Years and years ago, I remember seeing one of those New Yorker-style one-panel cartoons. Roz Chast didn't draw it, but it was kind of a similar style.
It was a close-up of the head (and hands) of a man lying in bed, and the title of it was "Early-Morning Resentments." And his thought bubble said, "I must get up and go to work, yet in many countries it is still night."
And while that's not technically true for North Americans (though I suppose you could say, "In many countries it is once again night"), still, early-morning resentments, I've got a few:
1. Why can't our Registrar's office set up a situation where the professor is automatically e-mailed when a student drops their class? This would be SO helpful. I had a situation last week - had graded the first exam in a class, really wanted to hand it back and go over it, realized one person in the class had not taken it. Realized then the person had not been in class for several meetings. So I went online to check the roster (which takes a little work. Not a lot, but still: more work than receiving and recording a "Joe Blow has dropped your class" e-mail) and found he was still enrolled.
We are expected to provide all sorts of documentation on things, but there is documentation back to us that would be helpful, and which we do not get.
(Resentment #2)
I went to the guy's advisor (a colleague) for advice. Sometimes advisees disclose medical issues or whatnot and I figured if the guy was out sick, well, then, I couldn't hand back the exam (I do NOT have time to write a make up exam for this one). Technically my policy, stated in the syllabus, is you must notify me or else you can't make up the exam, but if someone's REALLY sick that tends to be the least of their thoughts, and I get that....
Anyway. The advisor told me that no, he had no news, and also told me (in shorter and less-polite words) that "This individual is not exactly an exemplar of responsibility, so choose your action accordingly." (I handed back the exam on the grounds the student might NEVER show up again, and even if he did - well, it's now been a week since the exam, so too bad.)
3. My bad fellow drivers. The dude in the old gray pickup who can't be troubled to put his headlights on in the dark early-morning time when I am driving to work. The dude in the slightly-newer brown pickup who figures the fog lights are enough. The other dude in the brand-new, "compensating for something" big red pickup with lots of aftermarket gear, who has those surface-of-the-sun blinding halogen headlights - he can see everyone fine, but everyone else is blind because of them. The people who are using Wilson as a detour while the bridge is being fixed who have still not figured out that (a) it is a curvy road with poor visibility (b) people park on it and (c) it is posted as 30 and more than once I have had to pull hard to the side to make way for someone who figures the middle of the roadway is their due.
4. My city's lazy/broke/I don't know what attitude to road damage: there is a GIANT pothole on Wilson. I know because I hit it one day before it had grown to its full size and was worried I damaged my exhaust system (fortunately no). Last week the city came and put up rubber pylons and caution tape around it (the pylons are knocked down most mornings by the abovementioned poor drivers) but has made no move to fix or even fill it in. And seeing it every day, having to weave around it and pray no idiot is coming up the opposite way on the blind curve doing 50, just reminds me how broken EVERYTHING seems to be these days. (Also, more news of officials in towns around here being caught embezzling: no wonder this state is broke, all the politicians are funneling money into their pockets.)
There's another street in town - fortunately one I can easily avoid - with a similar situation, and there may be yet another. And on North Fourth, north of me, there's a chewed up section of road that was blocked off for a while until they dumped some gravel in the pothole and decided it was "good enough."
5. The ongoing humid, warm weather. Someone hit a raccoon on the road just outside my building and WHOA has it gotten ripe. (No, my city has no roadkill-cleanup crew; the vultures and rot eventually do that). I almost gagged driving in when the smell blew through my car's vents. The humidity traps all the bad smells here.
We're supposed to get a cold front, but all the weather forecasters are decidedly evasive about WHEN, which makes me wonder if it's like the previous round of rain we were supposed to get that never materialized.
6. The fact that in the past few days, I've had to deal with soothing the ruffled emotions of several people - I do an awful lot of soothing and placating - and yet, when something happened that hurt MY feelings, it didn't seem to matter. And yeah, yeah, I get the whole "to those whom much is given" bit from Luke, and the "to each according to his ability" thing Marx said (though I'm far less willing to trust Marx than I am to trust Luke) but it does seem sometimes everyone looks at me and goes, "You're strong and tough, you manage, so, here" and dumps a load of emotional labor on me, and when I would like to have my ruffled emotions soothed....either no one who is capable of helping is to be found, or, more commonly, I can't even ask, because I feel so ridiculous asking. So I just suck it up yet again and keep going.
I also think the thing is, that while I'm "needed," it's a very one-directional sort of need. When you have children who need you (or so I imagine), you also get some kind of love back from them - I imagine the parent coming home and the kid running up to them and saying "I love you! I missed you!" at least once in a while. Or those moments watching a video together with the kid curled up against you. And the way I'm needed, it's more like - I give out but I don't get back. I get dozens of e-mails from students wanting help or reassurance. Maybe one or two of them thank me.
It's just.....it's really hard going it alone in life, not having a Significant Other or kids or even a sibling nearby to lean on a little some times. And yes, proximity is part of it - I have my Invisible Internet Friends, and I appreciate that I do, but it's not the same as having someone in the same neighborhood.
(And yes, I also get there are such things as dysfunctional relationships where the sibling or parent or child or Significant Other or friend or whoever just takes and takes and takes, and that becomes a very unidirectional thing. But I'd hope that most people had some relationships where they got back as well)
7. Maybe not a resentment as much as a woe - I woke up this morning and thought, "What fresh horror will have been visited upon us when I turn on the news?" So far, nothing major (new) that gets reported locally. Oh, the talking heads are still talking about Las Vegas and Puerto Rico and politics and all that lot, but at least it seems like overnight we didn't get hit with anything NEW. But yeah, at some point my attitude towards looking at the world tipped over from hopeful expectation to concerned resignation, and I don't like that. (And yes, I know, that's the fault of the 24 hour news cycle, but I also have a suspicion that the so-called "mass casualty events" are increasing over time...and I admit the other day, hearing someone else in my building early, I reached over and grabbed the handle of the shillelagh, and held on to it - also trying to see if I could use it to quickly push my office door closed without getting up (no, it's too far). But then I realized it was a colleauge's research student getting ice for an experiment - and who else would it be? - but still. There have been several cases of fake shooting-threats called in to high schools in the area and that is SO not cool.)
No comments:
Post a Comment