“One can never know for sure what a deserted area looks like."
Expanding more on something I posted earlier on npc
Today has been awful and bizarre.
Parking at UCF lately has been Thunderdome-esque, mostly due to mid-terms and faculty going in and out of the new Music and Theatre buildings, making it impossible to get faculty parking in the lots I need. But that's minor.
Today, I went to my second class to find the computer...totally missing. It was completely absent, with no rhyme or reason, and I figured that at the most it was taken for repairs or something. I went up to the OIR (Instructional Resources) office to ask, and the conversation went something like this:
"What's wrong?"
"My computer is gone."
"YOUR computer, or the computer in the room?"
"...The one in the room."
"What's wrong with it, exactly?"
"...It's not there. Gone. Vanished."
"...Are you sure?"
I stared at the girl, she stared at me, then made a phonecall and said 'someone will be down to look at it,' to which I replied 'look at what' before leaving, and sure enough when I returned to my classroom there were two OIR guys who just arrived, and they stroll in, all young and hip, before turning the corner around my podium and going
"Son of a bitch!"
The computer was not just gone, apparently it was STOLEN, and no one had even bothered to mention it at all until I went and asked about it, meaning that WHEN it was stolen is totally impossible to know.
So, the two guys hurriedly walk out, and I then had to go up to OIR again (in the middle of class) to ask about when I could expect a replacement, since I need the computer for certain aspects of my course. A young woman offered to help and to come input a temp. computer I could use for the day, and I said that'd be great.
She came, I lectured, and she began to take apart the podium to install the computer--until some guy walks in, reprimands her (in front of my students), and....she starts crying. In front of my students.
The man quickly disappeared before I could even say anything, the woman sobbingly puts the podium back together, cries, apologizes, and disappears, and I summarily just ended up canning the rest of my class due to the utter incompetence of some guy, and my students being totally stunned into awkward silence.
So I then couldn't leave it at that (because I guess I'm a nice person) and so I trek once more to the offices to find the woman, who I find literally shut in her office, crying. I tell her how grateful I am for her help and try to make her feel better, and I get a long, exasperated tale about how most of the OIR staff are guys and act like jerks because they're all comp sci. social rejects, and she sort of just...implodes, leaving me standing there as she starts sobbing a bit more. I tell her not to worry and that she did a good job and helped out, but even I couldn't really find the right words to say.
I exchanged names with her and shook her hand, and left, and I've spent the rest of the afternoon feeling like shit.
But not before stepping into the office of my boss (one of, honestly, the most influential people on campus) and telling her the situation, and she said she'd get back to me about anything that might be done to reprimand the idiot for what he did.
Doesn't make me feel any better, and seeing a grown woman cry while closing a door to an empty office is probably the most depressing thing I've seen in a while.
I really wish that sometimes, my work didn't feel so much like any other job. There are many times it doesn't, when teaching in a classroom and working at universities and colleges is a really interesting and fulfilling experience--one in which you directly influence and control the futures of others, and in which they actually depend on you.
But at times like this, it just feel like any other bureaucratic sink, a place where people's lives are tread on daily, where hierarchies are decided by petty office politics and personality flaws than by actual skill or merit.
I hate the nagging feeling that I'm only this upset because it was a woman and not a man, like I'm pretending to be more upset than I really am, or that perhaps it comes off that way, but that really isn't it. I entered the academic system and specifically University level instruction to sort of escape the daily grind of life.
Watching this woman sob into her hands, a grown woman (who was, as far as I can tell, at least as old as I was--this was no grad student or intern) cry into her hands--hands that, when I offered to shake, were so clammy and wet that I felt absolutely horrible afterwards--because of internal office politics or whatever, makes me...I don't really know.
I'd like to say 'want to punch the guy in the face,' but that's juvenile.
I'd like to say 'ignore and go on with whatever,' but I'm not quite that jaded or cynical (or, maybe, I am, and that's why I can't ignore it.)
I'd like to say that this is somehow not my fault, but I feel like it is--if I wasn't so insistent on having a computer to use in my class, would, or could, this have been avoided? Why didn't I say anything when it did happen? (I suppose because I was still trying to teach a class that was becoming more and more of a mess, but it still feels like a Moment on the Stairs.)
I suppose if anything, the real reason this sticks with me is that...it's a moment in which real human anguish and pain was..not solved. There wasn't anything I could do. I had my life, my obligation to teach other classes, to fulfill, and there was only so much a simple listening session, a simple 'I appreciate your help' and a handshake could really have fixed.
We'll probably never encounter one another again.
And I'll never know if anything ever gets fixed, or gets better.
And that image of the door slowly shutting and the sound of further crying as I walked away will probably stick in my mind long after I forgot why it even happened.
