So I dunno

I slept very badly last night. Probably stayed up a bit too late for me, and then I couldn't "clear the cache" on my mind to be able to go to sleep. I tried all the mental tricks I knew: telling myself over and over again that I was safe, that I had hours and hours before I had to get up, so I could just relax and sleep. Or praying for every single person I could think of that might need it. Or trying to imagine one of the "alternate houses" - like a Hobbit house, or a light house, or a cabin on the side of a mountain - where I might want to live.

Nothing worked. Oh, I slept eventually, because I had bad dreams (the house next to me catching on fire and me worrying that it would spread to mine, and not being able to get 911 on the phone) and I was cranky when I woke up.

And news of the world is just bad. A couple people I follow on Twitter - who maybe I should mute - shared some alleged details of the death (alleged death? Though I think it's pretty clear he's dead) of that reporter that are just nightmarish and horrifying.

And there was a home-invasion robbery two and a half blocks from me. Granted, there may have been drugs involved and also the victim had left his door unlocked, but still, it's unhappy and unsettling.

And the Kilkenny-cat-i-zation of our culture continues apace.

I know I often say "if the world is going to Hell, I don't have to go with it" or "I don't have to hurry it on its way" but I'm reaching a point of just being so disgusted with how lots of people act that I really do want to withdraw and become a hermit. (But I can't, because you probably have to be independently wealthy these days to be a hermit.)

I dunno. I still feel like there is nothing I can do that makes things better. Maybe I need to settle for "at least you're not making things worse" but I want more than that.

(Man, if this were like a "nice" movie....well, something would happen to restore my faith, or my fairy godmother would show up and show me that I was having a good effect, or something just good and nice would happen to me. But life is more like a horror movie or one of those comedies where the protagonist is just a....what's the word....butt-monkey....instead of the hero.

And I was worrying about that exam I graded Monday, and debating - since there are different forms of the calculation part, should I just take a couple class periods and work through literally every problem on it (21 total) to show people what they did incorrectly? Or what? Is it my fault for not teaching better, or are the students not putting in the work? (Several of the very low-scoring exams had entire swathes left blank; they didn't even TRY.)

I dunno. I totaled them up this morning (there is also an in class portion which I graded more than a week ago but didn't put a number grade on).

Turns out the mean is a 72. And the two lowest-scoring ones, by far, are people who are present about 1/3 of the time. So I don't know. Maybe it's not much worse than previous years? Hard to say.

But it's frustrating to try to write an exam as clearly as you know how to and still have people apparently misunderstand the questions, or just give up and leave them blank. (And they had an entire week to do it. I know being busy and all, but really? Not being able to make a little time each day to work on it, maybe do one problem? And I know none of these were impossible because I solved them myself first)

I have a headache and I confess if I were less-diligent than I am (and hadn't spend $12.25 of my own money on lab supplies yesterday AND YES I AM STILL UNHAPPY ABOUT THAT), I'd just tell my secretary I was sick and go home and go back to bed. (I really probably could use a few more hours of sleep).

I also feel guilty about going to Whitesboro - maybe - on Friday. I need to be saving my money for things like getting my garage painted and getting my trees trimmed (the owner of the house next door called me and asked me about both things. He's going to go half on the painting of the side of the garage we share but the trees are on me. And I need to do that anyway).

Maybe I should just stay home because I'm not good enough to deserve it. I don't know.



****

- at least lab is set up for this afternoon. I found all the stuff I need. Hopefully it won't take more than about a half-hour to set up, provided everyone pulls their weight. And then they can come in and score the results tomorrow (or, dammit, if people don't? I will before I leave for the day because I'm not gonna let this lab fail)

- Was thinking just now how so much of my life these days seems like "side quests" and honestly I might be happier if life had obvious "XPs" like videogames do. (And I also wonder: has any sadistic soul composed a video game that is nothing BUT pointless side quests, so you grind endlessly for XPs, but never have a boss fight or anything like that? The game could be called "real life" or some such)

- Even though I feel like maybe I don't deserve to go to Whitesboro and shouldn't be spending the money, having to listen to other people cheerily recount their Rhinebeck adventures on social media....well, I'll be a lot grumpier if I DON'T go.

(I never did invest in that CD. Maybe I withdraw a couple hundred dollars from my savings account - that won't break me - and use cash to pay for my purchases? Also I doubt the tree guy would be much more than $1000 and I have enough in  my savings account. Or maybe....no, I'm not gonna ask my parents even though I know they sent a check to my brother and sister in law to help with something. I should be more independent.)

- I need to make myself feel better about those tests. Someone did score a 99% - someone I know is a good student and who has been there every class and sits in the front row and asks questions. And the two lowest scores were, as I said, people who are chronically absent. But it bugs me, and feels like a failure on my part, when someone doesn't even ATTEMPT a test question. Though I have no way of knowing if it was:

- "I have no idea and I never learned this"
- "LOL I don't have time to do this" (Yes, we get a few students about this)
- "I really didn't understand this, she didn't explain it well"
- "I was absent the day this was covered" (I have said, again and again, you cannot learn this stuff from just reading the textbook unless you are a flippin' genius. And even then: you'd have to be smarter and better at stats than I was, and I was kind of a stats-savant in grad school, to be able to learn it from the book.)