Back to mundane

A minister in my parents' congregation talked about being "Easter people" - in the sense of living in joy because Easter has happened, and living our lives with a view to "The Kingdom."

But oh, it's so hard sometimes.

I e-mailed our Title IX coordinator this morning. I have a student who reported to me a "controlling" relationship that was preventing them from coming to campus and getting work done. Is it true? I have no idea but I have to treat it as if it is. (And anyway: if the student is lying about it to try to get some kind of sympathy, they sort of deserve whatever undue attention they will get).

At this point, all I can do, I think, is sign papers allowing a "retroactive"drop, seeing as the student has missed every test this semester and I doubt they could learn about 12 weeks of material, if I even had TIME to write four make-up tests. (I don't and I hope I won't be asked to)

And this morning it's pouring down rain, so our roof is leaking. The power flickered (shutting my computer down; I have a surge protector but not a backup battery any more - the one I had got fried when we had a colony of raccoons [or so OG and E claimed] living around one of the junction boxes). I took advantage of the downtime to go check the leaks in both halls of the classroom building. Yes, of course, they were going. Our custodian doesn't come in until later in the morning and he tends to be pretty cool with faculty taking care of emergencies, so I grabbed the buckets and "Wet Floor" signs out of his storeroom and deployed them.

There are now six buckets and three wet-floor signs. Great optics if we get prospective students coming through....

(I wish I had a cell-phone camera so I could photograph them and send them to our legislators. Though a colleague reminds me: these leaks have existed since we moved in in 2001, during better economic times, so maybe it's the uni admins who need to see the photos of the leaks)

But yeah, that's my Monday - trying to get help for someone who may have a serious problem (or, there's an outside chance they're lying to try to garner sympathy, but if that's the case, it'll come out in the wash) and setting out buckets to deal with a problem that should have been solved when my current crop of students were toddlers.

"Chopping wood and hauling water,"  indeed.

(And yeah, I suppose at least the putting-out-of-buckets was a WWJD thing - taking action to prevent people from slipping on the floor instead of waiting for the person whose "job" it supposedly is (though the custodian should also not have to contend with a leaky roof, any more than faculty). But that kind of thing does wear me down, all the imperfections of an imperfect world.)

Edited to add: and the "shared printer" that is convenient to my office is still broken, sigh. (At least I can print downstairs but it means running up and down the stairs to get the printed item)