Last week definitely had more ups than downs. This week, not so much.
The bad:
Both the boy and I had to deal with medical b.s. Mine included driving all the way to Sacramento with a migraine, to see my TMJ specialist, only to be told that my appointment had completely disappeared from their system.
I’m also prepping for some facet injections in my back. The pain clinic and I are sort of at a stand-still. I don’t respond well enough to the treatments we’re trying, and they’re also a little dangerous (since I’m so young, I shouldn’t have frequent disc injections). They want to burn the nerves in my lumbar spine, but I’m unconvinced, both because nerve pain isn’t the only thing going on and because I’ve had a nerve burn done in my neck, and it backfired. Instead of my brain saying, “we’re not getting pain signals from her neck anymore, so let’s not make her feel pain,” my brain said, “holy fucking shit! They BURNED HER NERVES! Let’s send the regular pain signals and the pain one should feel after being burned!”
The facet injections are a compromise, basically. They’re hoping to show me, through it, that a nerve burn would work there.
Anubis decided that two family members having health problems wasn’t enough, so his urethra got blocked. Now we’re monitoring his pee, and Dante has to help him keep is clean (Anubis’s surgery to widen his urethra has helped, but not quite enough.)
We didn’t get to really celebrate St. Urho’s Day, due to the chaos.
In other news, I took a break from celebrating getting out of medical and consumer debt to check on how those student loans were coming.
Borrowed: 133,733
Paid back so far: 88,744
With interest, what I owed Tuesday: $154,213
My laptop’s keyboard is starting to have sticky keys. Apparently, it’s a known issue, and they should fix it for free, but the fixers say I have to be prepared to be without it for a couple of weeks. My desktop can’t yet do Zoom, so I’ve had to order a web cam with mic before I can get the laptop into the shop.
The meh:
My 300th college course began this week! It’s an intro to lit class at SCC; unfortunately, it’s an 8 week class. And while I got rid of a few units (postmodernism, the Southern Gothic, and fairy tales), it’s still a challenge to do a semester course in half a semester.
5 of the 26 enrolled students didn’t respond to emails or log on to Canvas the first week. Half of the rest are already failing because they haven’t turned in the homework. I’ve reached out to everyone, and most are telling me they just didn’t think the course would be time consuming. When I explain that they would have physically been in a room with me for 6 hours and 40 minutes each week if we were in person, and that they should therefore be prepared to do at least that much (which is much less than the Carnegie expectation of 20 hours/week for this class), they are shocked.
I’m not shocked that they’re shocked, but I’m disheartened.
Many of my students are working full time and also taking a full load of courses, which an 8-week course isn’t compatible with.
Half of the students hated “Hills Like White Elephants,” and I had fun reading their interpretations of what the “operation” was. The most creative was that the American wanted Jig to join a prostitution ring. I also included “Bullet Points” by Jericho Brown in this first week, to show them that poetry isn’t just dead white guys writing about daffodils. Most of the students loved it; the one who wants to be a cop found it offensive.
Next week, we do plays: Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune and Mr Burns: A Post-Electric Play. It’s my first time teaching the latter; I’m cautiously optimistic. Am I having them watch the “Cape Feare” episode of The Simpsons first? Of course!
I finished my four Winter courses, and I got the syllabi and Canvas pages up for my three Davis Spring courses, which was quite a feat. There were a couple of days, including yesterday, when my brain broke.
The good:
I got to see the Sklar Brothers and Grep Proops perform virtual shows.
Spring came.
I took The New Yorker‘s recommendation to watch The Bureau, which is excellent.
I had many students thank me for my work last quarter. A few of them realizing how much time I spend writing to them and talking to them is the only thing that makes it worth it. One student wrote this:
“I have never had another teacher like you before. You terrified me for all of the right reasons. I kept feeling called out in the beginning. I used to write papers for the grader instead of the purpose because of their biased writing styles. In fact, I used to do everything to please other people because I thought that is how life works. I know now how incorrect that way of living is. Maybe this wasn’t your intention, but I understand how I want to live my life from now on. You taught the class with humor, honesty, and empathy: three characteristics I strive to perfect one day. There was never any bullshit, and for that, I am so thankful. You taught the class not only how to become better writers, but also how to be better people.”
I’m pretty sure “[terrifying] for all of the right reasons” should be on my tombstone.
