I was really hoping to have a strong start to the quarter–I was especially hoping to have a deep-cleaned house, since this quarter will be so busy.

The universe, of course, had other plans. While in Vienna for a conference, my medicine bag was lost (stolen?) and my phone straight up died.

And I’m really sick from something I caught on the plane back, so today the classroom is my dirty home. I will greet classes 342, 343, and 344 on Zoom!

It’s been a difficult few months. Some of the household stress isn’t mine to share, but I’ve been ill, with three separate trips to the ER.

Luckily, I’m more or less stable now, and I’m leaving the country tomorrow. For the first time in five years, I’m returning to Oxford to teach. The class is new, though. Instead of fantasy literature, we’ll be doing a writing in film studies course.

We get to watch some lovely things together, visit the Wilton House (featured in Outlander, Bridgerton, the Crown, etc.), and have Dr. Liam Creighton do a guest spot. Vanessa is my on-site coordinator, and we get a few days in London before we head to Oxfordshire.

Fingers crossed for continued stability!

A week ago, my husband made me go to the ER, due to an injury. They noticed a growth while examining me, and said I need a biopsy (which will happen Tuesday).

I was in so much pain on Monday that I couldn’t really walk, but held my three classes and my office hours over Zoom.

I’ve also been juggling appointments (my primary, my therapist, my allergist, my chiropractor, since I woke up yesterday unable to move my neck).

Getting a med I needed took four not-quick phone calls and two visits to pharmacies.

This is all on the heels of weeks and weeks of extraordinary stress about work, family health issues, and family conflict.

This has definitely made me less sympathetic to a student’s proposal that college instructors should allow students to miss 2-3 classes per term so the students can sleep in.

For the fourth or fifth time in my career, a parent reached out today. She didn’t identify which student is hers, but it’s someone in my premed writing classes. She said students were upset about the “volume” of essays in a short time.

I wrote back, explaining that we only have three essays in the quarter. I told her when they were due and why they were spaced the way they were. (One is a scaffolding assignment for another, for example.) I also stressed that each assignment was on the syllabus from before the class started, with instructions and due dates.

And then I told her this:

“On the first day, I also shared my own experience with being overwhelmed in college (students in my circumstances have a less than 1% chance of getting a bachelor’s degree). I asked them to talk to me if things started going wrong, if they started falling behind, etc., saying that we could work it out together. I explained that the only way I got through college successfully was communicating with my instructors.

“Thus, I’m really disappointed by your email.

“Rather than the students engaging with me, someone’s mother has been dispatched.”

The mom got back to me. She said the context I provided, which her kid left out, assured her that I was reasonable about my expectations and schedule. And she apologized.

Two stressors have risen in awful prominence lately.

First, health. (Warning: this is gross.) Several weeks ago, my gastro doc asked me to do a cleanse, to determine if I have IBS-C (her guess) or IBS-D (my guess). It’s D. It’s so D. Now, after the cleanse, my diarrhea is so much worse, both in frequency and, grossly, consistency. I have to carry wipes with me to the bathroom, if I hope to be able to put clothes back on after I go.

Naturally, the clean up takes a while, and at work, the lights (on timers), turn off before I’m done.

Yesterday I was dealing with that, and then when I went to bed, I turned my head and my neck went out. It was extremely painful: I couldn’t control my tears, in addition to not being able to move my head. Hubby had to lift me up so I could take medication; the lifting made me scream.

It was the third time in the last five weeks that my neck has done that.

So I’m exhausted, and I’m worried, and all of this is exacerbated by my other big stressor:

Work.

The university is up to something. All UWP lecturers are being moved to the Writing Center, we’re told. The profs in my department heard the news at the same time.

This decision, about how writing will be taught, was made without input from a single writing instructor.

It has also been made without the larger senate being notified. It really seems like having most of the courses in a department being taught by people outside the department, not to mention gutting a department that serves all undergraduates, would be something the senate should have to vote on, right?

(It’s not the first time campus-wide decisions about writing instruction have been announced to us without us being given any advanced notice, the opportunity to advise, or without the senate being informed.)

The university is not being forthcoming about what this change means. In fact, they often claim they can’t answer our questions because we have a union, which is 100% bullshit.

Then, this afternoon, my husband told me he met an app developer who has a couple of employees who have also been hired by UC Davis to create an app to grade essays (we would upload our rubric and some general comments and the AI would do all the grading). The developer said grading would take seconds and that it’s obvious the university would need fewer writing teachers.

Of course, writing teachers know that’s not how grading works. Even those teachers who grade with a points-based rubric, instead of holistically, like many of us do, could never trust AI and some impersonal comments to do the work.

