End of the Semester Bliss
My semester is finally over, final grades are in, and I'm ignoring any whining e-mails from students wondering why they got X grade in my classes. It is now time to sit back, relax, and enjoy the summer. If it wasn't so early in the morning I would have a nice froofy alcoholic beverage in my hand in order to celebrate but I will do that later today.
A few observations from this lovely--note the sarcasm--semester. Rural college was a pleasure to teach at. The students were, for the most part, good and attempted to do all the work. Out of my four classes, only a small handful failed and that was simply because they did not do the work. Overall, though, these kids have a great work ethic. Heck, I even had one class where everybody passed, which was a miracle as that's the hardest class I teach! My boss here, Hippie Chick, is just phenomenal. She really went out of her way to help me with some problems this semester. What's better, she actually gave us evaluation forms to fill out anonymously to let us give feedback of her as departmental chair. How awesome is that? But do you ever notice it's only the good bosses that do that?
As for the suburban, rich kids college...well...that was another story. Thankfully I only taught two classes there this semester. While I did have some good hardworking students, most were lazy bastards who didn't do the work and then whined at the bad grades they got. Seriously? How do you not know you're going to fail when you don't hand in any of the papers that are worth 50% of your grade? Whine, whine, whine, bitch, and moan. I even had to curve an entire class a full letter grade as so many of the students failed from not doing their work. Personally I find that ridiculous but I had to do it to keep my boss, The Dickmeister, from riding my ass on this. Though, I don't think it really helped any of the students that did not do the work. Instead of getting a 50 they got a 60 which is still failing. Literally 1/3 of the class failed because not a single one of them handed in a single assignment. I tried following up with them as the semester came to a close and they just brushed me off like it was no biggie. I bet you , though, they will be the ones who go whining to my department chair about what a horrible professor I am.
And speaking of the department chair, The Dickmeister is not going to be my chair next semester! Yay! There was much rejoicing. The bastard really has lived up to his name this semester. It was bad enough that he gave my full class (with waitlist) to a full-timer who had not a single student registered for his class--normally I would just say this was part of the game with being an adjunct but there were other classes he could have given him--but he pulled one of the precious summer classes from me to give to another adjunct. Now that is BS. I know for a fact that he is doing it just to be...well...a dick (hence the name) but as I have no hard evidence of this there is nothing I can do about it. At least the new chair seems like a decent person. Then again, so did The Dickmeister at first.
While part of me is really looking forward to the summer, a good majority of me is dreading it. I technically have two summer classes, one at each college, but enrollment is down and it looks like neither is going to run. This could be a very Bad Thing. Going 15 weeks with no paycheck is not going to be fun. We can get by on Bear's salary but things will be very, very tight. No eating out, no movies, no nothing. I've already cut down a few things to help us out. The biggest of which was refinancing my HUGE student loans over a 25 year period instead of ten. While I'll get screwed over in terms of interest, it cut my payments in half and I can always pay more when we have more money. Maybe one day the government will be kind and forgive student loans but I won't hold my breath on it. At the rate I'm going I'll be paying them off when I retire. LOL
Oh and did I mention that I cannot receive unemployment benefits as I have a reassurance that I would be going back to work in the fall? What's the reassurance? My name is listed as the professor for classes. I have no contract yet and no guarantee of work but that seems to be enough reassurance for the state government. Bah.
With the semester now over there should be more kitty posts coming up. We will have a new addition to our Flock in a couple of weeks. I'll let you know more about that when the time comes as I need to give you some impetus to come back. :)
A few observations from this lovely--note the sarcasm--semester. Rural college was a pleasure to teach at. The students were, for the most part, good and attempted to do all the work. Out of my four classes, only a small handful failed and that was simply because they did not do the work. Overall, though, these kids have a great work ethic. Heck, I even had one class where everybody passed, which was a miracle as that's the hardest class I teach! My boss here, Hippie Chick, is just phenomenal. She really went out of her way to help me with some problems this semester. What's better, she actually gave us evaluation forms to fill out anonymously to let us give feedback of her as departmental chair. How awesome is that? But do you ever notice it's only the good bosses that do that?
As for the suburban, rich kids college...well...that was another story. Thankfully I only taught two classes there this semester. While I did have some good hardworking students, most were lazy bastards who didn't do the work and then whined at the bad grades they got. Seriously? How do you not know you're going to fail when you don't hand in any of the papers that are worth 50% of your grade? Whine, whine, whine, bitch, and moan. I even had to curve an entire class a full letter grade as so many of the students failed from not doing their work. Personally I find that ridiculous but I had to do it to keep my boss, The Dickmeister, from riding my ass on this. Though, I don't think it really helped any of the students that did not do the work. Instead of getting a 50 they got a 60 which is still failing. Literally 1/3 of the class failed because not a single one of them handed in a single assignment. I tried following up with them as the semester came to a close and they just brushed me off like it was no biggie. I bet you , though, they will be the ones who go whining to my department chair about what a horrible professor I am.
And speaking of the department chair, The Dickmeister is not going to be my chair next semester! Yay! There was much rejoicing. The bastard really has lived up to his name this semester. It was bad enough that he gave my full class (with waitlist) to a full-timer who had not a single student registered for his class--normally I would just say this was part of the game with being an adjunct but there were other classes he could have given him--but he pulled one of the precious summer classes from me to give to another adjunct. Now that is BS. I know for a fact that he is doing it just to be...well...a dick (hence the name) but as I have no hard evidence of this there is nothing I can do about it. At least the new chair seems like a decent person. Then again, so did The Dickmeister at first.
While part of me is really looking forward to the summer, a good majority of me is dreading it. I technically have two summer classes, one at each college, but enrollment is down and it looks like neither is going to run. This could be a very Bad Thing. Going 15 weeks with no paycheck is not going to be fun. We can get by on Bear's salary but things will be very, very tight. No eating out, no movies, no nothing. I've already cut down a few things to help us out. The biggest of which was refinancing my HUGE student loans over a 25 year period instead of ten. While I'll get screwed over in terms of interest, it cut my payments in half and I can always pay more when we have more money. Maybe one day the government will be kind and forgive student loans but I won't hold my breath on it. At the rate I'm going I'll be paying them off when I retire. LOL
Oh and did I mention that I cannot receive unemployment benefits as I have a reassurance that I would be going back to work in the fall? What's the reassurance? My name is listed as the professor for classes. I have no contract yet and no guarantee of work but that seems to be enough reassurance for the state government. Bah.
With the semester now over there should be more kitty posts coming up. We will have a new addition to our Flock in a couple of weeks. I'll let you know more about that when the time comes as I need to give you some impetus to come back. :)
Comments
I laughed at your post..."dickmeister"...much more original than "ass clown". srsly