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."