Marco from Memphis And the Story of a Liar.

This morning, a student breathlessly came up to me to explain why she missed our final exam review session. She'd had a car wreck, she had whiplash, her family's only car was destroyed. She was nearly in tears.

Relax, said I, I will take time after I'm finished my other final and help you sort through the material. We'll call it a special review session.

She looked like she might hug me, her beatific smile warmed me. I was getting through to them; I was helping. I was going the extra mile (like the Adminiflakes ask us).

Still feeling good about myself, an hour later, I overheard that student and another while they stood in line at the coffee shop on campus:

Other: Did you say you had a car wreck this week?
Student: Oh, I said that. But I didn't. I just skipped class. I told the teacher that because I found out I missed all the review.
Other: Funny.
Student: Yeah, but I did total my car once, so I knew what to say.

Guess who's not going to make that special review session?

Greg from Greensboro And the Job Misery.

I have a vague acquaintance in a department at a nearby 4 year school. It's an okay place, and I usually keep my eye on their job openings.

6 weeks ago they announced a full time t-t spot. The same day I got a call from the department chair about the position. She'd gotten my name from my acquaintance, and asked if I'd be applying. I told her I would, and hand delivered my letter, vita, sample of scholarship, and student evaluations the next day.

2 days later I had a phone interview with three members of the department, and then a week later I was asked to campus.

They were hiring late because of an unexpected retirement. They department was friendly, the campus pretty, and the Dean came by during my lunch to tell me that he'd heard wonderful things about me.

I went back to my shitty apartment and began imagining packing my belongings up and moving the 30 miles up the road to the big school. (I've been on a contingent full time contract at a community college for 6 years.)

The search chair called me one more time, 2 weeks ago. Sorry for the delay, just crossing some t's, etc. Will call tomorrow with the news. Everyone was knocked out by me.

A week passed. 5 more days passed.

Yesterday, I got an email that started:

"Dear undisclosed-recipient: Thank you for your application, but our position in Xxxxxxx has been filled."

Stop with the Cutco Presentations, please!

Email from a student:


Dear Dr. Cynic: I hope you are having a good summer. I know that you want me to succeed and the only way I can do that is to make money over the summer by selling Cutco products. If you aren't familiar with Cutco products, they are wonderful. I would like to make an appointment to show you the beauty that is Cutco. I know you can benefit from Cutco and I can benefit from getting the income so I can come back to school in the Fall.


Please let me know when you will be in your office so I can come over to show you these beautiful knives and kitchen utensils.


Sincerely,
Earnest Student


-----


Dear Earnest:


I hope you are having a good summer, too. Stop hitting me up for money, please. I cannot bear the burden of such requests. 


Besides, I know the beauty that is Cutco because I have nine Cutco knives, all of which are fabulous (except the pie scooper/spatula/spreader thingie; I could do without that, but I only bought it because it was the cheapest item during a sales pitch). These nine different Cutco knives are from nine different student presentations I have sat through nine times in the past. Yes, they are all from nine other students like you, trying to earn money for college (granted, one of them was my roommate). In all honesty, I believe I could do the Cutco sales pitch by heart now. While I wish you well in the future, and I hope you earn lots of money for tuition, I simply do not need another knife or kitchen/garden/hunting utensil, and I cannot (CANNNNOT!) sit through another presentation to make it ten for fear that I would use one of the knives in a desperate move to end the presentation. 


Moreover, I only cook when I absolutely have to: once a year when my department head decrees that we bring home-cooked items to our Christmas potluck. And when I do cook, it's usually to make my specialty of egg salad (no knives needed) or to bake (again, no knives needed). I am sorry, but my annual foray into the culinary arts does not make the price tag of a $180 knife worth it when I have nine others that do their jobs perfectly well. 


If Cutco ever sells candy, hit me up: I have a jar (and a mouth) in my office that can ALWAYS be filled!


Good luck!


Sincerely,
Dr. Cynic

Early Thirsty from Fab.

Recently a 45 year old friend of mine got her BA. She did the whole thing, all the ceremonies. Then a bunch of us got rip roaring drunk, made it home in time to pay the babysitters and oldest teenagers double rates and  had a pool party at a neighbors, where all of us ONLY wore gowns and caps.

Q: When Was the Last Time You Enjoyed Watching Someone Graduate?

I've gotten so old, I forgot my own schtick

Tip toes lost?  Tarp ton lust?  Top Ten List?  Hey, that sounds catchy.

Let's first talk about misery.

Their lying. Our hard work. Their cheating. Our Drinking.

Wait, am I talking about being a professor? Hell no, That's country music. Funny that you should get them confused.  But now that gets me to thinking. Most professors might think that they and country music are like this:

                             O                                            O

That's a Venn diagram.

