Fortunately, I'm a strong believer that things usually happen for the best
It's been an eventful 36 hours.
Yesterday:
8am: physical therapy for my shoulder, with significant progress made toward breaking down the tension and compression around my ulnar nerve near my shoulder blade.
11am: defended my qualifying exam essays successfully. The lit review needs a few small rewrites ("minor surgery," the professor called it), but the other two essays were roundly praised, and the question period turned into more of a lively discussion and debate. Very fun, actually.
3pm: presented my paper on WALL•E, which was very well applauded by both professor and classmates, and then spent the next four hours listening to classmates' papers on other topics, some interesting, some deathly dull.
8pm: COCKROACH comes skittering in under the screen door and hides under bookshelves. Frances, the middle cat, stalks it. Half an hour later, she's managed somehow to get it out from underneath them (they're flush with the floor; I have no idea how she did this), and it's skittered to the big speaker, which is also flush with the floor. Milo, the younger and non-hunter, gets a lesson in stalking. I move speaker, cockroach runs for lamp base. I move lamp, cockroach runs for threshold between living room and hallway. Cats are after it. It runs for the two piles of DVDs on the floor in the hallway (which is about four square feet in area). Cats knock over DVDs. I poor catnip on threshold between hallway and bedroom, because catnip repels cockroaches and I do not want this thing in the bedroom. With tongs, I pick up the DVDs one at a time, and Frances bats the cockroach around for fun. Milo gets a turn. It hides under the threshold metal thingie, but after another fifteen minutes or so Frances has bothered it enough where it comes back out. And so on and so forth. At one point, it was skittering around, quite maimed, underneath the husband's desk, and all three cats were waiting for it to appear. Frances and Milo two-teamed it, one blocking its way while the other herded it, and Milo generally got a lesson in how to hunt and kill. Frances got the cockroach to the point where it moved slowly enough for him, and he just started batting it around every which way, the way Fenchurch, our ten-year-old used to do to the mice (ah, the happy days). The funniest point was when the cockroach, searching for darkness, kept trying to crawl underneath poor Fenchurch, who, having I assume never seen a cockroach before, was utterly perplexed by it. Mice, after all, run away from her. She was clearly just as disgusted by it as I was, and eventually settled down to watch the youngsters play. Oh, they had a grand time with it, and it was still alive when I went to bed about three hours later.
11pm: Fellow TA calls with, in her opinion, urgent problems regarding how to use Excel to calculate student grades. I love the anonymity of the internet, where I can shout to the world what an IDIOT she is. How hard is it to drag column edges to try and widen them? What's so confusing about the math of automatic addition, especially when I've already set the sheet up for her? ARGH. I help her as quickly and curtly as I can get away with, and put my phone on Airplane setting. Ah, blissful sleep.
---
TODAY:
8am: Final exam starts, all 300 students accessing the online quiz system. Problems start: Students find that links to examples (audio and video) aren't working. Students start getting a message about the question category not having enough questions in it. Gmail only pulls email from my university account every hour, and takes forever to manually load it. Then, looking through the questions on my own to see if I can replicate students' problems, I discover that the database is crashing, and suddenly students are being kicked off of the class website and unable to get back to their exam. I become responsible for sending all mass emails to the class about the errors and what to do -- since we can't edit any of the questions once the students start taking the test. The emails get ruder; I'm on the phone with the tech people who run said database, and they show absolutely no sympathy for our problem, as if it's my fault that THEIR database is crashing, even though they've known about this 300-person class, and our final, for several YEARS, not to mention the fact that the professor regularly contacts them about what she wants to do with their online system, and so on. It's a fiasco. Eventually, we have to extend the time frame in which they can take the final to midnight tomorrow, and give each student three chances to take it. But this doesn't fix the fact that, because of the not-enough-questions-in-this-category error, which didn't affect all students, some students lost 1 or 2 points with no rhyme or reason. The "discussions" over how to fix this are not fun for me, as I cannot bear giving students points when they didn't earn them, just as much as I abhor not giving students the points they should have earned. Fortunately, the professor is on my side, and though the other five TAs made a decision during our meeting simply to give everyone an extra two points across the board, the professor contacted me a few hours ago to basically say "Let's do it your way, even if it's more work." -- which means that I have to look at all 300 students' grades and spot the missing questions. Not an impossible job, or complicated, just long. But fair and honest.
1pm: Final exam fiasco finally ends. I go get allergy shot at student health center, and run into one of my students in the waiting area; she generally agrees with me that the time extension and extra chances (especially as some students were completely logged off of the system while the database was glitching, and couldn't access their final exam at all) were a Very Good Idea and Much Appreciated.
2pm: pick up cat food. get honked at by a lot of drivers because I'm stuck behind slow cars.
3pm: late lunch w/ husband at a newish-to-us restaurant. fun times discussing the Scooby Do cartoons on the restaurant's television.
4:45pm: I begin checking in for my flight to Canada tomorrow for a conference. Realize I don't know where my passport is.
5:00pm: Find passport exactly where I thought it was, underneath a packet of gum that happened to be the exact same size.
5:01pm: distracted by stuff.
