Save our jobs! ...Uh, on second thought...

Yesterday I arrived at work at the career college and found the faculty office in an uproar. Apparently some students, upset about the termination of their favorite teacher Mella, designed a flyer, printed multiple copies, and posted it around the hallways. According to my sources, the HR person who lurks on the third floor somehow saw a flyer and called Freep the Education Director. I believe Freep called our resident Fairy Godmother of Fun (and Academic Coordinator, also soon to be unemployed, we'll call her Jiminy today) and asked her to find all the flyers and take them down.

I managed to procure a sample of the flyer, thanks to some dumpster-diving on the part of our fearless leader Denny, and documented it photographically, like I have documented last moments since I found out our campus is closing on May 2.

The flyer exhorts “Save Mella!” (This is a fictitious name, of course, so don't bother Googling it.) The writer goes on to claim that Mella doesn't deserve to be terminated and should be allowed to keep her job. I yucked it up with Denny—how sweet, the students think they have some power!— and thought it was over, just another bizarre blip in the ongoing implosion of one dinky career college.

Last night, however, my three Word students were talking in those hushed tones that indicate something is up.

“I know who did it,” said Minnie, a round-faced girl who used to be a Medical Assisting student and now is... I have no idea what she is. I just know she's been around for what seems like forever.

I said nothing, not knowing at first what she was talking about and not wanting to get involved, like a true introvert. Minnie's friend (I'll call her Axella) took out her earplugs to ask who.

“The two people who did it are denying it, and two other people have been accused of doing it, and now have a write-up in their permanent record from Mr. Freeper,” said Minnie, milking her moment.

I did my best to ignore her, although I was starting to suspect this had something to do with that flyer.

The third student (I'll call her Lela) waited until Minnie and Axella left for their next class, and then she said to me, “I saw Mella making those copies last night.”

“No way,” I said skeptically.

“I saw her.”

I let it drop and went to my next class. But I thought, wow, Mella, right on, sister. I didn't think you wanted this job anymore, but I support you, whatever radical subversive action you might take. Bring on the spray paint! I'm right behind you!

Later I saw Mella in the office.

“I heard...” I began and told her the whole story. Mella listened. After a few moments, I trailed off when I noticed she was looking at me like I'd grown a second head. She seemed to be trying to generate interest in responding to my unspoken accusation. I thought to myself, She doesn't care. She's already gone.

She didn't say it, but I don't think she would want her job back, even if management came to her on their hypocritical knees and begged her to stay. She's seen the dirty red underbelly of the place. Of all the layoffs, I would say hers is the most cruel. She re-arranged her life for this school. She donated tons of extra time, not to mention her heart, to the students and to the faculty. You couldn't have asked for a more committed and loyal employee. Management took what she gave them and when they were done with her, they discarded her like an used tissue.

“I was making copies last night,” Mella finally said. “But it wasn't those flyers. I saw a copy of one, though, and thought, ok, so what.”

I don't know if this incident is evidence of the greedy nature of for-profit career education or if it is simply evidence of a failing institution run by self-centered, short-sighted, abusive individuals. Maybe the two are related. Maybe you can't have one without the other, I don't know. I just know it's sad that a good employee has been callously discarded. It's sad that the only way students can grieve the loss of their campus and their favorite teacher is by posting flyers exhorting the school's invisible and uncaring management to save Mella's job, as if their futile expression represented anything than more than an embarrassing annoyance. Instead of giving students a place and time to grieve, our management did what management does when backed into a corner: threaten, punish, and terminate.

We are so out of here.

The end of the world... again

How many times must we go through this? I'm speaking, of course, of the tragedy at the Boston Marathon yesterday. I'd rather be ranting about how my Chair has neglected to send my paper on to the Graduate School, or what a student said today, or what I ate for lunch...  anything but this. But how can I ignore the elephant in the room? I go through my day pretending it's not there, it didn't happen, it's not real, and I end up with a nauseating case of surrealism.

Everyone processes a disaster in his or her own way. Some avoid the topic, some talk about it incessantly. Because it happened on the other side of the country, some may not even care. We came close to having our own Boston bombing a few Christmases ago, when a crazy young man was all too willing to plant an explosive device at the Pioneer Square tree lighting ceremony. Lucky for everyone, the FBI was on to him: The “bomb” they gave him was a dud. It could have turned out differently. It could have rained body parts.

My coping method involves seeking out news accounts and reading them compulsively, over and over. I feel compelled to watch the raw video, as penance for surviving the day with my limbs intact. I spent Monday in a daze, awash in unshed tears, going through the motions of my job (I'm not a real teacher, I just play one on TV). My face still sags. Smiling is an effort. I'm also running low on patience.

Last night a female student in the Human Resources Management class said something about how difficult dating was these days, how her current love interest wasn't working out the way she'd hoped. Her best friend said, “You need some new eye candy.” The first girl laughed and repeated it. “Yeah, I need some new eye candy.”

“People are not eye candy,” I shouted. “It's rude and disrespectful to refer to people like they are objects!”

“Men do it to us,” she countered gamely, appealing to the group for support. The other two women concurred by nodding vigorously.

“I know!” I yelled. “And that is no excuse. People are humans, not objects, and they deserve respect, no matter what gender they are.”

Everyone contemplated me in shocked silence. I think I know that look. I think that look was on my face when my mother, breaking under the weight of caring for four bratty children, finally lost control and started screaming. Just screaming. Loudly. With anger, with frustration, with fear. Those screams lasted a lifetime in my little magic world. Reality as I had known it suddenly took a dip and dropped out from under my eight-year-old feet. Last night I think my students felt the same way. Like, uh-oh, Mom's gone crazy.

Now I am remembering another incident, one evening last week. The three female students in the Word class started trading Mexican jokes. As their laughter escalated, so did my blood pressure, until finally I shouted, “Enough with the Mexican jokes!”

So, I'm treading on a thin edge, it appears. An incidence of violence doesn't help, but Monday's horrible event isn't what has prompted me to suddenly start speaking my mind. The truth is, I don't care anymore what my students think of me. I don't have to care. I can be myself now. I can say what I want. If I could fit in my Levis, I would wear jeans to school everyday. F--k the dress code. F--k the school. F--k the student evaluations.

I'm exiting their lives in less than three weeks. They will forget me. I'm already forgetting them.

How to survive a campus closing

I'll give you a hint: It has to do with spraypaint and glitter. No, not really. I'm just kidding. I know I sound obsessed with expressing my feelings with a can of orange spraypaint, but I'm not stupid. I know that would be vandalism. These days I try not to do anything for which I have to make amends later. Spraypainting you guys suck in 10-foot tall letters on the lobby wall would probably qualify.

The students from the soon-to-be defunct Clackamas campus of our sagging little career college have been invited to visit the mothership in Wilsonville, to meet the faculty and get acclimated to the stuffier air. Many aren't attending due to transportation challenges, which I'm sure will be compounded come next term, when they will be expected to show up at 7:50 a.m. Or at 5:40 p.m. for those night students who get off work in Portland at 5:00 p.m. Rotsa ruck making it on time in rush hour traffic.

Everyone is universally unhappy about the closure, for a variety of reasons. Some students are worried about teachers. Others are fretting over transportation. Some teachers are frantically searching for other employment. Some are feeling guilty they still have jobs. I think I might be the only one who is actually anxious for it to be over. I'm so ready to be done I told a student today that we had only two weeks left in the term. Ooops. We really have three. My bad.

I'm processing my feelings by turning my faculty website into a photo blog. I'm taking pictures—last looks—of all the things that made our campus unique. The dingy front lobby. The mailroom. The worn out classrooms. The odd barbeque we found parked on the roof outside the emergency exit door in the third floor computer lab (What are those corporate sneaks up to on Fridays, when teachers and students aren't around? Planning how they will save their own jobs, with a side of steak and brewskies, no doubt.)

We are situated in an old three-story office building next to a shopping complex and across the street from the Clackamas Town Center Mall, which made the news last December as yet one more (ho-hum) site of a random shooting. Our building is a two-tower faded orange stucco box with angled facets that must have seemed modern and edgy back in the day and now just look cheesy and amateurish. Moss grows on the shaded patio areas that divide the two towers, the smokers' hangout.

Inside, the carpet is old and worn, especially on the stairs. Many feet trod those stairs over the past ten years, mine among them (I rarely take the elevator). The front lobby atrium ascends to the third floor, an echoey cavern of light. Any day now, I expect someone, a student or a teacher, to fling themselves over the second floor railing in a fit of despair. I can't be the only one who has contemplated it. Unfortunately the drop probably wouldn't kill me, so I would just have to lay there while swarms of medical assisting students practiced taking my blood pressure and draining my veins of blood.

Hey, on a lighter note, my committee returned my proposal with three, count 'em, three minor grammar suggestions, which I fixed throughout the paper in less than an hour. I resubmitted the paper with the hope and expectation that my Chair will send it on to the Graduate School for review. That will take another two weeks or so. I will brace myself for their comments, but in the meantime, I will begin preparing my application to the Institutional Review Board, the group that approves applications to interview human subjects. I also found out who my committee member is, inadvertently, because her real name appeared in her comments. I immediately Googled her and found out she's a proud alum of the University of Phoenix.

