Mostly I'm just buried under a perpetual (electronic) pile of papers to grade. I told myself at the beginning of this semester that I'd be very very disciplined and as soon as a group of papers got handed it, I'd grade 5 a day, no matter what, and since I get about 70 papers every time one is due (3 sections w/ 23 students each), I could finish the whole lot in two weeks. Then I promise my students I'll have them done in two weeks. Then something comes up one day, then the next, then the next, and before I know it I'm a week behind and I have to lock myself in my office and grade for like 5 hours straight so I can get caught up.
Harumph.
This is the first semester I've had three sections instead of two, and the extra paper load is kicking my butt already. We're required to assign four papers a semester, and each paper averages about four pages long (double spaced), so that's 16 pages per student (conservatively), and 16 x 70 is 1,120. Pages. Pages I not only have to read, but think about and comment on and score on a rubric and add up points and enter into my electronic gradebook. Then, after the painstaking effort of trying to explain in writing what a student needs to change in order to get a better grade, he/she still needs to see me in person during my office hours because I wasn't clear. OH! And speaking of that, three out of the four of these papers allow revision, so any student who wants to can write another draft and turn THAT one in on top of everything else.
This is, of course, in addition to actually teaching the class--prepping, creating handouts and PowerPoints, trying to find interesting things to read and coming up with good discussion questions, etc. Today I gave a scintillating lecture on grammar and mechanics, PowerPoint included. Do YOU know the difference between a subordinating conjunction and a coordinating conjunction? Better yet, do you know WHY it's important to know the difference between a subordinating conjunction and a coordinating conjunction? (Actually, if you read a lot you don't really need to know why because you can just tell when a sentence isn't complete or a comma is required . . . but most of my students are less-than-voracious readers, so to punish them I make them listen to me drone on about conjunctions, then I give them a quiz.) I kid, I kid. I really don't do it to punish them. I'd prefer to do away with talking about grammar and mechanics altogether; it's a big, fat snooze-fest and I'd rather discuss interesting articles and how to build an argument and even effective research methods. But I gotta do it, at least a little bit. So I do.
This sounds like I don't like my job, but that's not true. I actually really like my job. I enjoy the teaching part quite a bit, and I enjoy my students too (even those who've never read an entire book in their lives). I love my Monday/Wednesday/Friday office, a space I share with Tuesday/Thursday John, a very neat man (as in tidy) who keeps a pristine and apparently functional 1980's Commodore computer on his side of the desk for reasons that remain mysterious to me. Even better, I like my department and that they treat me like an actual professor instead of a skulking interloper (as adjuncts are sometimes deemed to be--and don't you like the phrase "skulking interloper"?). I mean, get this: I, and a few other "associate lecturers" (as adjuncts are known) get to go to Boston in November for the National Council of Teachers of English conference, paid for by the remedial English budget. Since the vast majority of all remedial and early-level writing courses are taught by adjuncts it makes sense, but still, a trip? To BOSTON!? How awesome is that? I've never been to Boston. And I get to stay in a hotel room all by myself. I am quite thrilled at the prospect of staying in a hotel room by myself. And I get to stay here, too. (Yes, I am a public employee, but we got excellent rates, better than the Holiday Inn.)
So all that is great. It's just the grading that sometimes makes me wish I taught geology or psychology and I could give them multiple choice tests that a computer grades immediately. Although I'm sure being a geology or psychology teacher has its pitfalls as well. I'm just saying.
But enough about my teaching! If you've gotten this far, congratulations. The real point of this post was to update everybody on the basement, which is now 93% finished. Of the remaining 7% (rearranging storage, putting up shelves, decorating appropriately, setting up the guest room/Forrest's office, etc) 5% will get done over the next few months and 2% will never ever get done at all. So now is as good a time as any to show you what we've done. Here is the basement before:
And here is the basement after. The first picture I'm standing close to the same spot I was standing in the photo above. If I'd backed up a little you'd see that the space under the stairs is now a closet.
We got a projector and ordered a screen from this online company that builds them and ships them to your door. At first we were just going to paint the wall white, but I talked Forrest into going the screen route and I like it. The stairs from the main floor are to the right, so the first thing you see when you come downstairs is that wall and I didn't want it to look like a random, bare white wall if a movie wasn't showing.
I also found the furniture that surrounds the screen at Ikea, and put together 1/4 of it myself. The bottom shelves are two TV stands (one a 2-drawer and the other a 3-drawer) pushed together, then next to it is a matching cabinet. Funny thing, though, all that *I* was thinking about was buying a matching set of furniture and having it fit in the space. I didn't consider that our components would have to fit in the cabinet, which is more a "curio" style cabinet than a media cabinet. Long story short, Forrest had to cut an audio-tuner-sized hole in the false back of the cabinet in order for it to fit . . . but you can't even tell. All's well that ends well, yes?
It took us a while to find a good couch, too. Part of me wanted to get something like my mom and dad have with the individual lounge chairs, but I also wanted lots of kids to be able to cram onto the couch and I prefer to lay sideways and have someone hold my feet whilst watching movies (just like Mom!) so the current setup prevailed. It's not quite as comfy as the floor model in the store was, but we'll break it in. I just have to train the kids not to throw pillows all over the floor.
And of course you noticed Bucky there on the back wall. Bucky, who has spent the last year in our garage, eyeing me whenever I pull in. I promised Forrest that if we could finish the basement I'd let him bring Bucky in out of the cold. So there he is. Which means we are the kind of family that has a deer head in our basement. Life is full of surprises, no? And I realize that the table on the far wall doesn't really match anything, but it's more about utility than aesthetics. It's already gotten some good use when Ethan's friends came over for a Nintendo DS Pokemon marathon. Yes, 17- and 18- year old boys have Nintendo DS Pokemon marathons, or at least Ethan's friends do, which at least partially explains why he finds church lessons about resisting temptations while hanging out with your non-Mormon friends a little over the top. For Ethan and his friends that night, though? It was Pokemon and cream soda, baby. Wild times!
The door right next to the table opens into the bedroom/office, the the door on the left opens into an eventual bathroom. Who knows when we'll get that one finished. Then the closet on the wall has become the toy/game storage closet, which I didn't realize how much I'd like until I put all Wyatt's toys inside and closed the doors.
The picture below is the bedroom/office. As you can see, this is part of the 7%. We need to get rid of our old entertainment center but it's proving difficult thus far. And it's a nice piece of furniture! Solid wood, not all oak-y and dated. I have it up on Craigslist for $99 and have had a couple of nibbles but no real bites. Entertainment centers are going the way of the rotary phone, it appears.
And here's what a ginormous screen looks like in a window-less basement with the lights off. It's pretty cool. And I don't even watch football! I did enjoy inspecting the pores on celebrities' faces during the Emmy's though.
And that is it for now. Forrest is gone on a campout with Jonas and the Scout troop and the rest of us get to SLEEP IN tomorrow because of MEA (the Minnesota version of UEA). Hallalujah! I'll have a kid-update post sometime soon.
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