Midterm thoughts

I just reread my last blog post. Guess who's disappeared from class? Yup. She Devil has been absent for a couple of weeks now. Big surprise? Not really. But why did she have to make life so miserable while she was here? Sheesh. Cut me some slack people.

In fact, most of my classes have dropped in number of students. The 8-week Writing I classes are the worst. I have approximately 8-10 showing up on a good day. Of course, tomorrow is Friday, so that means I'll probably have 3-5 in each class. It's really quite depressing. I was pretty down last weekend after I only had 5 show up in my 1:00 class. What a bummer way to go into the weekend.

My latest favorite though have been the students who have been absent for about 3+ weeks who are just now emailing me telling me they want to get back "on track" and complete their missing coursework so they can pass the class. Um, yeah, right. Did they miss that part of the syllabus that said, "NO LATE WORK"? Or did I neglect to make that clear on Day 1? Oh, right. They didn't show up until Day 2 or 3 so that policy doesn't count for them because they weren't there to hear it. And really now, you've been gone 3 weeks, which is the equivalent of 6 weeks in a regular semester, you've completed no work to date, but you want me to give you all the work you've missed. How about I also stay late every night to reteach everything I went through each of those 2-hour class sessions when you weren't there?

I also have a new one this semester: students who don't want to come to class, but who consistently turn in their work to me via email. Did I miss something that said our class was a correspondence or online class? Hmm... how dumb of me not to realize that. Yeah, I hope you enjoy not having your assignments graded because there is no way I can even prove the work is yours! See you (or not) next semester.

How many weeks until Finals...?

Get... Out... Of... My... Class... NOW!!!

So, did I actually write in my last blog that I WANTED to go back to work? Well, ok, so I did, but that was because I like being around my co-workers. Today, I got to...err had to... kick my first student of 2012 out of class. My, my, what a great way to start the year. You know, I don't recall having to kick anyone out last fall. Why now?

Naturally, the nastiness started even before class began. The student asked me if I brought in the journal packets. I simply said, no, that they are in my office and she can swing by and grab one after class. She didn't like that, so I got to see her roll her eyes and sigh, "Ugggghhhh." That was just the beginning. In the next 20 minutes, she proceeded to check her cell phone, be on the computer even though we were going over a lesson and I'd asked them to just turn away for a moment, text even after I told her to put her phone away, and then announce to me and the class when I told her that if she HAD to text to go into the hall to finish, that "It ain't like we doin anythin' anyway, humpf."

Shortly after all of that, I told her to go to the hall so we could chat. There she wouldn't look at me and was so snotty. When I told her to knock off the attitude, she said, "I aint got no attitude." I figured by then, nothing I could say would change anything, so I said, "Get your things and get out of class. You're not staying here with this behavior." So, after some more pouting and stomping back in the room, giving me dirty looks, and making disgusted noises, she left. She returned about 10 minutes later, threw her paper down on the teacher's stand at the front of the room where I was reviewing the lesson, and stormed out.

Good riddance, and DO let the door hit you on the way out, please.

And a great big "yay" for going back to work!

So my last post was about the wonders of freedom at the end of the semester. I hate to say it, but right around the beginning of January, I was ready to go back to work. When I got there this week, I didn't realize how much I actually missed the interaction with my co-workers. It's been nice being back and just having time to get back into the swing of things with them. Of course, I'm not totally ready for the idea of teaching again, especially because I have 6 classes AGAIN this semester. Ugh. But the good thing about that is that I will get overload pay for 2 classes. That will be awesome!

But it is going to be a busy semester: 6 classes, 3 committees, 3 conferences (Florida, St. Louis, and Newport Beach), a trip to NY in March for Rach & Suz's wedding, and all of the other regular things in life. March will be the craziest since I'll be in NY, MO, and CA all in the same month. I guess I won't be around much. Ken'll be on his own with the cats. :-)

16 more weeks until summer!!!

Freedom!

Today was finally the end....the of the semester. Yee Haw and a great big, "THANK GOODNESS!" Hallelujah! What a great day! Seriously. I mean it. It was a great day, and in my opinion, an exciting day!

You see, the truth is that there isn't a whole lot that I get excited over these days. At the ripe old age of 34, I've seen a lot. It's the little things in life that make me most happy: a clean house, NCIS and popcorn with Ken, a shower before bed along with fresh sheets, finding The Goonies on TV...You see, I'm a pretty content person and so the last few times I was ever seriously excited about something include the following (I may be missing some, but these are what come to mind automatically): Christmas eve as an 7-8 year old and receiving my doctoral gown in the mail. That second one sad? Maybe. But if you knew what it took to get that thing, you'd probably have cried too. I know I should add things like getting married and Ken coming home from war and all, and yes, those were important moments in life. But what I'm thinking about here is the youthful excitement that comes from deep within, something that stirs you at the core and makes it impossible for you to sit still.