It's strange how there seems to be two tracks of academe these days: traditional and for-profit. This will have to be a topic for another day, because it is almost midnight, I am missing Letterman, and I'm too tired to think anymore. Stay tuned. And start stocking up on spraypaint, because you're invited! Mark your calendar, May 2.

Get on down to the spiritual axiom

As the teachers left yesterday after day classes, they wished each other a happy Easter. One said, “Have a happy Easter, if you celebrate Easter,” leaving room for those of us who might be pagans, wiccans, heathens, addicts, non-Christians, and generic ne'er-do-wells.

I said nothing, my usual response to all things religious. I have no opinion on Easter, one way or another. Isn't this the day that Jesus was supposed to rise from the dead? Likely story. More likely the guy just looked dead. What a shock to wake up buried alive in a cave. Roll away the stone, let me outa here! From there, it's not too hard to picture the responses of the locals to his unexpected resurrection: It's a miracle! And the rest is history.

I have memories of some Easters in my history. Well, not really memories, per se. I've seen black and white Kodak photos of my sister and me, sitting on the backyard swing-set squinting into the sun, ages about three and five, attired for church in pastel dresses, flowered bonnets, white patent leather shoes, and little white gloves. My sister displays all her baby teeth at the camera, while my smile is somewhat more circumspect, bordering on insipid.

I remember an Easter procession at the church, in which all the children carried daffodils to the alter, to create a big dazzling yellow cross. I think I've blogged about this before. My daffodil had yet to fully open; I was mortified. That feeling of shame is embedded into my genes.

I'm happy that this Sunday is Easter because the callers that usually call me on Sunday afternoons will be off doing their holiday thing with family, and I will have time to work on my dissertation proposal. Yeah, the massive beast is still hanging around, like a overfed, lazy cat, hogging the blankets and polluting the air with dust and dandruff. No, wait, that's me... huh? The good news is, after 150 pages and at least that many sources, I think I've almost got a good first draft. I hope to finish it and upload the monster into cyberspace sometime on Easter Sunday, if I can keep my neck away from the spiritual axiom.

This weekend the temperature should hit 70° for the first time this year. Everyone is excited, of course. All over town, Portlanders are breaking out their shorts, tanktops, and flipflops, bicycles, skateboards, walking shoes. Overnight my sleepy little village corner will turn into a pedestrian-infested, car-congested carnival of park-goers and cafe-mongers. Their music, their voices, their cigarette smoke and exhaust fumes will all waft into my windows on the not-quite-balmy spring breeze. What can I do, I have no defense. I have to open my windows: My place smells like an old gym sock.

Speaking of people who smell like old gym socks, what is with my obese female students smelling like mold? Really? Is it an environmental problem or a hygiene problem? What would happen if I asked them, “Why do you smell like mold?” They would probably look at me and reply, “Why do you smell like an old gym sock?” Then I would try to explain how I haven't vacuumed in a year because I've been working on my doctorate. They would retort, “Well, I work full-time, and I have three kids, no husband, and I live with my mother!” Okay, enough said. Forget I said anything. I won't ask about your stinky body odor if you won't mention mine.

I imagine all my obese female students wearing pastel mini-skirts, low-cut tops, and platform spike heels, tottering off to church this Sunday to celebrate the rising of an almost-dead guy. I'll be celebrating, too, in my own way, by typing a lot of incoherent words and phrases into pages and pages of white space. It's a religious experience, in a way. Especially that moment when I upload the wretched tome and cry to heaven, “Thank god almighty, free for the 21 days it takes my Chair to read and destroy my paper—at last!”

I hide my anxiety with maniacal laughter

Three weeks into the term. The evening Human Resources Management class, the one that was having trouble last week, got on track and started steaming ahead, all systems go. The young man who had the agenda, who just couldn't make room for anyone else's vision, finally came to his senses, after a weekend to ponder his plight. He opened the team meeting with a sweet and heartfelt apology, which worked wonders, and that was that.

The daytime class, on the other hand, hit a wall today. It was painful to watch. Teresa, who had been absent last Thursday, was back, and true to form went head-to-head with the young slender blonde (I forget what I named her in a previous post... Lisa? Leisl? Lulu? I can't remember. Let's call her Lulu today, that name seems to fit.) Lulu is just young and stubborn enough to not know when to back down. In other words, she hasn't learned yet how to pick her battles. So when Teresa smacked her down with some verbal abuse disguised as teasing, Lulu rose to the bait and blurted out what could have been the undoing of the team.

“We got along fine without you last week!” she declared hotly.

Teresa didn't hesitate one moment. “I can leave if you want,” she said. But she didn't get up.

Lulu backed down. “I didn't mean it like that.”

For a moment the team teetered on the brink of disintegration. When Teresa didn't leave, Dina or whatever her name is—the older gal who is the only one with a lick of sense in my opinion—cautiously shifted the topic to the project. Steve, the only man on the team, remained stoically silent throughout the altercation. Pretty soon all four adjourned to the computer lab to work on their proposal. I stayed behind, which I usually don't do; I was very tired and not interested in watching the group fight off a meltdown.

After class, after the others had left, Dina said to me, “Well, that was intense.” That, I recognized, was her careful request to be heard. I listened, giving my best imitation of someone who cares, while she described trying to get Steve and Lulu to help her write the proposal for their project. “Lulu kept checking her phone, and Steve spent the whole time looking up Keurig coffeemakers!” She resented having to be the mean mom to the two members of the team that seemed to be willing to participate. Teresa was off typing something else, although she spent a fair amount of time in the hall trying to make an appointment with a doctor at OHSU. I couldn't help but overhear. I'm sure everyone heard. Not our business that she is married! Who would have imagined it: Pondering Teresa as a blushing bride makes me stop and wonder if there is any sense in the universe. Maybe I'm just not getting the joke.

This evening. I went online to simplyhired.com and found a job worth applying for. I started gathering my materials. I hate jobhunting. I always feel so inadequate. But nothing ventured, etc., so I went through the motions, skilled at bla bla, adept at yada yada, willing to hardy har har. As I was getting ready to upload, I realized I had given them the outline they requested, but for their duties, not for their list of requirements. Oops. Good thing I saw that before I sent it. Attention to detail... right. It's late, what can I say. I'm tired, I'm bored, I just want it all to be over.

But tomorrow I get to get up and do it all again. Am I complaining about being alive, when we all know what the alternative is? No, I'm laughing, really.

We're not happy until you're not happy

My indefatigable dissertation chairperson saved her comments for Chapter 3 of my dissertation. Why am I surprised: She is a self-proclaimed methodologist, and Chapter 3 is the methodology chapter. It's the plan, the blueprint, the guideline of my study. She marked it up with the Word equivalent of red ink: Lots of purple balloon comments in the margin: Do this part over! Move this here! Call me if you want to talk!

Uh, no thanks.

I've been working on it off and on all weekend, checking my sources and my reference list, trying to make sure everything aligns, reviewing the university's exceptions to APA format to confirm that yes, Abstract and Table of Contents are not bold, but Introduction and References are. I'm tired. But I'm willing to slog onward.

I went online just now to look up “open-ended questions” and “unstructured interviews” in EBSCOhost and ProQuest. EBSCO refused to link to some articles: internal server error (their server, not mine), and ProQuest was down for maintenance. Can you believe it? On a Saturday night! How many graduate students are fuming right now, having stashed away a few hours to work on some obscure topic like interviewing cats about academic quality in for-profit Gainful Employment programs...

Just kidding. My cat has nothing to say about quality, academic or otherwise.

Too many hours to Saturday Night Live. My eyes feel like they've been weeping. I'd remember if I wept today, wouldn't I? I blame allergies. We had two days of sunshine and blue sky. Every leafless tree is quivering on the edge of bursting into bloom. White and purple crocuses and sunny daffodils decorate the rock gardens, and neglected winter flowerbeds are showing green sprouts: tulips, maybe?

It's beginning to look like Spring around here, and it's only mid-March. What the—? Is this global warming? Can't say I mind, really. The sun felt good, even though the air was cold. Well, cold-ish. Well, okay, warm, almost. Like, maybe 60°? Only for a few brief moments, and it was great, but I swear it was 45° in the shade, which is all I have in the Love Shack, lest you think I was basking in the glorious rays while I was editing my paper. Not hardly. I have the heat cranked. My feet are tucked in my homemade rice-filled foot warmer. I'm wearing fleece, a hat, fingerless gloves... the usual, and it will be like this until July 5.

We're not happy until you're not happy. (The best song title I've ever heard.) Sort of sums up the self-imposed plight of the chronic malcontent.

Last week I visited my naturopath, Dr. Tony. What a guy. He's got new stuff to try on me every time I see him. I feel like I'm in a Batman cartoon when I venture into his dinky little treatment room. Here, he said, turn over and lie on your stomach. Suddenly—Bam! He dropped the middle of the bench to realign my hips. I sat up, reeling a little. He gently hugged me, and then...crunch! He cracked my back. I flopped back, gaping like a beached trout. Then he grabbed my ankle and told me to hang on to the table. Uh-oh, I had time to think before he yanked my leg and popped my hip. Pow!