AI isn’t smart enough yet. I can’t think of a single writing assignment I have that could be responded to in that way.

My doctors would like me to have less stress, but just writing this out has made my neck tighter. I’m really worried about my health, and I’m really worried about my job. And I live in a country where my healthcare is dependent on my job.

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself telling my students how rare something was:

“In my [pause while I did the math] 25 years of teaching, I have never read an essay that . . .”

I stopped and wrote myself a note: “Celebrate.”

My celebrations are usually low key. Birthdays are quiet dinners with friends and family and small celebrations with my beloved book group. I’ve skipped all my graduations. Four of my five books have come out without a big party. If some friends hadn’t thrown me something for my PhD, there wouldn’t have been a real Party (with a capital P) for just me in my adult life.

In the summer of 1998, I taught for the first time. I realized what I was supposed to be doing: teaching.

Thus, on Thursday, after I turn in my grades for classes 326, 327, and 328, I will see colleagues and former students and raise a drink to a quarter century of a job I love.

The third week of classes is almost over. Most of my students are going to be okay. A couple are not. A few are awesome.

In addition to the usual course load, I’m working with two of my former comedy students to produce half hour “goodbye” sets (they’re graduating): something I used to do before the pandemic. It’s a lot of work, but I’ve known these kids for years, and I want to give them a proper sendoff.

Anubis just got his stitches out, after yet another bladder surgery. An unfortunate bout of diarrhea means we need to rent a carpet cleaner soon.

I saw John Mulaney at the Golden One Center. I love him, but I don’t ever want to see comedy in a venue like that again. It’s too big. And I was seated in the front row balcony–a really narrow space. Every time someone had to pee, I worried one of us was going to fall over to our deaths. Is there a little bit of plastic to protect your drink from falling? Yes. Protection from YOU falling? Nope.

After almost four month, I was finally able to re-start my allergy treatment, at a different clinic. Because it’s been so long, they had to take my dose way down, and I have to go in every week now. On top of that, I still go to my regular UCD place to get my Xolair shots twice a month.

In other words, I used to have two shot appointments a month. Now, because UCD can’t seem to find an allergist, I have six. That sucks.

I got to see the National Theatre Live production of The Book of Dust, at the Tower Theater. They did a really beautiful job with it. It was the first time my friend and former Oxford assistant and I had seen each other in a long time.

I have discovered there’s a technical term for another way in which my body is weird.

I saw my ENT last week, because ever since Covid, or whatever I had at the very end of 2019, my right ear has been off: feeling stopped up, with low level pain. My ears have never been great: any change in elevation, even going to the foothills, is painful. It also makes me look awful: my eyes start to water uncontrollably.

In his exam, my ENT asked me to pop my ears.

I explained I couldn’t do that. He assured me I could. So I plugged my nose and blew.

“Oh, wow. You actually can’t. Nothing in your ear moved at all.”

He used a complex scientific term for what I was supposed to be able to do, one I can’t remember now and which isn’t coming up when I search for it.

I honestly hadn’t realized that everyone else could just pop their ears at will; I just thought my painful ears were part of everything hurting when it shouldn’t.

The good news: there’s apparently a treatment we can try, after we run a few hearing tests. As much as I travel, I hope it helps.

Finally, the Dean said a couple of week ago that if I only had 11 students for Dublin in the Fall, we couldn’t go. I did one last push. And it paid off. My 12th student has enrolled, so Dublin, here we come!

In some of my classes, I offer book club extra credit. Students read a book, and we meet during finals week to talk about it.

Several years ago, I chose Maus for my Writing in Social Justice class.

We had a wonderful discussion, but one moment will stay with me forever. One student said Maus taught her about the camps.

The rest of us were aghast. She knew about the Holocaust, right? Yes, but she had never heard of the camps.

She thought all of the Jews and other people the Nazis didn’t like were simply shot on sight.

She had never watched any of the great films: Life is Beautiful, Schindler’s List. She didn’t know where and how Anne Frank died.

A student dedicated to social justice was missing a key part of history.

That’s why we must not ban books; we must read them.

Buckle up: this one’s a doozy.

The Bad:

Some things I’m going through this week, you’re going through too. We watch as Haiti gets wracked by another earthquake.

Those of us in California got our voter guide for the ridiculous recall. Governor Newsom is in trouble for enforcing life saving measures. When things started to loosen up and our economy was once again good, polls showed he would survive it.

Now, with the Delta variant and a bunch of selfish, stupid assholes who won’t get vaccinated, we need to mask up again.

And the polls are showing he might lose. ‘Muerica!

