On Hiatus

As some of you may have noticed, I have not been posting a lot. I have a very crazy schedule this semester and am taking some time off from writing. I'll be back in time for Christmas. Just hang on until then.

Cat

Vacation Time!

Both grad school and the community college are done for the summer.

I finished up my forensic psych class with an A-. Yes, part of me is still upset that I didn't get the A but I'm a nerd. I'm all set with my schedule for the fall: Administration of Criminal Justice and Criminal Mind and Behavior. I'm really looking forward to that last class.

The summer session ended up with two students in my office crying about their grades. They both got D's and needed a C to actually graduate. Me the softie allowed them to hand in work really late to get the C. I'm too damn nice.

I get to enjoy the rest of August at a much more relaxed paced. I'll still be working at the library a few days here and there but I'll have a full two weeks off at the end of August, one of which will be spent lying on the beaches of Cape Cod.

Now maybe I can work on cleaning the house... :P

Almost Done

In two days the summer semester will over and I can finally rest. These next two days are going to be easy. I give the finals tomorrow and on Thursday I just give out final grades if the students want them. I have to be here anyways and I've learned never to give a final on the very last day of the semester. We don't have a finals week here. You just give it on the last class, or as most of us do now, on the second to last class.

I'm also settled in my new office. It took a while to get things organized. I showed up in my old office yesterday to find everything gone. Maintenance finally got around to moving my stuff. Unfortunately, they put all my stuff in the wrong spot. Also, as I was very impatient last night, I did not wait for IT to hook up my computer and did it myself.

I'm trying my best to personalize my new cinderblock fluorescent hell with pictures and stuff. The Devils 2009 calendar is up and so is my favorite quote: Antiquis temporibus, nati tibi similes in rupibus ventosissimis exponebantur ad necem ("In the good old days, children like you were left to perish on windswept crags"). Yes, it's grumpy but it makes me feel good. It's better than all that motivational shit you normally see in offices. To me, insulting my students (in a way they will never get) is so much more motivational especially at the end of a semester when they all come in begging for higher grades. However, now that I share an office with a whole bunch of English professors, I'm afraid one of them may know Latin and ask me to take it down. Then I'll find a nice insult in Russian. :)

I did finish my forensic psych take home final. It ended up a smidge over 10 pages and took about four days to complete. I only managed a 26/30 on it, which is an 87. That's about what I was expecting since some of the questions on the exam were really tough. This, however, brings my average down to a 93. This could mean an A- instead of an A. I'll have to wait to see when the final grades are posted to see what I got. Don't get me wrong. An A- is good. I just really wanted the A.

Some good for now

Remember how earlier in the week I was complaining about losing my computer. Looks like I get to keep it. When the IT people came over to upgrade my "new" computer, I was told that I am supposed to move my computer with me. The IT guy even promised to yell at my dean for me. Yay! My computer is a PoS but I have it all specialized to the way I like it. It's also familiar to me which is the most important thing.

Bear and I also finalized our vacation for next month. We're going to Cape Cod for a week, specifically south Dennis. Because we waited so long to make a decision, we could not get a house near the beach in our price range. This works out OK though because South Dennis is pretty centralized and in decent driving distance of pretty much everything. I just hope the weather is nice so I can get some serious time in at the beach.

My depression is still giving me issues. My doctor is switching me off Lexapro and putting me back on to Zoloft, mainly because Bear and I want to start trying to get pregnant. I guess Zoloft is the safer of the two. The timing sort of sucks because my depression has been acting up a lot lately and I've had a series of episodes over the past month. The idea of cleaning my system of the old meds and then waiting for the new one to kick in is slightly unnerving. If you've ever switched anti-depressants you would understand. It's never a fun process.

Feeling the Pain

This month has been rather...well...sucky. Too much has been going on and not all of it good.

To start off with, my job has turned into a really sucky mess (that'll be the "word of the day" today). I'm forced to move into a new office so they could make room for all the new tenure faculty coming in. The way it was explained to me was that I am not worth anything and that my desk in the office with the nice window has to go to "real" faculty. While those were not the exact words used, the tone was.

My new office? In the bottom of the science building (got to love those natural gas fumes :P), no window, and cinderblock walls. What's better? I get to share it with seven other people. How they fit eight desks, eight filing cabinets, and a small conference table in this room is beyond me. On top of that, it's off the noisiest hallway in the entire fucking campus. Joy. I'll be investing in a good set of noise-canceling headphones in the next couple of weeks. I went down last week to snag a decent desk. Of course all the good ones were taken, but I managed to snatch one in the corner with its own filing cabinet. I may just switch around the desk and the filing cabinet to get a little bit of privacy and to negate some of the noise coming from the door.

I've packed up my office and deleted most of the files off of my computer. For some reason, they won't let me take my computer with me. I have to use the one already down there which hasn't been updated in a few years. Heck, it still has Office 2003 on it and I thought the whole campus had already upgraded at the end of last year. Anyways, I've accumulated a lot of stuff over the past two years and it's hard cleaning it all out and packing it up.

The thing that has been hardest for me is that I've worked so hard over the last three years (one as an adjunct and two as a lecturer) and I've got so little to show for it. The higher ups don't seem to care that I'm a good teacher and asset to the college. They now see me as a burden to fill in temporarily while one of the "real" faculty is on sabbatical. Bah. Part of me almost wishes that they just told me I wasn't coming back in the fall. At least I would've gone out with some respect. Now they are just throwing me in the basement to be used as a whipping boy for one more semester and I get nothing really out of it.

So true...

Some Good News

I finally got word on what's happening to me in the fall. I'll be coming back as a lecturer, which means full time pay and health insurance. However, it was made very clear to me that it will only be for one semester (to cover a colleague who is on sabbatical). Financially it is good news but at the same time it is frustrating. I'll be teaching six classes and working at the library. I have to keep my library job as well since I'll have to rely on that in the new year. All of this plus grad school. I'll be a fried kitty before December rolls along.

All of this is making me seriously considering going away for a vacation. We'll have the money (at least in the short term) to do that. I really want to go to Cape Cod but I'll have to convince the husband to agree to it. He wants to do a "staycation" but I need to get away in order to relax. Heck, I even found a nice cottage right near the beach for a decent price in August. Now I just have to find a way to convince him to go along with it.