“I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it.”
Today has been awful and bizarre.
Parking at UCF lately has been Thunderdome-esque, mostly due to mid-terms and faculty going in and out of the new Music and Theatre buildings, making it impossible to get faculty parking in the lots I need. But that's minor.
Today, I went to my second class to find the computer...totally missing. It was completely absent, with no rhyme or reason, and I figured that at the most it was taken for repairs or something. I went up to the OIR (Instructional Resources) office to ask, and the conversation went something like this:
"What's wrong?"
"My computer is gone."
"YOUR computer, or the computer in the room?"
"...The one in the room."
"What's wrong with it, exactly?"
"...It's not there. Gone. Vanished."
"...Are you sure?"
I stared at the girl, she stared at me, then made a phonecall and said 'someone will be down to look at it,' to which I replied 'look at what' before leaving, and sure enough when I returned to my classroom there were two OIR guys who just arrived, and they stroll in, all young and hip, before turning the corner around my podium and going
"Son of a bitch!"
The computer was not just gone, apparently it was STOLEN, and no one had even bothered to mention it at all until I went and asked about it, meaning that WHEN it was stolen is totally impossible to know.
So, the two guys hurriedly walk out, and I then had to go up to OIR again (in the middle of class) to ask about when I could expect a replacement, since I need the computer for certain aspects of my course. A young woman offered to help and to come input a temp. computer I could use for the day, and I said that'd be great.
She came, I lectured, and she began to take apart the podium to install the computer--until some guy walks in, reprimands her (in front of my students), and....she starts crying. In front of my students.
The man quickly disappeared before I could even say anything, the woman sobbingly puts the podium back together, cries, apologizes, and disappears, and I summarily just ended up canning the rest of my class due to the utter incompetence of some guy, and my students being totally stunned into awkward silence.
So I then couldn't leave it at that (because I guess I'm a nice person) and so I trek once more to the offices to find the woman, who I find literally shut in her office, crying. I tell her how grateful I am for her help and try to make her feel better, and I get a long, exasperated tale about how most of the OIR staff are guys and act like jerks because they're all comp sci. social rejects, and she sort of just...implodes, leaving me standing there as she starts sobbing a bit more. I tell her not to worry and that she did a good job and helped out, but even I couldn't really find the right words to say.
I exchanged names with her and shook her hand, and left, and I've spent the rest of the afternoon feeling like shit.
But not before stepping into the office of my boss (one of, honestly, the most influential people on campus) and telling her the situation, and she said she'd get back to me about anything that might be done to reprimand the idiot for what he did.
Doesn't make me feel any better, and seeing a grown woman cry while closing a door to an empty office is probably the most depressing thing I've seen in a while.
I really wish that sometimes, my work didn't feel so much like any other job. There are many times it doesn't, when teaching in a classroom and working at universities and colleges is a really interesting and fulfilling experience--one in which you directly influence and control the futures of others, and in which they actually depend on you.
But at times like this, it just feel like any other bureaucratic sink, a place where people's lives are tread on daily, where hierarchies are decided by petty office politics and personality flaws than by actual skill or merit.
I hate the nagging feeling that I'm only this upset because it was a woman and not a man, like I'm pretending to be more upset than I really am, or that perhaps it comes off that way, but that really isn't it. I entered the academic system and specifically University level instruction to sort of escape the daily grind of life.
Watching this woman sob into her hands, a grown woman (who was, as far as I can tell, at least as old as I was--this was no grad student or intern) cry into her hands--hands that, when I offered to shake, were so clammy and wet that I felt absolutely horrible afterwards--because of internal office politics or whatever, makes me...I don't really know.
I'd like to say 'want to punch the guy in the face,' but that's juvenile.
I'd like to say 'ignore and go on with whatever,' but I'm not quite that jaded or cynical (or, maybe, I am, and that's why I can't ignore it.)
I'd like to say that this is somehow not my fault, but I feel like it is--if I wasn't so insistent on having a computer to use in my class, would, or could, this have been avoided? Why didn't I say anything when it did happen? (I suppose because I was still trying to teach a class that was becoming more and more of a mess, but it still feels like a Moment on the Stairs.)
I suppose if anything, the real reason this sticks with me is that...it's a moment in which real human anguish and pain was..not solved. There wasn't anything I could do. I had my life, my obligation to teach other classes, to fulfill, and there was only so much a simple listening session, a simple 'I appreciate your help' and a handshake could really have fixed.
We'll probably never encounter one another again.
And I'll never know if anything ever gets fixed, or gets better.
And that image of the door slowly shutting and the sound of further crying as I walked away will probably stick in my mind long after I forgot why it even happened.
“I've had a wonderful time, but this wasn't it.”