibly a date with a shotgun. Seriously, that day is going to blow, but my new! job starts the next day and it needed to be done so I don’t give that great first impression of asking for time off. I also have an appointment with the boob doctor on like the 3rd because she couldn’t fit herself into doctor appointment Monday, but for inquiring minds, we’re in a holding pattern. That is, no matter what I do, it continues to hurt and leak and ooze. And I’ve now finished round 4 of ass kicking antibiotics, and seem to be infection-free, so that is certainly good news. I have a sneaking suspicion that when I go in there we’re going to later, rinse and repeat the same thing as last time. I’m guessing she’s going to re-silver nitrate it and I’m going to continue packing it until it decides to close. Which right now, at 2 months post surgery, seems like it might be never.

Anywho, on July 1st, I report to my new job at 9am. Yikes (p.s. NOLA peeps, how long will it take me to get from uptown to Kenner by 9 in the morning? Is there a better route than the interstate? Heeeeeelp me). I will get out sometime around 4ish (I get out more like 6ish MWF) and then have my first night of summer session Chemistry II from 7 to 10. Yea, let that soak in for a while. MTWTh from 7-10pm for 4 weeks. If I post something completely incomprehensible on July 25th, just assume I’ve consumed massive quantities of alcohol in celebration with being done with that class because I’m pretty sure it’s going to hand me my ass.

Once that’s over, I’ll have 2 weeks to study, fast and furious style for the GRE, take that, not suck at it, and then begin my regular fall classes, which include child psychology and microbiology, both online, but with a Tuesday 7-10 lab on campus. Things should settle down for me nicely once classes start, but I’ve got one mean month before that happens.

Some of you may be wondering if this was a long way of saying that I was taking a blogging break, and just so you know, you’d be wrong. All this really means is that you can expect a lot of blogs in capital letters about Texas, a lot of general pondering about how the hell to do Chemistry and I’m sure nice (and undoubtedly correct) usage of GRE vocabulary. If anything, I think this blog is about to get more smarterer.

Yep, we’re going to get our education on. But not until after we get our wedding and hooneymoon on first.

Test is done. Not my finest performance, but arguably better than I’d anticipated. Thankfully the professor took about half his multiple choice questions off the online quizzes I took like 12 times. I don’t want to hazard a guess on my grade and I know it’s lower than what I’d like, but such is life.

I spoke with the doctor’s nurse today and the surgery is scheduled for April 22nd. We’re doing a pre-op on the 15th so that I can assault her with questions and make sure that I’m doing the right thing. For the next 13 days, in preparation of the surgery I can’t take any advil, aleve, motrin or alcohol. No, I’m not joking. It’s like a sick little jab. Ha! You’re having surgery that you’re panicked about. Let us take away painkillers and booze and watch you have a big gigantic unmedicated cow.

Anyway, I’m off to my lab and then home and to bed. Even the promise of 5 bonus points on my exam tomorrow (that I have done precisely zero studying for, by the way), isn’t enough incentive for me to stay an extra hour here at school. I just want to sleep, relax and give myself some time to process this because I’m operating on pure ignorance.

Which may not be overrated. You know, ignorance is bliss.

I can officially check off “study for (this) anatomy exam” and “write (crappy) paper proposal for same class” from my list of things to do, which is a very good feeling. I would even hazard a guess that the exam went okay (though that tends to be a bad sign, so we’ll see, knowing this professor he’ll run the scantrons by April-ish, because, you know, turning on the machine and putting 25 papers in it is such an incredible amount of effort, sometimes you have to store it up for the event…) and I got an “ok” for my paper topic.

On the other hand, I can add, “feel like shit because you aren’t taking good care of your body” because it seems like that’s going to be the theme of the week.

I realize there’s been a serious lack of humor here lately and I just want you to know that I am aware of the dry spell and will do all that I can to liven things up soonish. I still have an Anatomy lab quiz Wednesday and a physics exam Thursday, not to mention parent-teacher conferences tomorrow and a lobotomy on Friday. That last one was just penciled in this evening, so the humor might have to wait. You know, until the lobotomy incision heals some.

My writing here is going to get a little more erratic for the next week or two. Why you ask? It’s because of my enormous and ever growing to-do list of things that must be accomplished by March 19th or sooner.

In no particular order:

-Study for Anatomy exam Monday

-Write Anatomy paper proposal also due Monday because professor is a douche bag

-Study for Physics exam Thursday

-Choose restaurant for dinner with The Fiance, NOLA and family on Saturday (really, I swear, I am going to make a decision, like tonight-ish.)

-Begin and stick to wedding diet

-Find officiants for wedding

-Make appointment to meet potential officiants for wedding

-Call florist and set up time for viewing mock-up centerpieces

-Call DJ and set up time to go over songs for wedding

-Speak with God about adding 7 or 8 hours to Holy Thursday for more wedding errands

-Call bridal shop and move the fitting back a day

-Pick out a song for The Fiance and his mother to dance to that doesn’t either make me laugh out loud at the absurdity of it, or want to vomit from the intended sentiment.

-Learn to feel left arm/hand again

-Order wedding rings

-Send email to get more addresses for wedding invites

-Send the rest of the save the dates

-Finalize wedding list

-Fold the mountain of laundry on the floor

-Write lesson plans for next chapter of teaching

-Have a bunch of tiny electrical needles stuck in arm muscles

-Get oil changed and perpetually flattening tire fixed

-Pay remaining medical bills

-Book honeymoon

-Clean classroom for parent-teacher conferences

-Find new job

-Sleep

And this does not include the mundane work from 7 to 4 on weekdays, plus class Monday from 4:30-5:45, Wednesday from 4:30 to 8:45 and the hour and a half physical therapy sessions Tuesdays and Thursdays. Oh and all the barrels of crazy I’m dragging along with me.

As the wedding gets closer and closer I’m not finding myself more nervous about being married, just more nervous about having a total mental breakdown before I even get to the aisle. I should probably add mental breakdown to the list because, come on, you know it’s coming…

So that whole bit about studying all day today turned out to be a little more like, lie in bed all day, take a lot of anxiety medication, eat a lot of cookies, read a lot of webpages and otherwise not move. I did, very briefly, look in the general direction of my physics book, but that was pretty much the extent of it. I only need to make a 50% on it to get an A in the class and I can get a -10% and get a B in the class, so I’m going to categorize my concern about this test as pretty damn low, much like my desire to do anything that involves being vertical today.

Who needs physics when you can sit around all day and wallow in the anxiety of the fact that I’M HAVING BRAIN SURGERY IN 9 DAYS.

Obviously the copious amounts of anxiety meds are doing their job. At least the muscle twitches stopped with all the tranquilizing.

P.S. I’d like to also issue a formal thank you to Vh1 for airing two days of full seasons of America’s Next Top Model. I cannot tell you how you’ve helped facilitate my procrastination. Bless you former music channel, bless you.