There's a lot in country music that y'all might appreciate. It's about upholding traditional values (think standards of conduct in your classroom).  There's also themes about mama, trains, trucks, prison, getting drunk and the misuse of MLA formatting.  OK, I made up that last one.  Trust me.  It's like ol' Hank wrote his songs about us.

Shit, where was I going with this?  Oh, yeah.  A top ten list.

Top Ten Country Songs for College Faculty (links are to actual songs)

10. He Stopped Attending Her Class Today
9.  Where Were You (When You Should Have Been Studying)
8.  If You’ve Got the Money, We’ve Got the Tuition Bill 
7.  Have I Told You Lately That You Won’t Pass My Class
6.  I’m So Underpaid I Could Cry 
5.  Folsom County Community College Adjunct Blues

4.  Mammas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Snowflakes

3.  I Am a Student of Constant Excuses 
2.  Blue Eyes Cryin’ for Extra Credit
1.  Stand By Your Syllabus 

I hope y'all drank as much reading this as I did writing it.

The New Math...1 M.A. + 0 Money=Misery!!!

You can do the math:  1 non working spouse on very low unemployment check for 1.5 months already.  End of part time retail job that helped make ends meet.  0 income for month of August on my end.  5 classes that equal less than $10,000 for the fall.  Living in one of the most expensive areas of the country.  All this equals---misery.   

The “F” word (foreclosure aka Judgment Day) is coming.  We bought a money pit, so it's actually a relief, but dealing with all the stuff is exhausting.  This has been going on since the semester ended. 

This is also destroying my dream of the Ph.D.  I suspect finding a job at Craptastic Community College will do more for us right now.  We can go anywhere, so where is living cheap?  Ideas, anyone? 

Job searching was the last thing on my mind before I fell asleep last night, and it led to an awesome dream.  The job was at a lovely SLAC for a great salary, with CM'ers on the hiring panel!  Hiram and I shared bafflement over americanus studentus.  Beaker Ben brought chemical goodies.  Strelnikov offered to dispose of bodies.  Bubba offered me bourbon.  Emergency Mathematical Hologram gave me the Virtual Teaching Assistant for grading, and Stella was our Smackdown Dean. 

And then I woke up…..’nuff said.  

The Obsolescence Question. From Inside Higher Ed.

By Jonathan Rees

When’s the last time an ice deliveryman visited your home? Have you ever talked to a telephone switchboard operator? Thanks to new technologies, these once-common occupations passed into history many years ago now. Bank tellers and travel agents are not completely obsolete, but substantially fewer people are employed in these lines of work than in the past for similar reasons.

Will new developments in Internet-based communications technology do similar things to college professors? Perhaps people like me will face the same trouble finding employment that newspaper reporters or piano tuners face nowadays. Or perhaps MOOCs will eliminate the need for professors almost entirely, allowing students to flock to courses offered by a smattering of "super-professors" while computers, graduate students and adjuncts do all the grading that once occupied so much of an analog instructor’s time.

Read more.

Even though it is Monday, I am Thirsty. How Would YOU respond?

With the exception of names being changed to protect----well, to protect our identities, I am copying the following e-mail word for word.  I just received it. 

Hi Professor Bella, 

I am Contacting you to let you know that I will be missing the first 1 or 2 weeks of class due to the fact that I will be getting surgery the week before, So I thought it was in my interest to let you know this information ahead of time.

Sincerely, 

I am an Idiot

Sid from Santa Fe on "Individualized Instruction."

I'm Rick!

Rick just dropped my summer class. Here at the Worst Juco in America, one can take 11 weeks of a 12 week summer class and still take the W.

And Rick took his W this morning.

Now, for the 11 weeks he was with us, he dominated class. He never missed an opportunity to talk over others, so much so that I had to keep him after 3 different classes to tell him to ease up and let others have the chance. His most momentous response to this was: "No way. These students don't care. If they would, they'd talk. I care. I need this class. I want to learn. You should teach the interested ones!"

He also loved to dispute or question assignments, regardless of how innocuous the guidelines might be.

He had a particular fondness for going after me in class for word counts.

"Why 500 words? Will you fail me if I write 499 or 501? What if I do what I want to do and turn in 5000?"

"Well," I'd start, "there are all kinds of reasons for word counts, sometimes it's about the level of detail I want you to use on a thesis, other times it has to do with offering reasonable limits to help you safeguard writing 5000 words when they aren't necessary."