5:15pm: start filling in passport number on check-in form. fill in expiration date -- OH CRAP.
5:16pm: burst into tears because my passport is expired and I need to fly to canada tomorrow.
The next few hours were a lot of sitting on hold with both the Passport Agency and Air Canada. Though I was able to get a renewal appointment tomorrow for 10am, that was after my original 8am flight -- and apparently, according to the woman who made my appointment for me, it was unlikely that my missed 8am flight would count as "international travel within the next 14 days." (Which makes no sense to me.) So, I tried to get air canada to change my flight, and as it would have cost $500 or more for me to move to a next-day flight, I had to try to change to a
same-day later flight, for a mere $75. However, though I could get to Toronto on an afternoon flight, assuming that I got out of the passport office on-time, I would then be stranded in
Toronto until, for another $75, they would be able to get me on a non-overbooked flight to Ottawa. Add in the $135 for an expedited passport renewal, and I'd be out almost $300, which is more than what I have to pay for my half of the hotel room for the conference, which I need to reimburse to a colleague. So, after much soul-searching, crying, and (in all honesty) coin-flipping, I realized that I didn't want to go to Ottawa that much, especially in the winter, and especially to present a paper I now wish I hadn't written in the first place, and that paying my half of the hotel without being there was a small price to pay for the chance to use my flight credit on a later flight, booked at my leisure. There's the loss of face that comes with not showing up at a conference, and the staying-in-my-very-hot-city for the weekend instead, but it makes for a much calmer next few weeks, with only one conference instead of two.
The TL;DR version:
- passed my qualifying exams, but am requested to edit my literature review;
- the cats had a lot of fun with a cockroach last night
- 300 students using an online system to take a final exam is a BAD IDEA. Also, my fellow TAs have different teaching philosophies from myself, and one of them is an UTTER IDIOT.
- my passport, it turns out, is expired, and as I cannot afford the massive fees to get an expedited passport renewal, nor could I probably convince the passport office that my 8am flight that I just missed counts as "international travel in the next 14 days," and as Air Canada would charge me $$$$$ to change my flight to the next day, and I'd only be able to take the cheaper same-day adjustment by basically showing up at the airport (which brings me back to the beginning of this argument to trying to convince the passport office to renew my passport), I gave up after two hours on the phone with passport folks and air canada folks, and am not going to a conference this weekend. Furthermore, the idea of having to pay for the privilege of being stuck in Toronto to wait for a flight to Ottawa, which is what I'd have to do were I to get on a later flight tomorrow, does not strike me as in any way worth it. So, I have a future credit with Air Canada, which I can use anytime in the next year. (Trust me, this is a summary.)
Yesterday:
8am: physical therapy for my shoulder, with significant progress made toward breaking down the tension and compression around my ulnar nerve near my shoulder blade.
11am: defended my qualifying exam essays successfully. The lit review needs a few small rewrites ("minor surgery," the professor called it), but the other two essays were roundly praised, and the question period turned into more of a lively discussion and debate. Very fun, actually.
3pm: presented my paper on WALL•E, which was very well applauded by both professor and classmates, and then spent the next four hours listening to classmates' papers on other topics, some interesting, some deathly dull.
8pm: COCKROACH comes skittering in under the screen door and hides under bookshelves. Frances, the middle cat, stalks it. Half an hour later, she's managed somehow to get it out from underneath them (they're flush with the floor; I have no idea how she did this), and it's skittered to the big speaker, which is also flush with the floor. Milo, the younger and non-hunter, gets a lesson in stalking. I move speaker, cockroach runs for lamp base. I move lamp, cockroach runs for threshold between living room and hallway. Cats are after it. It runs for the two piles of DVDs on the floor in the hallway (which is about four square feet in area). Cats knock over DVDs. I poor catnip on threshold between hallway and bedroom, because catnip repels cockroaches and I do not want this thing in the bedroom. With tongs, I pick up the DVDs one at a time, and Frances bats the cockroach around for fun. Milo gets a turn. It hides under the threshold metal thingie, but after another fifteen minutes or so Frances has bothered it enough where it comes back out. And so on and so forth. At one point, it was skittering around, quite maimed, underneath the husband's desk, and all three cats were waiting for it to appear. Frances and Milo two-teamed it, one blocking its way while the other herded it, and Milo generally got a lesson in how to hunt and kill. Frances got the cockroach to the point where it moved slowly enough for him, and he just started batting it around every which way, the way Fenchurch, our ten-year-old used to do to the mice (ah, the happy days). The funniest point was when the cockroach, searching for darkness, kept trying to crawl underneath poor Fenchurch, who, having I assume never seen a cockroach before, was utterly perplexed by it. Mice, after all, run away from her. She was clearly just as disgusted by it as I was, and eventually settled down to watch the youngsters play. Oh, they had a grand time with it, and it was still alive when I went to bed about three hours later.
11pm: Fellow TA calls with, in her opinion, urgent problems regarding how to use Excel to calculate student grades. I love the anonymity of the internet, where I can shout to the world what an IDIOT she is. How hard is it to drag column edges to try and widen them? What's so confusing about the math of automatic addition, especially when I've already set the sheet up for her? ARGH. I help her as quickly and curtly as I can get away with, and put my phone on Airplane setting. Ah, blissful sleep.
