A venting post

You've been warned.

This has been logistically one of the worst semesters ever for me. I'm exhausted, I'm angry at some of my students, I'm trying to do too much.

Right now my big worry is this: they went to an online health-insurance enrollment portal this year, instead of the in-person thing they used to do. It has been a giant clustermuck. It was delayed at the very last minute (supposed to open up 1 November, did not). When it finally opened (9 November) it promptly crashed....and was down all weekend.

it's still down today and I can only presume whatever office or business is SUPPOSED to be fixing it is taking Veterans Day Observed off, which means we will have one less day to enroll. (If it's even fixable). The deadline is now the 27th, I guess, but I lose the entire week of Thanksgiving and I do not count AT ALL on being able to access a computer ANYWHERE including getting somewhere to do it because I am going to be the Chore Donkey that week at my parents' house. And it will be loud, and it will be hard to have enough quiet and free time to do it and pay attention to it.


Or: maybe I just take one day when my parents' church is open, and drive down there and ask the financial secretary - a friend of my mom's - if I can use her computer and T1 line for fifteen minutes, and re-enroll there, and just tell people they will have to hang on and not need anything of me for that time because frankly health insurance is pretty darned vital.

(I called HR and said "I won't be able to enroll over break ONE OF MY PARENTS IS HAVING SURGERY" and if it's an exaggeration it's not a lie. They claimed someone would help me if I missed the deadline but as I don't have that in writing, I don't trust it).

I'm really stressed about this. I don't have a spouse to fall back on. I can't afford private health insurance even if someone would take on a fat 50-year-old hypertensive woman who is allergic to almost everything.

I've had people in my classes bailing left and right on deadlines. I had six people contact me this morning about not being able to get in to hand in the take home exam so I just gave everyone an extension until Wednesday on the grounds that I'd rather grade them all at once (when? I don't know at this point but I'm sure the hell not carrying them to Illinois with  me) than grade five or six, and then grade five or six more another day, and then wait three days for another five....

I have other stuff I can do during office hours; if I get that done NOW then perhaps the Monday I come back I can get the exams graded. I hate playing Tetris with time and tasks though but that's my life now. 

And I've just had person after person with problems, the latest being that someone scheduled themselves to work (????) during a class meeting time and they need to reschedule an exam. (And yes, I'm going to do it, even though it annoys me). But I'm fast hitting compassion fatigue, which is bad.

I need ONE thing to go right this week. ONE thing. If I had my pick it would be "insurance reenrollment opening back up and we all get enrolled smoothly" but even something else would be OK.

I have two meetings tonight and two Wednesday night and Thursday I have to pack and and and. I am angry and upset and unhappy and I feel like no one here gives a crap about the struggles I face, but expect me to have infinite care about theirs.