It was constant. The 11 weeks dragged. People would roll their eyes when he started things like: "I don't get why I have to use MLA style. What if I don't care about documenting my sources? That should be my prerogative. Maybe while you're writing research papers I want to write a feature article like the ones in magazines I read." (Oh, don't ask. I was horrified to learn what mags he wanted to emulate.)

"I feel as if you've dampened all the creativity out of this class," he said one day. "You're all about rules, and I'm about language!"

As I was walking to class this morning, Rick was headed the other way.

"Hey, Sid," he said. "I've dropped the class. Got some stuff that's more important to me than finishing up the work I'm late on. Plus, I'm a little pissed that I didn't get individualized instruction and attention."

"Gaw," I said. "Smerghhh, ugggggggh."

"Like it says on the TV commercials. Right? Individualized instruction. Learn at your own pace. You don't follow that. Still, it was fun debating with you."

And then he was gone.

Students Love the Social Media! From MSNBC.

Kent State University police have arrested and charged a 19-year-old student after he sent a message out on Twitter saying he planned to "shoot up" campus.

William Koberna, 19, was arrested at his parents' Brunswick home Sunday following the threatening message sent on the social media site.

Koberna has been charged with inducing panic, a felony, and aggravated menacing related to the tweet. He will be arraigned at 1:15 p.m. Monday.

Brunswick police executed an arrest warrant at Koberna's home late Sunday afternoon and took him into custody without incident.

The sophomore will be arraigned in court on Monday. He also faces university hearings that can result in his suspension or dismissal.

"Any threat to our campus community is taken seriously and immediately investigated," said Kent State University President Lester Lefton. "Our students, employees, and all those who come to campus should know that their safety is our top priority."

Stats.

50% Increase in Grading Misery

I've written before about being a grader for the upcoming fall semester. The semester hasn't even started yet, but the misery is already deepening.

The class was originally slated to have an enrollment of 80. Since the proffie, with his rep for being "easy," is quite popular, the class filled up at the beginning of the registration period. About 40 additional students signed up on the wait-list.

I just visited the university's course info website to check the schedule of another course that I'm taking, and found out that the powers-that-be have increased the size of the course I'm grading for to 120. All of the wait-listed students have been allowed to enroll. Now, instead of grading papers for 80 students, I'm apparently going to grade for 120. No big deal, just a 50% increase in my workload.

To quote Beaker Ben: "I don't like students. Why would I want more of them in my class?" Oh, right, because it isn't *my* class, it isn't my decision. I'm just the one doing the lion's share of the work.

I wonder if this means I'm going to receive a corresponding 50% increase in my meager stipend? Hahaha, I crack myself up.

"College professors ‘fight’ over class timings." Those Mumbai Proffies are Crazzy!

Two professors allegedly came to blows in the staff room of Ismail Yusuf College in Jogeshwari over the issue of timing of lectures. One of them had to be hospitalized with an injured arm.

While the injured professor alleged that he was beaten up by a senior colleague, eyewitnesses in the college claimed that he got hurt when he tried lift a chair to hit the latter.

On Wednesday morning, as D Khare entered his second year BCom class, he was asked to wait by W K Acharya, who was already teaching there. "I called my head of the department and there was an argument. The matter was settled and, after lectures, I went to the staff room. There, we again had an argument. The senior professor then hurled a chair at me," said Khare.

Khare was rushed to Cooper Hospital and he also filed a complaint with the Jogeshwari police after the assault.

However, professor Acharya said, "There was a minor argument. He is trying to blow it out of proportion. He, in fact, tried to lift the chair and hit me when he got a sprain."

A police officer who visited the college said: "Witnesses said Khare got injured when he tried to lift a chair. We have, however, taken his complaint."

Chick-fil-A Controversy: University Of Louisville Students Protest To Remove On-Campus Fast Food Joint. From HuffPo.

University of Louisville students cannot use Chick-fil-A sauce in good conscience.

Dan Cathy, Chick-fil-A's president, has long supported groups that fight against LGBT rights, spending millions through their charitable arm WinShape. However, earlier this month in an interview with the Baptist Press, when asked about his rumored bias against same-sex marriage rights, Cathy responded "guilty as charged."

Then in another interview on "The Ken Coleman Show", Cathy said "I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at Him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage.' And I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to try to redefine what marriage is about."

MORE.

I don't like students. Why would I want more of them in my class?

Allow me to provide some advice to you, a student trying to register for my general chemistry class which is already filled. You typically stop by my office at the worst possible time (e.g. while I’m in it). There are 10% more of you this fall than last year but the same number of classes offered. I shouldn’t hold that against you but I can. Sometimes I do.

First, if you are registered for any general chemistry class, even the one with a 4 pm lecture and 8 am lab with the crazy guy from Turkmenistan we just hired, consider yourself lucky that you have a class at all. You might not be able to understand what he says, but, um, well, I’m pretty sure that you won’t be able to understand what he says.