Then while I lay there trying to catch my breath, he gave me a remedy that seems to pretty much be targeted at curing whatever ails you. It's called spigelia, and it's potent stuff. Got heart palpitations? (Who doesn't?) Hey, no problem. Sinuses congested? We got it covered. Pesky intestinal parasites? (Yipes! Really?) Spigelia is your solution. Hmmmm. Why didn't he just give it to me when we first met? Why wait three years for the magical cure?

He dumped a few pellets onto my tongue, and of course it worked immediately, as homeopathic remedies often do (at least when Dr. Tony is standing there watching). Then he pushed on my arms a few more times.

“You know that stomach problems are caused by the emotions, right?”

We've had this talk before. I nodded. “So?”

“Think of someone who is upsetting you.”

I thumbed through my ancient dusty moth-eaten mental Rollodex. “I can't think of anybody,” I whined.

“Someone at work.”

“Uh.... maybe Teresa?” She's my shadow side, it's gotta be her if it's anyone. Dr. Tony grabbed my arm.

“No, not Teresa. It's a male.”

I mentally reviewed my student rosters. Who could it be...? There are so few men in my classes, I hardly know these people, certainly not enough to be upset by them... Ch-ch-chug, my brain slipped a gear and came up with a name. “Uh, would it be... Roger?”

Dr. Tony grabbed my arm again.

“Bingo,” he said triumphantly. “It's Roger.”

My mind was saying, oh for crying out loud, this is ridiculous. It can't be Roger. Roger is a young man with entrepreneurial aspirations. He's likable, smart, articulate (although he plans everything he says, it takes forever for him to spit out one sentence), and he's an optimist (another word for born-again Christian). I like Roger a lot. I think he might be one of the brightest students we've seen at the career college. He could do better than our crummy school. He plans to start his own business, and here's the part that gets me: he actually believes he will succeed.

As I thought about Roger, I began to think Dr. Tony was on to something. Roger has something I want, something I've always wanted: success at running my own business. I would quit this lousy teaching job if I could just figure out how to make self-employment work for me. But I'm scared to try. I throw up every obstacle under the sun as an excuse for why my entrepreneurial ideas won't work, while Roger just goes ahead and does it. He's the most annoying creature in the world of business: the naive fool who doesn't know something is impossible, so he just... does it! Argh!

So, my heart, my parasites, my sinuses... all Roger's fault. Maybe I should send him the bill.

Put four students in a team project, add a deadline... and hit BLEND

Here I am, skulking back to my blog after being outed as a closet optimist. I've had some interesting feedback on the whole sordid expose. My sister laughed (kindly). She didn't sound all that surprised, once again proving I don't really know myself, have never known myself. She copied my self-portrait and drew a smile and a dimple on my malcontented face. How's that for sisterly love! Pretty cool.

It's humbling, but maybe it's also a little bit liberating, to discover this not-so-new, not-so-secret side to my personality. Liberating because if you don't know who you are, you could be anybody. All this time I thought I was a frustrated creative, a plodding malcontent, an irritating pot-stirrer, a rabble rouser. But turns out I could be totally wrong! Maybe I'm really a successful, well adjusted, creative, productive member of society. Maybe I'm a secret millionaire, so secret I haven't discovered it myself yet. Maybe I've written ten books and I'm working on my eleventh! Whoa. Maybe my thighs really are thin, maybe my hair isn't gray, maybe I'm not growing a mustache! I mean, there's just no telling who I am these days, if the once and former chronic malcontent is really a hidden optimist.

We started a new term at the career college this week. I have six preps, 26 contact hours, and not very many students. One class has one student, one class has two. The others have a handful each. The two classes that will be most interesting (for me) will be the two sections of Human Resources Management, where I require the students to work together as a team to choose and produce some sort of group project. This is the same process I used last term in the Organizational Management classes I may have blogged about previously. This term, I think one class is going to pose some problems. There are four students in the class: three women, one man. Two of them know each other, the other two are retreads from another time, another campus. And one is a chronic malcontent.

How do I know? Because I dislike her intensely. Her (not real) name is Teresa. She's my shadow. She represents all the things I dislike in myself, that I'm afraid to look at, afraid to express. She's obese and messy (like I fear I will become). She wears glasses (like I do) and her hair hangs down in strings around her face (like mine used to). She wears sloppy clothes (like I do when I can), and her fat-girl pants are usually halfway down her butt, so we would all be able to see her butt crack if she weren't wearing a grimy-looking thong (have I ever worn a thong? Maybe in my drug-hazed youth). She drags herself to class with a scowl, avoiding eye contact. Mostly she's silent, but every now and then, someone will say something (usually me) that rouses her ire.

The task today was for the group to begin the brainstorming process. I served as scribe, standing ready at the whiteboard, stinky marker in hand. “Who needs help?” I prompted. “What needs changing?”

Steve, the token male in the group (family man, toy collector, future accounting major and entrepreneur) cleared his throat and said slowly, “Gas prices need changing.”

“Oh, should they be higher?” I chirped.

“No, lower!” he said with some heat. His emotion roused Teresa, the sleeping giant.

“Gas prices are so high because the Middle East countries aren't producing as much oil,” she said proclaimed hotly.

The older gal, Dina, who is back at the career college after several years in the workforce, looked at Teresa and said with just the slightest hint of contempt, “We don't buy much oil from the Middle East anymore.”

They bickered about U.S. oil production for a few moments, until I leaped into the fray, verbally speaking.

“If this topic is interesting to you, you'll probably want to do some research, so your project is based on facts rather than just opinions. Okay, any more ideas? Who else needs help? What else needs changing? What can you find out?” I raised the marker, ready to write.

Everyone slumped back into their stupor. They stared blankly at the whiteboard. Lisa (20-years-old, size zero, bottle blonde) checked her smartphone. Steve gazed out the window. Dina drummed her fingers on the table. Teresa hid behind a wall of hair, her back to the board. Clearly the team has not started the first step of the group process (forming, storming, norming, and performing.)

I blame myself. If I were a really good teacher (which I'm not), I would devise a team-building activity for them, so they can get to know one another. Part of me wants to help them, ease them into the group experience. The other part of me just wants to sit back and watch the train wreck. I'm like the scientist poking the frog with an electrode. If I put four uninterested students in a pot of hot water (a forced team project) and turn on the heat (a 10-week deadline), what will they do? Will they climb over each other to claw their way out? Or will they help each other? Stay tuned. This is bound to be fun (for me).

Scratching the teacher burnout again

I just finished the weekly task of grading the work of my keyboarding students. They are required to type and print a variety of asinine documents. Scintillating and informative topics like The Integrity and Ethics of Job Applicants. Ending Procrastination. As if students actually pay attention to the content of what they are typing. Ha. If they did, they wouldn't make so many damn mistakes.

The software program scores their work and catches their typos, but not their formatting errors. That is where I come in. Out comes the red pen. I rip their documents bloody. Add line spaces here! Delete this extra space! Insert a page number, no don't just type a 2, what the hell are you thinking, do you want every page to be numbered page 2? I spend way too much time (and derive a disgusting amount of satisfaction) editing the crap out of their work, and then feel righteously angry when they don't feel inclined to revise. What! Are you going to settle for 9 points when you could have all 10? When will I learn they don't care? They just want to pass the class.

I've been proofreading the same documents for almost ten years. Reports in business style and academic style, memos, chart notes, letters, tables... over and over and over. Every few terms, I catch a break from the scheduling gods, and I'm excused from the keyboarding drudgery. Next term, I hear, I might get lucky. The trade-off is that I may end up with a new class, an introductory computer class for medical students who are notoriously computer illiterate (and sadly unconcerned about it). I hear there are three sections. With a lot of students in each. So I hear.

The term is winding down, two weeks to go. Teachers are going through reviews. Today I sat in a computer lab listening to a keyboarding instructor walk his students through the review for the keyboarding final.

“What fingers do you use to type the number four?” he asked in a slow voice, like they were third graders.

“R4 L1!” they shouted.

“Very good, class. And what fingers do you use to type the number six?”

“R4 L1!” they shouted again. No, I thought, that is not what the software teaches us. I almost interrupted. I put my hand over my mouth. Before I stick my foot in it, I must have evidence! I signed myself into his computer class (let him puzzle over who this new student is, two weeks before the end of the term). I poked around the lessons until I found what I sought. Lesson 14. Yes! I knew it. It's L4 R1!

By then he'd moved on. All the answers were written on the whiteboard, all copied dutifully into students' notes. Would I really consider undermining his authority by pointing out to him that he is teaching them wrong information?

