Monday midday follies

Life comes at you fast.

Two issues in one of my classes right now: One guy has never shown (this is meeting #4 of the class.) I talked to his advisor and was warned this was someone "known" for doing this. My response is that I am NOT putting in the time to catch someone up on at least four days of foundational material in a class that is known for not being a "you can learn it by reading the textbook" class.

I have another student in that class who, "got a slow start" and missed all of last week, and then couldn't find my class (!) (Yes, it was the one I had moved but I thought the signs were still up).

So yeah. I'm doing a tiny scream into the void right now over this.

And yes, yes, I get it: our students have challenges I did not face as a student.  Many of our students don't have the privilege I had of growing up with parents who insisted on being at stuff and being on time for stuff and that education was important.

The thing though - and what makes me do the tiny scream - is that it means more work on me as a faculty member- chasing people down (I had to look up the missing student 'cos I didn't remember them from my roster and in the past people have wound up not-listed, but he was there).

So yeah, I'm tired. I also typed the minutes for the Wesley Center Board (and to my amusement, managed to work in the phrase "a particular set of skills"). And I prepped stuff for tomorrow's classes and put a link up so the students can easily* find their way to the online homeworks, and answered about three dozen e-mails.....

(*"Oh, easy for Leonardo!")

It's the little stuff, the things that you have to do, that take maybe five minutes to do (but there are so many of them to be done) and yet you feel like you haven't ACCOMPLISHED anything when you've dealt with them, and they make you tired.

It's the people-wrangling I will miss the least when I finally do retire. And all the "wth?" e-mails where someone tells you something they need help with but leaves out an important detail and you don't know what they're getting at.

Anyway.

I worked more on the hats last night, including the hat I am now thinking of "the hat you can rip me off of" - the purplish one I will offer as either a giveaway or a charity donation when it's all finished (photo will go here and on Twitter; I'll probably prioritize donating it somewhere if someone has a good suggestion within the US; failing that, if someone just wants it, I'll send it to them)

But yeah. I'm just very tired this noon. I don't know why. I don't know if it was not-enough-time-off this weekend, or if it was getting up shortly after 4:30 to work out (I am back in my "wake before the alarm" mode. In fact, "wake an hour and a half before the alarm, look at the clock, try to sleep again, wake again, look at the clock, find it's still an hour early, say "you can't get up before 4:30 am" and try to sleep again....because I KNOW if I just got up when I woke up early, I'd wake up earlier and earlier to exercise, and eventually I'd work around 24 hours and totally bork my sleep schedule and also wind up probably having one night happen where I did NOT sleep as it goes round the cycle, and....)

(Part of it, I suspect, is exhaustion over the state of the world. Yes, I get it: people have always been terrible and it's probably actually better now that the terribleness is coming to light rather than remaining hidden and gotten-away-with. But it doesn't make me feel any better)

It's also very hot and very humid here again, but no chances of rain. And I think back to my first fall here (1999) when I looked at the calendar and saw how many more days it STILL was until Labor Day (I think we must have had three weeks before it then, instead of two) and put my head down on my desk and cried because it felt so far away. I'm better about that now but I still get REALLY tired of August.