Yes, my friends, that is how I felt today. Today was the best day - the last day of fall semester! A break... we all get a break...from work, from each other, from meetings, from going to bed super early and getting up super early, to responding to emails, to thinking about what to wear, oh how the list does go on. Today, I was so excited that I was actually skipping in the hallway outside my office. Yes, it was just that kind of day. Thankfully, I was not the only one to admit feeling this way. Many of my colleagues admitted to feeling excited and simply boisterous because of what the calendar was telling us. Freeeeeeeeedom!!!!

Stuck, stuck, stuck.

So, I'm stuck. That whole "lose weight pretty fast" thing has stopped for me. I'm trying to stay positive and remind myself that staying the same or losing just a little is ok. But really, how excited can a person get about losing 0.2 lbs when only a few weeks ago, they were coming off in 2, 3, and sometimes even 4 lbs at a time?!?! I'm getting nervous about making my 25 by Christmas goal. It may not happen at the rate things are going these days. Stay positive, stay positive!

Thanksgiving was good. I didn't deny myself anything good (hmm...and I wonder why the scale is stuck). But it was back on track for me on Sunday in hopes of a speedy recovery before weigh in. I also walked Sunday-Tuesday so hopefully that wil make 100 pounds fall off really fast.

Weigh in tonight: keep your fingers crossed for me!

And a Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Just a quick note to say Happy Thanksgiving! One more day of work for me (it should be a pretty easy day!) and then we're off to enjoy the holidays with Ken's fam. This includes the annual Pfiffner women's shopping trip. Who knows what wonderful... or at least interesting ... deals await us. Though I must say I'm not looking forward to the throngs of people. Ugh.

I also wanted to send out a wonderful bit of news...congratulations to friends Nikki and Brian on the arrival of their much-anticipated daughter Hope! We are so happy she arrived safely and is now officially celebrating the holidays with you all!

We're wishing all our friends and family a blessed day on Thursday. Enjoy your time with others and stay safe out there.

A Lot of Hard Work

Today is the first day in a while when both Ken and I have been home and able to get some much-needed work done around the house. I got up bright early around 4:30 a.m. -- but stayed in bed until around 5:30 a.m. -- and decided to get my "mandatory" Saturday exercise in and done for the day. I got on the treadmill downstairs and managed to get in about 50 minutes while watching almost two full episodes of "Sell This House." The good thing about walking and that show is that I desperately need to see the completed versions of the houses and so it makes me keep walking until the end of the show.

While downstairs, I managed to do two loads of laundry and clean the cats' litter box area (sweeping and scooping). Sadly, I discovered much to my dismay that one of the cats had peed in the Kitty Pop Tent and so had to also do a cleaning of the floor and another trip to the garbage to dispose of the now-ruined pop tent. So much for buying them toys! Side note: I must say that my Swiffer Wet Jet is my new favorite cleaning tool for the basement. It's perfect for cleaning and sprucing up a concrete floor after 3 cats.

After that, it was on to the outside where Ken (I made him get out of bed by this point) and I set to work on the yard. It was my goal today to get all the lawn decorations in and get some of the nasty plant stuff put into the yard waste bin. Thankfully, because yesterday was Veterans Day, there was no garbage or yard waste pick up until today, so we managed to get the yard stuff out with about 20 minutes to spare before the truck came around. Victory! Ken went around with the leaf blower/sucker thing and picked up a lot of the loose leaves blowing around. It looks pretty good out there. I should get a fall house picture up to share. Will work on that. Now we just have to get the furniture in the side porch pushed to the middle of the room and covered, and we should be pretty much good to go for winter. Considering we had our first round of snow on Tuesday, we are now aware that this could happen for real anytime.

Tonight we're off to a UNI game with some of Ken's family. His sister Linda is making chicken tortilla soup before the event. Can't wait! Not only do I not have to cook, but I get to have an excuse for not doing any school work for the rest of the day (not like I've started any of course).

On a side note, I thought I'd mention that I've been doing Weight Watchers again for the past 9 weeks or so. My friend Kelly and I decided to do it together. It's so much easier when there's someone who's going through it at the same time. We've been moving steadily along. Kelly hit her 10 pound lost mark on Wednesday, and I hit my 20 pound mark the week before that. My first goal is 25 by Christmas. I'm not looking too far past that at this point. Small goals, right?