Well, what does wrong mean when it comes to typing, I ask you. It's not like this is a medical terminology class and he taught them salpingo-oophaboomboom instead of salpingo-oophorectomy. My father typed with his two index fingers on a manual Underwood with sticky keys. He wasn't graded down by his superior officer, as far as I know. He retired early, a happy man, and spent more than 20 years never worrying about typing again. I've seen students type 70 words a minute with two fingers—I wouldn't have believed it possible if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. I've seen a person with one hand type faster than most people type with two. When it comes to typing, I guess the lesson to be learned is.... who the hell cares what fingers you use? Let's just be grateful we have fingers, if we do, and let it go with that.

Every time I grade keyboarding I am reminded of how much I hate grading keyboarding. I know I could just let it go, do less, give them less feedback, demand less, expect less (if that is possible), but my sense of integrity rears its weary head. No, can't give less than... oh, about 96%, I'd say. I used to give 110% but after ten years, I just don't have it left to give. Not for keyboarding, not for anything, anymore. I've got a classic case of teacher burnout. It's like athlete's foot. Or a yeast infection. It burns, it itches, and it doesn't go away.

Trudging into the future

Part of me is frozen in time, stuck forever in the horrific events of Friday, December 14. Just like a part of me is still caught in the destruction of September 11, 2001. Another part of me got torn away when my dad died. And a little more when my cat died. Maybe that is what brings us down in the end, the little pieces of our soul that get caught and torn away by tragic events. How much shredding can one soul take?

The rest of me, what is left of me, moves on. It's hard to believe, because the part of me that thinks and feels seems frozen in time, but the rest of me is still trudging doggedly into the future. In between my moments of despair, I have moments where I find myself suddenly humming. Or smiling. How can I hold both despair and acceptance in my mind at the same time? It seems impossible.

So, now you get to hear from the part of me that is moving on.

Good news. A small milestone has been reached. My concept paper, thrashed into submission, has apparently received thumbs up from my faceless nameless dissertation committee. My dissertation chairperson emailed me today to say she has sent my concept paper to the Graduate School reviewers. This is not a formality. This is serious. They have the power to kick me out of the program, send me home empty-handed, no consolation prize after seven years and $45,000. I can't worry about any of that. I hope it is approved, because I'm embarrassed to admit, I'm really sick of this leg of this endless journey.

Although the next leg of the journey is the dissertation proposal, just more torture at a deeper level. The concept paper was toothpicks under the fingernails. Now it will be the rack and hot branding irons. I know what you are thinking. How can I complain about such a luxury problem? I'm alive, after all. No argument. But whining is what I do. I'm chronically malcontented.

Speaking of malcontentedness, today I made the trek to Wilsonville in an early morning rainstorm. December, ho hum. I arrived on time as the sky was lightening in the east. I dutifully arranged the tables and wrote the chapter notes on the whiteboard. Then I waited for my four students. One showed up. Gina (not her real name) and I had a nice discussion for two hours, but I worry about the missing students. It's only the second week of school.

When students are absent, I always give them the benefit of the doubt. I don't automatically assume they were too tired from partying the night before to get out of their cozy warm beds. They could be sick. Their child could be sick. They could be snowed in—some places in the hinterburbs got snow last night. Hell, I don't know. They didn't call in to the school as they are required to do. They could be lying dead by the side of the freeway. Ugh, cancel that thought. I'd feel pretty bad if I complained about their attendance when come to find out they are dead.

I don't know, should I even joke about people being dead? It doesn't seem all that funny anymore, does it. It's only funny if it isn't happening. Or if you don't really think about the reality of death. Once it happens, once you really think about it, death casts a dismal pall over everything. Death isn't all that funny. People die all the time. But you don't expect it to be a bunch of little kids. Maybe in Syria, but not in America. Although why I assume we should be exempt is a fallacy worth examining in some future blog post.

This week I feel like I'm moving through a dark fog. My emotions have flatlined. Even my relief at hearing the hopeful news about my concept paper hardly registers on the emotions scale. The best I can muster right now is a heavy sigh.

A reflection on the sordid reality of a career college teacher's schedule

My work life is lived in chunks of time. Day to day, week to week, term to term. Year to year. I suppose most people live on some kind of schedule, unless they are retired and can drift through their days according to their own sense of time. My idea of the perfect life has always been to be master of my own time, to live liberated from the obligation of an externally imposed schedule. It's not surprising. From childhood we mind the clock. We rebel at first, don't we? But eventually we learn to accept and even embrace the clock. We lose our personal sense of rhythm and march with the throng to the same boring beat.

Even though I work in the for-profit career college sector, generally considered the bottom feeder of higher education, I still benefit from its nebulous association with academia. That is, I am lucky enough to work (mostly) a 4-day week, Monday through Thursday, with most Fridays off (the sacred teacher prep day). Except when we make up holidays, but that's another story. It's fantastic working a four-day week. Two days a week I work just 3 to 6 hours and have the rest of the day off. How cool is that?

The trade-off is, the other two days a week I work a split shift. That means I essentially have two work days in one. I get up, fix breakfast, and go to work for six hours. Then I go home, go to bed, get up, fix dinner, and go to work for five more hours. So it's like I work six days a week. And then I have a 3-day weekend to catch up on my sleep, my homework, my laundry, my relationships. You might say, wow, if you love your job, that is a great schedule. On the other hand, if you are tired and burned out, it is an endless grind. Guess which category I fall into.

The long days are grueling, especially if I have to be teaching the whole time. The hours telescope into eternity. There are few things more bleak than sitting in a dim computer lab at 10:15 on a winter night waiting for my one or two students to figure out how to save their work and eject the flashdrives they will lose tomorrow. The short days are deceptively liberating. I always assume I will have time to run errands, see friends, go shopping, have some fun, but I'm always too tired to do much beyond the essentials: buy food. The short days are for recuperation and resting up for the next 14-hour day.

As a consequence of this unbalanced work schedule, I've learned to sleep in chunks of time during the week. Six hours at night, two hours during the day. I make up the deficit on the weekend. The schedule drives my meal times, too. I eat twice a day, before work and between work. I get hungry sometimes, while I'm sitting in that computer lab. I try not to think about it.

Day after day, week after week, I follow the lopsided schedule, showing up for a 10-week term. After nine years, I'm just starting to understand the arc of a term. Ten weeks, 20 days, a few inches forward, a few more grams of knowledge shoved into their rigid and weary minds. After every term I'm left with a few memorable moments to carry with me: a card from the student who cried during the first week of the term, thanking me for helping her believe in herself enough to not give up. A new graduate, walking with a bit of a swagger and tossing back a huge grin over her shoulder as she shouldered her backpack one last time. Little moments, big moments.

It's not enough to inspire me to stop whining. I try to notice and embrace those special moments, but they don't motivate me. They just make me tired. Those little shining moments aren't enough payoff for all the hours spent sitting in a lab with only one student, or listening to a student tell me why he can't turn in his assignment today, or discovering that a cabal of paralegals cheated on their keyboarding transcriptions. All the hours on-stage, all the hours when I should have been sleeping, all the hours spent crafting creative assignments for students who had the nerve to catch up on their sleep during my classes... why should I bother to care? Said the burned out teacher.

Tomorrow is the first day of the new term. I must leave by 6:30 a.m. to drive the 25 miles to Wilsonville in rush hour traffic to get to my first class by 7:50. I'm not well-loved in Wilsonville. (Chronic malcontents tend to be pot-stirring troublemakers. And burned out teachers tend to lack compassion for slackers.) I don't care. My hope is that by this time next year I will be someplace else doing something else (hopefully someplace and something better). I refuse to give up on the dream of creating a new relationship with time. In the meantime, I live for my next nap.

Bring me the head of the baby jesus

The end of the term at the career college coincided with some other curious occurrences, prompting me to ask, is it odd, or is it gawd? Ha. That's only funny because it rhymes. I am not really much of a believer. But I wonder, is it human nature to look for interconnection in a series of events? I say yes. From there it is one short step to asking the universe for a sign. I'm not that far gone. Yet.

The end of the term doesn't necessarily precipitate odd occurrences. But when it comes to student behavior, the end of the term can bring the perplexing. For example, two students failed to show up for finals. One was sick, I heard, but what happened to the other? Not a word. For all I know, she's dead in the bushes outside the front door, surrounded by the scattered soggy pages of her 10-key math practice test. We'll find her weary bones next spring, long after we've forgotten her name. It is confounding to me that a student trudges through ten weeks and then bails on the last day. Is it failure to launch again? I'm always confounded when students choose to miss a class, but to miss the final, and not even call? That is beyond bizarre in my world. I suppose in the world of a student who is afraid to leave school, it makes perfect sense.


Speaking of being afraid to leave school, my dissertation chairperson sent me three comments from the faceless, nameless committee. First, he/she/it/they asked me to add some clarity on the problem statement. Spell it out: The problem is... Be specific—make it easy for these weary reviewers to locate the problem. (In other words, don't expect them to think much.) Second, please add more subheads to the literature review section, to make it easier to read. No problem. I had lots of friendly subheadings in there, originally, but a comment from the chairperson led me to believe I wasn't following the template, so I took them out. Easy fix. And third, do I need all three subgroups (faculty, students, and administrators?) Here is where I want to whimper a little. My original draft, the one that was rejected from the Graduate School reviewers, was dinged for using only one group and not justifying why. Now I have three groups, and they want to know could I get by with one. Read my lips.