Now, I appreciate your efforts to help me by showing up with all four of your friends, asking that all of you be added to the same class, which is already over-filled. I can say, “No.” just once. Actually, you still bitch, beg and complain enough that I have to say it four times, but at least your group visit saves me from saying it four times to each of you. I may be an asshole but I’m an efficient one.


For all you sophomores who want to register two weeks before my freshman class starts, you really should know better. You had all spring to sign up when the classes were empty. Now you have your class conflicts and your work schedule conflicts and whatever other problems you kept talking about after I stopped listening. As I said before, we are at capacity. I don’t have any desire to add another student who doesn’t have her shit together.

By all means, bring your mom to our meeting so she can tell me what type of professor you need to get the most out of college. Let me guess, somebody who is talented and experienced in teaching and above all else, cares about the success of students? Hmm. I know all our faculty pretty well and I can assure that that you’ll be lucky to get two of the three.

Yes, you can stomp out of my office and go see my department head and the dean about this. Let me give you directions to their office. Do you think I’d be a hard ass if I didn’t think they had my back?

Above all else, please go away and return only when I’m under contract and actually being paid to deal with you.

Dorm Dancin' #3. A VidShizzle.

A Friday Thirsty Just as it Arrived.

angsds 'n drink

(Maybe this is an Thursday Thirst, who knows. Up to you).
Deep questions (written in a alcohol-laden haze),
1) If you are in a bar, and the waiter is one of your students, can
you still get drunk?
2) How much are you to tip?
3) Being hur a 9, are salacious comments about the waiter/-ss to your
co-drinkers absolutely out of place?

My answers 1) of course you can, 2) like a drunken pirate, 3) it's ok
as long of hu does not hear any of it.

English Job Market.

07/25/2012

Strayer University (Florida): ADJUNCT FACULTY IN ENGLISH- Tampa East Campus

Strayer University (Florida): ADJUNCT FACULTY IN English- Maitland, FL Campus

Strayer University (Wisconsin): ADJUNCT FACULTY IN ENGLISH- Milwaukee, WI Campus

Strayer University (Florida): ADJUNCT FACULTY IN ENGLISH - Ft. Lauderdale, FL Campus

07/24/2012

Strayer University (North Carolina): ADJUNCT FACULTY IN ENGLISH

Strayer University (Minnesota): ADJUNCT FACULTY IN ENGLISH - Bloomington, MN Campus

07/23/2012

North American College(Texas): Multiple Part-time, Full-time or Adjunct Faculty Positions

Strayer University (Virginia): ADJUNCT FACULTY IN ENGLISH

Chaminade University of Honolulu(Hawaii): Lecturer in English

Q: Who's excited?

Maybelle is knee deep in Misery

I have picked up stakes and moved to a completely new culture/place. It's quite the adjustment. I feel like I have landed on Mars.

The pay at my new job, with all the work and CONSTANT emails from the admins about what to include to be compliant with New University Standards, even without stepping foot in a classroom, is looking like I might be earning less than a dollar an hour by the time I'm done with this course.

In order to meet all the admin requirements, which I got three days ago, I have to completely redesign the course. I also have to learn a completely new LMS. The LMS would be more intuitive, but IT doesn't have very good handouts or explanations of, well, anything. I was given wrong passwords and wrong URLs. I'm tech savvy, and the handouts were outdated. No one at New Job believed me until I CCed the chair. Funny how my emails got answered faster after that ....

I also was informed about the Mandatory Faculty Meeting and Mandatory LMS Training ... while I was still employed at Old Job and in the Old State. Now I have been officially marked absent for both Mandatory events, even though I read all the material and have incorporated all the Mandatory Elements.

I have Other Misery from my Old Job, but I need to let those wounds heal before I open them up again. Needless to say, I left Old Job feeling bitter, jaded, and humiliated.

More MOOC Misery

This may be flogging a dead horse, but following from the earlier posts about Massive Open Online Courses, Marc Bousquet nicely summed it up on the Chronic.

Flava:

If institutions really wanted to sustain participatory learning, they would already be doing so, for instance, by reducing lectures and high-stakes testing, investing in teaching-intensive faculty and the like. Instead, driven less by cost concerns than a desire to standardize and control both faculty and curriculum, administrations rely more than ever on lectures and tests.

It’s hard to imagine that an education vendor, particularly one driven by profit, will do more than use Siemens’s and Downes’s excellent, sincere efforts as a tissue-paper justification for passing off cheap “social media opportunities” as a substitute for sustained interaction with working professional academics.

Oy!