---
TODAY:
8am: Final exam starts, all 300 students accessing the online quiz system. Problems start: Students find that links to examples (audio and video) aren't working. Students start getting a message about the question category not having enough questions in it. Gmail only pulls email from my university account every hour, and takes forever to manually load it. Then, looking through the questions on my own to see if I can replicate students' problems, I discover that the database is crashing, and suddenly students are being kicked off of the class website and unable to get back to their exam. I become responsible for sending all mass emails to the class about the errors and what to do -- since we can't edit any of the questions once the students start taking the test. The emails get ruder; I'm on the phone with the tech people who run said database, and they show absolutely no sympathy for our problem, as if it's my fault that THEIR database is crashing, even though they've known about this 300-person class, and our final, for several YEARS, not to mention the fact that the professor regularly contacts them about what she wants to do with their online system, and so on. It's a fiasco. Eventually, we have to extend the time frame in which they can take the final to midnight tomorrow, and give each student three chances to take it. But this doesn't fix the fact that, because of the not-enough-questions-in-this-category error, which didn't affect all students, some students lost 1 or 2 points with no rhyme or reason. The "discussions" over how to fix this are not fun for me, as I cannot bear giving students points when they didn't earn them, just as much as I abhor not giving students the points they should have earned. Fortunately, the professor is on my side, and though the other five TAs made a decision during our meeting simply to give everyone an extra two points across the board, the professor contacted me a few hours ago to basically say "Let's do it your way, even if it's more work." -- which means that I have to look at all 300 students' grades and spot the missing questions. Not an impossible job, or complicated, just long. But fair and honest.
1pm: Final exam fiasco finally ends. I go get allergy shot at student health center, and run into one of my students in the waiting area; she generally agrees with me that the time extension and extra chances (especially as some students were completely logged off of the system while the database was glitching, and couldn't access their final exam at all) were a Very Good Idea and Much Appreciated.
2pm: pick up cat food. get honked at by a lot of drivers because I'm stuck behind slow cars.
3pm: late lunch w/ husband at a newish-to-us restaurant. fun times discussing the Scooby Do cartoons on the restaurant's television.
4:45pm: I begin checking in for my flight to Canada tomorrow for a conference. Realize I don't know where my passport is.
5:00pm: Find passport exactly where I thought it was, underneath a packet of gum that happened to be the exact same size.
5:01pm: distracted by stuff.
5:15pm: start filling in passport number on check-in form. fill in expiration date -- OH CRAP.
5:16pm: burst into tears because my passport is expired and I need to fly to canada tomorrow.
The next few hours were a lot of sitting on hold with both the Passport Agency and Air Canada. Though I was able to get a renewal appointment tomorrow for 10am, that was after my original 8am flight -- and apparently, according to the woman who made my appointment for me, it was unlikely that my missed 8am flight would count as "international travel within the next 14 days." (Which makes no sense to me.) So, I tried to get air canada to change my flight, and as it would have cost $500 or more for me to move to a next-day flight, I had to try to change to a
same-day later flight, for a mere $75. However, though I could get to Toronto on an afternoon flight, assuming that I got out of the passport office on-time, I would then be stranded in
Toronto until, for another $75, they would be able to get me on a non-overbooked flight to Ottawa. Add in the $135 for an expedited passport renewal, and I'd be out almost $300, which is more than what I have to pay for my half of the hotel room for the conference, which I need to reimburse to a colleague. So, after much soul-searching, crying, and (in all honesty) coin-flipping, I realized that I didn't want to go to Ottawa that much, especially in the winter, and especially to present a paper I now wish I hadn't written in the first place, and that paying my half of the hotel without being there was a small price to pay for the chance to use my flight credit on a later flight, booked at my leisure. There's the loss of face that comes with not showing up at a conference, and the staying-in-my-very-hot-city for the weekend instead, but it makes for a much calmer next few weeks, with only one conference instead of two.
The TL;DR version:
- passed my qualifying exams, but am requested to edit my literature review;
- the cats had a lot of fun with a cockroach last night
- 300 students using an online system to take a final exam is a BAD IDEA. Also, my fellow TAs have different teaching philosophies from myself, and one of them is an UTTER IDIOT.
- my passport, it turns out, is expired, and as I cannot afford the massive fees to get an expedited passport renewal, nor could I probably convince the passport office that my 8am flight that I just missed counts as "international travel in the next 14 days," and as Air Canada would charge me $$$$$ to change my flight to the next day, and I'd only be able to take the cheaper same-day adjustment by basically showing up at the airport (which brings me back to the beginning of this argument to trying to convince the passport office to renew my passport), I gave up after two hours on the phone with passport folks and air canada folks, and am not going to a conference this weekend. Furthermore, the idea of having to pay for the privilege of being stuck in Toronto to wait for a flight to Ottawa, which is what I'd have to do were I to get on a later flight tomorrow, does not strike me as in any way worth it. So, I have a future credit with Air Canada, which I can use anytime in the next year. (Trust me, this is a summary.)