After I fume a little, I need to prepare a reasoned response to that comment. That is my task for this weekend, what is left of it. My hope is to be able to upload the revised concept paper by Sunday night. I don't think I'll have much time next week to work on it, with the new term starting. I spent today grading papers and posting final grades. It was edging close to 4:30 pm, the witching hour when the worker bees at the career college begin to shut the place down to go home, so I got little done in preparation for Monday morning. I need to do my course calendars and print assignments. A little advice for you wannabe educators: You gotta come in guns blazing on day one, armed with stacks of policies, assignments, and forms, else they will yawn and sink into a stupor for the rest of the term.

Last week I had a great schedule for next term. However, I've learned from hard experience to never get attached to a schedule. It unraveled, and now I'm going back to Wilsonville two mornings a week to teach a management class with four students and a marketing class with two students. Really? All that exorbitant gas consumption for six students? Teaching early classes means I must leave an hour early to drive the 25 miles in rush hour traffic. That means I must set the alarm for 5:15 a.m., not my best time on any morning, but definitely not after I've been working till 10:20 p.m. the night before. The theme of this new term will be sleep-deprivation.

And to top it all off, get this: Dave Brubeck died on Wednesday, so I had to listen to Take Five 20 times in one day. On Thursday Fitz got shot over and over in slow motion. And someone stole the head of the baby jesus! So what's the interconnection between students failing to show up, schedules turning to shite, reviewers making annoying comments on my concept paper, the death of a jazz legend, a TV show character, and the baby jesus? I don't know. Maybe you can figure it out. My enneagram type is 5: The Observer. That means I just sit back and watch you do all the work. So get busy.

I've caught myself a few times trying to work up a head of resentment at the schedule, the students, the life, but I just don't have the energy for it. Then someone steals the head of the baby jesus, and life is hilariously worth living again. Besides, anger solves nothing. I'm not a slave, right? I'm a volunteer. Until I'm ready to leave this sinking career college ship, I'm choosing to bail its dark and stinky hold. And daydream of what comes next. (Sleep. Lots of sleep.) I just hope I don't  crash my Focus somewhere on the dark and lonely stretch of I-205 between Oregon City and Wilsonville, where you sometimes see deer legs poking stiffly up out of the ditch. If that happens, I can only hope they find me before spring.

Don't try that: Try this!

Winter is about slogging through. Winter is two steps back for every tiny step forward. Winter is sniffles, frigid feet, fogged spectacles, and layers of stifling fleece. I'm already whining and we haven't even had a proper freeze yet. The temperature gadget on my computer desktop says it is 52° in the Rose City today. But with the damp sinus, chill bone factor, I would rate it ten degrees colder. And wetter.

I'm just pissed off because I stepped in dog poop this morning as I bravely lugged my laundry to the basement. Drat that wretched little neighbor! And her accursed dog, too! Dang it, I'm starting to sound like the Wicked Witch of the West. Grrrrrrr. Where is my book of spells? Maybe I can cause her to fall out of bed every morning at 4:00 a.m.

Last night I politely knocked on the wall at 12:30 a.m., hoping she would hear it and stop her incessant pounding. Her dog barked like a fiend on the other side of the wall. Maybe I can rig up something to knock on the wall every hour during the night. Her dog will drive her insane. No evil spells needed.

It's finals week at the career college. What, again, I can hear you saying. Didn't you just complain about finals week? Yep. That was ten short weeks ago. And here we are again. Most students have kept up with the workload. They are cruising into this last week with a smug look on their faces, especially the ones who are graduating: the proud soon-to-be owners of an Associates of Applied Science degree in blablabla. Others, however, are freaking out. I actually had to fill out a drop form on a student last week: one week to go and she apparently has bailed. I recognize the syndrome. I'm guessing she suffers from the I'm too scared to graduate and face the world syndrome. Failure to launch. I predict she'll either quit school and get a job at McDonald's, or she'll come back next term and take the class over again. And quite possibly bail one week before the end.

I get it. School is a safe oasis in a big scary world. I'm the last person to judge. Haven't I spent the last seven years in graduate school? Don't I complain every other post about how terrified I am at the prospect of finishing? Is not one of my biggest fears the fear that I will sabotage my years of effort, waste my $50,000 investment, by quitting just before the finish line? Is not my second biggest fear the fear that, despite all this higher education, I will remain unemployable?

Wreckage of the future again, I know. You can't trust a Magic 8 Ball, that's for sure. Nor a horoscope. Nor a weather forecast. But one thing I know: it's great to have plastic shoes that can hose off with water. If that is all I have learned from my day of whining, well, maybe that's enough.

Moaning about math

If there is a god, it has a sense of humor. Why else would I be teaching a math class? I've been hopelessly incompetent with numbers since I used to cheat in Mrs. Corbin's second grade class. Now, 50 years later, I'm teaching a business math class—although we don't call it math, we call it 10-key Calculator. The students learn to do basic business arithmetic on a basic Sharp calculator. And I'm their teacher.

If the career college I work for cared about assigning teachers to courses based on the teachers' strengths and interests, I would be teaching marketing, management, and PowerPoint. But that is not how it works in the career college world. Are you warm? Are you breathing? Do you have the proper credential, according to the accrediting agency and the State of Oregon? Then you can teach the class. (Here are the textbooks! Good luck!) It's a good thing the person who hired me didn't know about my sad history with numbers. She might not have hired me. And I would still be driving the short bus in Gresham. (Another story.)

At age seven, I was confounded by subtraction. At age eight, I was demoted to the hallway until I could tell the story of the big hand and the little hand. In high school I survived algebra and geometry because I had great teachers. I swore I would never again tax my brain with numbers. Not long after, I overdrew my first checking account.

After I moved to Los Angeles in the late 1970s, I sidled up to numbers again when I started my own business. This was before computers, so I taught myself how to keep my records, track my inventory, and manage my checkbook. I was so proud. But apparently there was more to it than I realized. I was soon way over my head in credit card debt. After awhile I stopped balancing my checkbook. I figured, it wasn't my money, anyway, so why  bother. When I got close to the credit limit, I would just shove the balance onto a fresh new credit card and keep racking up more debt. All in the name of keeping my business running, of course.

When the whole thing tanked, I went back to college (on my credit cards), starting with introductory algebra, and worked my way up to calculus. I know, crazy, huh, me doing calculus. I have no idea what calculus is or what it is used for. I'm pretty sure I didn't know then, either, but I guess I learned enough to pass the class. I believe that was the pinnacle of my mathematical achievement.

I had a few more traumatic episodes (statistics, finance, economics, and operational management), but somehow I managed to fool everyone long enough to pass the courses. Eventually I came out the great meat grinder of higher education, AKA Cal State LA, with an undergraduate degree in Business Administration. Yay me. After graduation, I was like the runner who rests after cresting the hill. My brain relaxed and got fat.

In the years since, I would pretend to understand math, but it was all a sham, a masquerade to avoid shame. Every now and then I would get caught out in a math faux pas, usually something to do with calculating a restaurant tip. So embarrassing. Then my brain would shut down completely while my body frantically tried to remember how to breathe. Yep, there's nothing like a good public shaming to make you feel alive.

And now I'm teaching math. If it weren't so tragic, it would be hilariously ironic. It's tragic that my handful of students aren't being taught by someone who really knows and cares about numbers. But then, it is hilarious, because it is a self-paced class, where the students teach themselves from a cute little textbook. When they get stuck, I just read the words out loud over their shoulder. They don't take time to read the instructions, so when I read it aloud, they are, like, oh yeah, I get it now. I look like I know what I'm doing! Fooled them again!

Actually, compared to my students, I know more than I think I do. I can round numbers with ease, whereas they are perplexed by the whole idea. Round $9.39 to the nearest dollar? Wha—? Well, would you rather spend $9.00 or $10.00? As soon as I put it in terms of their money, they get it. Estimating, though, forget about it. They don't see the point, so they refuse to try. Why should we estimate, we have the calculator!

Last week one of my students, a tiny long-haired barely-post-teen girl whose parents I suspect are fairly well off, looked right up at me and said, “I can't do any math in my head. I don't even know how to multiply!” She sounded proud of it. I was thinking to myself, I can't either, but that's because my brain is old and fat. You can't do it because you are young and stupid. I didn't say it. At least I can say I used to know how to do math in my head. I even once could do calculus, whatever that is. I guess that qualifies me to teach business arithmetic at a career college.

Hell, it beats driving the school bus.

Are you a victim or a creator? Sometimes it's hard to tell

Last night in the College & Career Success class, I gave a little demonstration to my four students on how to structure a five-paragraph essay. I'm certainly not a writing instructor, as evidenced by my use of my infamous Oreo cookie essay design—you know, a cookie on top (the introduction), creamy white filling (three paragraphs for the body), and a cookie on the bottom (the closing). Five paragraphs. A big fat cookie. Yum. What could be easier? I guess I was getting into it, because one student suddenly held up her hands in a back-off sort of way. She's young, maybe late-20s, thin, with long hair that I suspect would not be so blonde if she let it grow out, and judging by her reaction, she has a low tolerance for drama and enthusiasm.

“What's wrong?” I said in surprise. “Is this not pure genius? It's so simple! If you use this method, I swear to you, your readers will be eternally grateful, your audiences will swoon at your feet!”

“Calm down!” she shouted.

I put the cap end of the whiteboard marker in my mouth so I would stop talking. I held still, thinking, oh no, here it comes, the statement that will reveal that I'm a crappy teacher to the other three students in the class. Darn it. I knew I should have had a lesson plan! It's all I can do to read the book! Argh!

“I'm confused,” she said accusingly. “I've started my paper already. Now you are telling me I've done this all wrong?”

“It's just a suggestion,” I said weakly.

Tears welled up in her eyes. She was mentally flagellating herself. Loser. Loser. I could almost see the stick. And then her eyes got all fiery—F--k this sh-t!—and she turned her fury on me. I flinched, but gamely tried to resuscitate the now-comatose learning experience as the other three students studiously busied themselves in a discussion of pencils and paper clips.

“Would it help to think of it as a process, rather than an outcome?” I tried carefully. No smile. “Uh, would it help to know you will get an A on the paper even if it is utter crap?” I said. In retrospect, probably not the best thing to say. “What you've written is awesome! All we need is a bit of structure, maybe an outline.”

“I used to know how to outline, but I don't remember now,” she wailed, dabbing at her heavily made-up eyes.

“No worries! No writer writes a perfect first draft, take it from me, the author of many crappy first drafts... and second and third drafts... perfection is unattainable! Not worth chasing!”

I could see she wasn't buying it, and we were out of time. She hastened off to another class, and I was all too ready to pack up and go home. As I exited the building and headed across the dark parking lot to my car, I berated myself. You're a crappy teacher. This episode proves it. And I don't really care. She's got more problems than my half-hearted pep talk can solve, and I don't care. It's not my job to fix what is wrong with her, even if I could. She's got this idea that she has to know everything already, and we are only two weeks into the term. With that misconception, she won't last three more weeks. And I don't care. She'll either figure it out, or she won't.

Some teachers will hold her hand, empathize, and offer reassurances, while other teachers will give her the tough-love treatment: This isn't high-school, this is college. You aren't a child, you are an adult. So man up and start taking responsibility for your own learning. No whining! What kind of teacher am I? I'm soft on the outside, I guess, and hard on the inside. I don't say what I really think anymore, because it only gets me into trouble. It makes everyone feel bad, including me. So, I aim for empathy. A sort of teeth-grit empathy laced with sweaty fear that my evaluations will be so bad that I'll lose my job and have to quit school and live under a bridge. (Luckily we have a lot of nice bridges in this city.)

What kind of life has she had to cause such dread of making a mistake? Her anger is just a mask for her fear. I've seen this fear before in students, but rarely so close and in my face. Sure, students weep when they are under pressure. But usually it happens at the end of the term, not two weeks in. If she is already unraveling, I don't give her much odds of making it. I think if I practiced tough-love on her, she would crumble. I've seen my boss do it to students, ream them a new one—Show up on time or you're outta here!—and a few of them don't come back. Usually young thin blondes. Not sure why that is. Maybe their precarious self-esteem comes from a bottle of hair bleach.

But you never know about people. Some of the weepers, if they stick around, find out they know more than they thought, and they graduate with a confident swagger that is something to see. Maybe this girl will be one of those.

Next week we get to talk about being victims and creators. That ought to be interesting.

Fallout from flunking students

After I flunked the two Wilsonville students, Gina and Jimmy (not their real names), I retired back to the Clackamas campus in relief, hoping that would be the end of it. I wasn't surprised, however, when I received emails from their respective program directors, minutes apart, asking me to provide evidence for my decision to flunk them. For a moment I doubted myself: did I do the right thing, flunking these two desperate students? Gina, with tears tracking her cheeks, begged me to let her pass. Jimmy told me straight out he needed a C. (Jimmy is the student who threatened to bring a shotgun to Excel class.)

I totted up the evidence and sent it off to the program directors, who thanked me and said they needed the information to give to the students' Voc Rehab and SAIF counselors. The funding parties, in other words. I get it. I hope the students will be given another chance. And I hope it isn't me that teaches them. Jimmy's program director said Jimmy would have to come to Clackamas next term to take Excel again. I can pray he gets Sheryl (my colleague, not her real name) instead of me, but I know how wacky the Universe can be. I will accept what comes.

I don't fail students easily. I agonize over it, before I submit the final grades. But once it is done, I move on. I move on so completely, I have already forgotten the names of the students I had last term. I see them in the hall—it's only been a week since they were in my class!—and I can't remember their names until 30 seconds after they pass me by. Could be old age. Then again, could be I just don't care.

Most of our students struggle to survive. Very few come from money. Many live from loan check to loan check—some of them are in school only for the money. They are single mothers with one or three kids, living at home with a parent or other relative. Childcare is always an issue. Last term I met a four-year-old named Aiden, a charming child who did his best to quietly watch his Tin Tin videos while his mother endeavored to learn Excel. Children are not allowed on campus, but what can you do, when it's late at night, the student has maxed out her absences, and the usual childcare provider is not available? You welcome the child and hope no one in authority hears about it.

Yesterday the campus was invaded by photographers, taking photos for an online View Book. Apparently to be competitive we must have a View Book that prospective students can look at to see if they want to attend our college. (There's a joke there somewhere, but I just can't conjure it up right now.) A small swarm of strangers roamed the halls, grabbing and posing students and teachers in the typical places: a doorway, a classroom, a lab. I think I might have been unwittingly captured in a background shot. I'll sure they will crop me out. I look far too weird to be in any college's View Book. I dress in black every day and wear a hat and fingerless gloves (formerly known as socks), not your typical little old lady teacher.

Besides, I don't want my picture in their View Book. My intention, slowly taking shape and becoming clearer with each excruciatingly tedious hour I spend lurking over the shoulders of sweating keyboarders, is to leave this place behind. My brain is halfway out the door. It is just a matter of time before my body follows. Where we are going, I do not know. But away from teaching, if I have my way. I'm tired of evaluating students, judging their performance, flunking a few, praising a few, forgetting most of them in a matter of days. Being on stage is grueling. Teaching the same classes over and over is mind-numbing. It's time for a new adventure.

What to do about that pesky Reply All button

So much to rant about, where to begin, where to begin...

First, I suppose I should grudgingly mention that the weather has been.... fantastic! You know when I said fall was here, and I was all doom and gloom over it? Well, huh, go figure, I was wrong. The Pacific Northwest is having glorious halcyon days like you wouldn't believe. The tomatoes are red! Shocking! (The last two years, they stayed green right into winter.) If it weren't so cold at night, and if there weren't drifts of dead leaves on the steps in the park, I would think it was still August, not almost October. We haven't had any rain to speak of in over two months. Did you hear me, two months! In Oregon! Yes! I know! Too many exclamation points!

So against the backdrop of this delicious weather, we wrapped up the term in its stinking shroud and buried it good and proper. The long commute to Wilsonville is over, at least for ten weeks. How did Excel go? Thanks for asking. I flunked the Voc Rehab woman who wept and begged me not to. I flunked the guy who threatened to bring his shotgun to school. In Access, the whining blonde paralegal who threw up her hands and left without finishing her final, fuming, “This is so stupid!” got a B, believe it or not. (She had someone at home doing her homework for her.) A few sorry ass souls received the Ds they earned fair and square. But, yay!— a few students got As, and they earned those As (in spite of me, I could add, although I'd like to take some credit. I think my test reviews are pretty good).

There's no time to take a breath and relax. Yesterday I spent a few hours grading finals, trying to submit my grades before 12:30 pm. Didn't quite make it before it was time to troop downstairs to Room 101 for in-service. All the usual nutcases and wackjobs were there, assembled in one frigid room, noshing on baloney sandwiches. (Rather than get pizza or wraps, the food coordinator thought it would be a nice change of pace to present a poor-white-trash menu: white bread, velveeta cheese, potato salad... Luckily for me, I brought my own protein powder.) The nutcases and wackjobs I refer to are my colleagues. Four times a year we are required (by the State of Oregon who authorizes our college to grant degrees) to have teacher training, also known as in-service. I get to see some teachers I haven't seen for a while, and a few I probably wouldn't miss.

We were required to attend three back-to-back sessions of scintillating material designed to magically transform us into better instructors. The first session, held in a dark room lit only by a PowerPoint slide, was memorable for the statement spoken by the presenter (who happens to also be my boss): “Everyone who is here is valued.” I wrote it down, because it was worded so awkwardly. The subtext: The ones who aren't valued have been let go. I guess it's clear that all the people that got laid off over the past few months, including those whose last day was yesterday, weren't valued. And oh, by the way, yes, the school is moving next year, but as yet the location is undisclosed. (Why do I suspect that one day I will show up to work and there will be a lock on the door and a scrawled sign: We've moved! So long, suckers!?)

I had two choices for the second session: ethics or teaching tips. Neither session really appealed to me, but I went with the teaching tips workshop. (A discussion of ethics at a career college opens up a very deep can of squirmy Red Wigglers. Not a good scenario for the Chronic Malcontent.) The teaching tips session was presented by the school librarian. (Yes, we have a library, but it is in Wilsonville, not at podunck Clackamas, where we have what looks like a library—a room lined with obsolete law books—but apparently isn't really a library. In fact, we aren't allowed to call it a library, we have to call it the resource center.)

She looked the part. The librarian, let's call her Jane, is a fireplug of a woman, with a closely curled cap of auburn hair that reminds me of the hair on my Tiny Tears doll, before I cut it all off. Jane wore a dark blue pantsuit whose jacket didn't quite match the pants, plus a snappy flowered blouse. Of course, she had the ubiquitous gold-rimmed spectacles. (Is there a librarian in the world that doesn't wear glasses? Reading really messes with your eyesight, take it from me.) Not counting the crazy earth shoe strappy flats on her feet, all in all, Jane looked sharp, really put together.

I was a little perplexed when she read her introduction to us, although the reason for that became clear later on. What got my attention was her warning: “By choosing to stay, you are giving permission for something to happen!” Wha–? She looked up at us, laughed nervously, and made a joke about not seeing anyone getting up to leave. I thought, wait, did I just miss a chance to opt out of this session? I like Jane, so I stayed put, but I wondered what would happen if I tried that on my students on the first day of the new term. How many of them would take the hint and opt out with their feet to go hang on the verandah with the smokers?

I won't bore you with all the details of her session, but here's a brief synopsis: Do! Learn! Who is Emily? NLP and covert hypnosis, rapid learning methods, email me if you want the files, no, I don't have a website, pause, drop your tone, make your voice gravely, WIIFM, SIP. Ok. There you have it, the gist of Jane's session. I hope it makes you a better teacher, too.

The final session was well-attended. Unfortunately, it was assigned to the icebox room, which happens to have a large square pillar in it. I'm sure the temperature is not related to the pillar, but to see the PowerPoint show, I had to sit behind the pillar, in the corner, directly under the AC fan. The topic was Netiquette, presented by one of our hard-working adjuncts (one of the few that are left after layoffs decimated our ranks). I don't know where she found the time to put the show together, considering she taught 32 hours last term, but it was nicely done. I learned a few things, but all I really cared about was that she impress upon the Medical Department ignoramuses the proper use for the REPLY ALL button.

In case you searched on Reply All and somehow got this blog, the Reply All button lets you respond to a useless mass email (Please help me welcome Shannon, our new janitor!) with an equally large, equally useless mass email (Welcome, Shannon!), thereby sucking up valuable network bandwidth and filling everyone's in-boxes with mind-deadening clutter. In case you can't figure out how I feel from my snarky tone, let me just declare my abiding belief that people who misuse the Reply All button should be ejected forthwith from the establishment, do not pass GO.

Today I went to another non-work workshop that was supposed to be spiritually focused but sounded remarkably like the rah-rah pep talk sessions I sat through yesterday, so I left halfway through, searching for some peace before the new term starts on Monday night. I'm not ready. I have 28 hours and seven preps. Small class sizes, luckily, but Tuesday will be a busy day: six hours in the morning, five at night, with a quick drive home in between for a salad and a nap. The tedium continues. I can't generate any enthusiasm for the task of teaching: When I get a creative idea for a new teaching approach, I think, I don't have time to design a new interactive PowerPoint, or write a skit, or prepare a game. Besides, what's the use, I only have one student.

When I was running in the park this afternoon, savoring the warm air on my face, I remembered how happy I was to get this job. It was my miracle job. A job that lets me use my communication skills and creativity, with little supervision... how cool is that? Nine years later, I am grateful to have it, but not for the same reasons. I find there is little interest in my skills. My skills expand, but my attitude contracts. I fear I am growing more unemployable by the minute.

Over the next week or so, while my chairperson is ruminating over my concept paper, I hope I will be able to find some time to make some art or write something. And vacuum my car, take out the compost, and clean up the cat toys, dust bunnies, and dessicated hairballs. And at work, I'm going to show up, do my job, and try not to whine. Stay tuned.

Super size me! Yeeee-haaaawww!

I'm prying apart my gritty eyes to blearily type this post. I uploaded the second draft of my dissertation concept paper a few minutes ago. It took me five hours just to spell check, and make sure all the citations are in the reference list, and all the items in the reference list are in the paper. I'm so tired. I didn't even read the darn thing over again. I just want it off my plate.

How many times have I heard my students say the same thing or something like it? They just want the pain to be over. They no longer care about doing a good job: They just want to be done. Just today I saw one of my failing Excel students trying to calculate (not using Excel) how many assignments he needed in order to pass the class. I didn't say anything. I get it, I do. At some point, your brain just throws up its tiny hands and snarls, “Enough!”

So now my paper is on my chairperson's plate, so to speak. I hope she's hungry, because it is the scholarly equivalent of a double quarter pounder with cheese. One hundred and eighty-five sources on my reference list. A bit much, ya think? I don't know if she'll swallow it. She's seen all of it but the literature review section, and she didn't say anything about it being too long. But I know teachers. I am one. Sometimes they wait until they've got the entire paper, and then they shred it like a shark in a feeding frenzy. I expect to see the electronic equivalent of blood. Buckets of it.

This is finals week at work. The students are beyond weeping. They wander around in a state of shocked horror. Some of them will lose their funding if they fail Excel. I feel bad, but what can I do? I can tell, I can show, but I can't do it for them. They have to care enough to do the work themselves. I wonder what percentage of the class has wrangled a family member or friend to do their assignments for them? One paralegal student in my Access class actually admitted it. She blamed him because she couldn't open her homework files on her school computer. I knew something was up when I was able to open them just fine.

“But where are my assignments?” she cried.

“Inside the database,” I replied. “Which ones do you want to print?”

“That's not what it looked like when my friend did them.”

“Well, maybe you should have done them yourself. Then you would know how to find them and print them.” You can imagine how well that went over.

So if one blatantly admitted she didn't do the homework herself, how many others cheated that I don't know about? Will never know about? Do I even care? I used to feel anger, like, how dare they! But I can't conjure up anything. I get it. When we are under the gun, we choose the path of least resistance. If we can get away with it, we cheat. Hell, I break the speed limit all the time, because I know it is unlikely I will get caught. But I don't cheat on my dissertation studies. I could: Who would know? But I don't, and I won't. I guess I've gained a little integrity over the years.

I can't write anymore now. My neighbor just got home and turned on her stereo. The bass is echoing through the place, making my tiny little speakers seem like toys. Thank the writing gods she didn't get home an hour ago, because I would have had to have killed her. Again. (See previous post).

My chairperson has two weeks to ruminate on my submission, so I can focus on the end of the term, the finals, the grading, and the prepping for the new start next week. The work at the career college never ends.  Round 'em up and mooooove 'em out. Git along little dogge. Yeee-haaaaa.

What to do when students cry

It's getting down to crunch time at the career college, and students are weeping in the halls, dripping on keyboards, bogarting the tissue boxes. Oh, woe, woe is me, it's too much homework, I don't have time, the computer crashed, my teachers won't help me, I lost my flashdrive, my aunt died, my dog died. Alas, alackaday. Please, can't you make an exception for me? I'm special!

Some students have good reasons to cry. Take Gina, for example. She's an older gal, here on a voc rehab scholarship. Her computer skills are nil. She doesn't read well, and retains little. She's terrified she'll fail Excel, and with a little more than two weeks to go, it is not looking good. Today Rosie, the program director, pulled me out of class and asked me about Gina's progress. Rosie doesn't know Gina, but she's heard about Gina, apparently, from other people that Gina has approached for help.

“There she is right there,” I said, as Gina came back from a break, looking beat. She had just found out she failed my Excel test. “Would you like to talk with her?” Rosie said yes, so I invited Gina out into the hallway and introduced them.

“How can we help you?” asked Rosie in a compassionate voice, and the floodgates opened. Between sobs, Gina explained her dilemma: She has three other computer classes, but Excel is kicking her ass. She can't follow the book, she's afraid of making a mistake, and she can't remember things. I stood with my arms folded across my chest thinking, I'm a lousy teacher, what can I do to fix this? Hell, she could be me!

It's a good thing I don't get squeamish when people cry. (All those years in 12 Step meetings finally pay off.) People cry for good reasons, and I've learned to let them. I am not afraid of tears. I know what it feels like to be faced with an impossible task, where failure is unacceptable. To weep is a natural reaction. When students cry, most of them are just expressing their frustration and fear. I get it. I've come close a few times myself over the long years of my doctoral journey.

Rosie made soothing noises, and Gina quietly wept as people walked around us, as if what she had was catching. Fear. Maybe it is catching. When I went back into class, the noise level was subdued. Heads were down over their books, fingers tapping on keyboards. Everyone knew what was happening. Train wreck in progress.

Most students don't resort to tears for manipulation purposes because they know other tactics are more effective. Making excuses, for example. Some of these students are so creative! If they spent that energy doing their work... well. I admit, I'm gullible, but after nine years of this crap, I've learned to watch carefully. I pay attention to patterns: missed classes, tardiness, late assignments, general flakiness... actions always say more than words. 

Other natural reactions when faced with an impossible task and an immovable deadline are to lie, cheat, steal, and borrow. The next couple weeks will reveal the depths to which students will sink to extricate themselves from the impossible situation. Even though it is unsettling to discover my students are cheating, I totally understand why they do it. How many times have I used the I'm-special argument to try to persuade someone to cut me some slack, give me a pass, or just give me some sympathy? Oh, poor Carol, her life is so hard, she deserves a second chance. Some of our students do deserve a second chance. Most of them are running on the thin edge of disaster every day, a heartbeat away from homelessness. In fact, one of them was so stressed out yesterday, she was having heart problems. We called the paramedics. I presume she lived.

Most of them have only themselves to blame if they fail a class. Sometimes I want to smack them and say, Get over yourself! You chose this, no one is forcing you to to school. If you don't like it, you can vote with your feet. Then I remember that many of these students are in school so they can get their voc rehab money or federal student loan stipend, so they can pay the rent, put gas in the car, food on the table. Or buy drugs, go out drinking, and bail their boyfriends out of jail. (Hey, I heard it from a reliable source. Gives new meaning to the term higher education.) Every one has a story. Some have happy endings. And some end in tears.

Focus on the learning, not on the grade

Good news. My chairperson liked the Methods section of my concept paper. I am pleased (and embarrassed) to report that she praised my paper effusively, using words like “fantastic work,” and “absolutely wonderful research, detail, and thoughtfulness.” She's “thrilled” with what I'm doing. After barking up so many stunted trees, at last I seem to have found one that will bear fruit. Praise whatever higher power is in charge of scholarly pursuits.

Now the Literature Review section is hanging over my head. Unfortunately, I didn't get anything done on it this week. Friday was the make-up day for the Labor Day holiday, and it's testing time in my computer applications courses. I've ranted on that whole thing previously, so I won't bore you again with the pressures of reviewing for tests that few students are prepared for. I see the results of my labors when I grade the tests. That was my mission tonight. I spent some hours grading the Excel tests, and all I can say is, I'm really hopeful I may have a career as a scholar, because I suck as an Excel teacher.

I blame myself. Then I blame them. Then I blame the workbook format that we are stuck using for the time being. Then I blame Microsoft (why not?). And as long as I'm blaming things, ummm, how about Republicans and global warming? Okay, maybe not. Still, there are many variables at play here, and each student is different. For example, the guy who threatened to bring a shotgun to class got the lowest test score (not surprising), but the one multiple choice answer that everyone else in the class missed—he got right. Go figure. So in my defense, I would say it isn't a matter of blaming the teacher or the students. That's just the easiest thing to do. But it's not helpful, nor is it entirely accurate.

It's not normal for my students to fail tests, but Excel is one of our trouble spots: we throw brand new students into Excel in their first term, and then give them Word, Introduction to the Internet, and Keyboarding. Even for computer-savvy students, this is a lot of computer time. Imagine how it feels for the ones who have little experience with computers. (How do I select a range of cells, again? How do I save to my flashdrive?)

What cracks me up (in a rather fatalistic way) are the students who type in values instead of formulas and assume I won't notice. I download their test files right off their computers onto my flashdrive. I open their test files, and I see exactly what they have done. Their printouts may look accurate, but their file shows the story.   These are usually the students who bring in the homework from home (did someone else do it for them?), who spend their time in class surfing the Web, who rarely ask questions, who leave class early. I can't prevent a disaster if it is the natural order of things. Not everyone is ready to succeed. Some of us have to crash and burn a few times before we are ready to do the work.

Now I'm trying to imagine how I am going to face them on Tuesday morning, how I am going to tell them I have to take more of their precious class time to explain what they missed, where they went wrong, when so many of them are lagging behind on the homework. Which, of course, goes a long way toward explaining why several of them failed the test. I ran a little regression analysis using Excel to compare test scores to amount of homework completed. I'm no statistics wizard, but all signs point to there being a strong and significant correlation between the two. In other words, the students who did the homework had the highest test scores. Duh.

They are going to rip me a new one come Tuesday. I must do what I admonish them to do: keep my focus on the learning and not the grades. I must remember that their grades are not about me. Excel is not something you can tell, or even show... they must do, over and over and over, until they finally understand it. That is how I learned. There are no shortcuts, either in Excel or scholarly research. Not everyone gets it the first time. But if we keep at it, eventually we persist and succeed.

For those of you who think, yay, now Carol has time to meet for coffee or talk on Skype, it might be too soon to celebrate. I still have a lot of work to do to get this concept approved. But there's hope for the malcontent. At least for today. By tomorrow this time, I will have convinced myself the praise never happened, and everything still sucks.

Bring it on down to Critterville

Tuesday during the test review in the Excel class, one student, I'll call him Jimmy, started to turn a rather troubling shade of red. He looked like he was going to spontaneously combust. I figured it was either a stroke or he was super angry.

“I oughta just take a shotgun to it,” he muttered, positioning his hands in the universal sign of I have a shotgun, get out of my way. He was having trouble with some pesky functions. I laughed uneasily.

“I know this is hard, Jimmy,” I tried to empathize. “Don't sweat it, the test is only worth 15 points, it's not the end of the world.”

Clearly, failing a test is a big deal to him. Nothing I said seemed to help. I was stressed out, too, because I may have mentioned in a previous rant that the Academic Coordinator had interrupted the class to do the student evaluations. It was just a bad day all around. You know what they say: Don't let them know you are afraid. They smell your fear and they'll tear you apart.

A day later, while I was at the other campus (where I have a desk, a full-size computer, and friends who like me), I was musing over the entire experience, and it occurred to me that this was not the first time Jimmy has threatened to resort to a shotgun to ease his frustration. Images of Columbine and Virginia Tech started marching through my brain. Nah, I thought to myself, he's just barking out his butt, much like I do when I'm stressed out. But wait, do I really know this man? I don't. I like him. But I don't know him.

So I sent a carefully worded email to the Facilities Director at the other campus, as well as my two bosses. Wow, talk about lighting a fire. Whoosh, my inbox lit up almost instantaneously with missives from all the bosses on up to the VP of academics (or whatever his title is these days, I can never remember, they seem to change titles like underwear). They forwarded my email to everyone, and some copied me on their responses, so I got to see my message scorch a path up the chain. Whoa.

We haven't had many violent students in the nine years I've been working for the college. Usually our illustrious students perform their misdeeds after they graduate. I know we have at least two murderers. (Great publicity for the college. Not.) Only a couple times that I know of have students actually brought their anger to campus in the form of a weapon. One time it turned out to be a paint gun, brought for a speech class and displayed to inspire shock and awe. It sure looked like a rifle, but no worries that time. One time the gun was in the car, but that was enough to get the kid led away in handcuffs. We never saw him again. One time (so I heard), someone chased someone else down a hallway with a knife (total hearsay).

For a tiny podunck career college, with fewer than 2,000 students, does that seem like a lot of violence, or a little?

Jimmy got a talking to today. Shortly after I arrived, his program director led him down the hall past me, saying, “We need to have a little chat.” And then the program director patted me on the back. Awkward. I guess now everyone knows I'm a snitch? I fully expected to find my tires slashed. But later Jimmy came to class and gamely did his best on the Excel test, occasionally asking me for help with no attitude or resentment. So, either he was fine with the talking-to he got, or he didn't know that I was the catalyst for it.

In the Access class today, the three paralegals who missed the test on Tuesday breezed into class at the same time as the Academic Coordinator, who was intent upon proctoring their student evaluations. Argh. They lollygagged on the evaluations (while I sat fuming and twiddling in the hall—again), so they got started late on their tests. All three women had issues: one had a headache and had to go out of the room to take an Excedrin. One told me she was being evicted and went to court for a money-related matter. She started crying. The third one, who usually hates the other two, is a high-maintenance person who reinforces every stereotype you've heard about blondes. During the test, she repeatedly threw up her hands. “I can't do this. This is stupid! I'll never need to know Access.”

I hinted and helped far too much, and she earned a solid D+, fair and square. But she's not getting it, and she blames me. If the school continues to judge faculty performance by the evaluations we get from students, I'm toast. Oh well. It was good while it lasted.

So I get home and my kitchen is swarmed with ants and fruit flies. It's warm. I compost in my kitchen. I should know by now, after watching the paralegals take the test, that you can't interfere in the the natural order of things, whether that is in the kitchen or in the classroom. I shouldn't try to stop an academic disaster, if that is the natural consequence of a student's actions. And I shouldn't mess with mother nature. Heat and rotting food equals critters. As long as I don't have roaches, I don't really care. Ants, fruit flies, moths, spiders, and me, we're all part of the food chain. I feed them, and I eat them, and the wheel turns. Eventually they will eat me. Bring it on down to Critterville!