We could go the way of Florida, with one of the 40+ bozos on the ballot signing an executive order forbidding us from mask mandates.

In more personal news, the other day when I came home, I saw a man walking out of our complex with two bikes–one looked like the boy’s.

I almost shouted, “hey!” But I didn’t want to be a Karen, accusing an African American man of something before I got my facts straight. So I ran around the house first to make sure it was my boy’s bike. It was, but by the time I circled back, the thief was gone.

I’d been wanting the boy to donate it, since he doesn’t use it anymore, so we’re not hurt by the loss, except for the sense of violation.

The Huh?!?

I am supposed to have 50 students this term, but I only have 20 active participants. I usually lose a couple, but since most students who take upper division writing in Summer Session 2 are sort of stuck, I’ve never lost this many. They’re mostly students who have already “walked,” having put off their writing class until the very last moment.

The only thing that’s changed, though, is that I put a prerequisite on Module 1. It’s always a battle to have students actually read the syllabus and to go through the Modules instead of trying to do the assignments without having done any of the readings.

This term, Module 1 wouldn’t open for them until they read the syllabus. And they didn’t even have to read the pages, really; they just had to click on them.

I kept getting students emailing me on the first two days, asking me to open the assignments. I cheerfully explained that they just had to read the syllabus first.

And more than half of the class dropped.

In other words, I scared away a bunch of graduating pre-med students by just asking them to read something.

The Sad:

My AT&T contract was up this week, so I finally cut the cable cord. I know most people did so a long time ago, but until recently, I needed to have cable to record (and burn to DVD) every Simpsons and Doctor Who, etc. for use in class. Now, with students able to access everything streaming, and with my burning system not working with AT&T’s set up, I find that almost everything I watch on cable/DVR is on TCM. It’s hard to justify paying over a hundred a month for TCM and a few shows on other networks.

Every week, I would go through what was coming up on TCM and record beloved favorites I wanted to revisit, new to me works that sounded fun, and classic horror for the boy. I discovered a lot of wonderful things that way, and I loved TCM hosts telling me trivia.

I know I can find old movies on other sites, but I also know that some of the obscure ones won’t be there, and that I’m less likely to go hunting for those gems, when streaming sites bombard me with all the unwatched contemporary stuff I like.

The Annoying:

For the last year, I’ve been trying to get my various healthcare providers to refund me for payments I made after I hit my out-of-pocket copay last summer. My CVS pharmacy copays are still outstanding. I spent an hour on the phone with them this week, which was possible only because I bitched about them not answering my emails, on Twitter, and then they gave me the number to call.

A good twenty minutes of the call was them trying to find me in the system. The agent had to reboot her whole computer.

When she finally found me, she asked for the prescription numbers I was calling about.

“Can’t you pull up my list of prescriptions and payments to see what I got after I hit the maximum last year?”

“No.”

And that’s bullshit.

I told her I’d have to call her back.

As all my friends know, I’m on LOTS of meds. There are three just for GERD.

Luckily, the Target CVS pharmacists printed out a list of everything I filled, so I can spend who knows how long reading numbers to CVS tomorrow.

The Disheartening:

Remember how I discovered I might have a new peach allergy? Apparently, it might be that I’m just allergic to them when certain things are in bloom.

But I found out I have a sensitivity to figs, too, when I eat a lot of them.

So maybe it’s an allergy, but maybe it’s just an oral reaction to too much fruity goodness.

But I will NOT stop eating too many figs when they’re in season. They’re my favorite fruit, and they’re not available that often.

The Good:

Now that Karlissa can go to museums again, and since we’re still wanting to do that museum book, we had to see the Van Gogh immersive exhibit in SF.

Melissa took me on Wednesday for my birthday. We had an amazing lunch and then got to meditate on Van Gogh.

It was wonderful.

The Good, but Tainted:

Last October, it was time for me to ask that Davis grant me another three-year contract. According to the union rules, if I can prove I’m “excellent,” they have to give me a 6% raise. I also asked for a 3% merit raise, for the textbook Melissa and I published in Spring 2020.

Our new contract year started on the first of July, but I only learned this week that I’m indeed staying at Davis and that I’ve been granted the raise.

However.

The letter said the University Committee on Personnel tried to stop me from getting the merit raise.

Even though Melissa has already gotten that raise for our book.

You see, they wanted to enforce a rule they’re trying to put in place that lecturers can only get merit raises when they win a university teaching award.

Luckily, the Vice-Provost and Dean overrode them, explaining that the draconian measure isn’t in effect *yet*.

What makes it draconian, you ask? According to the new rule, only four lecturers could ever get a merit raise at UCD in any given year. Amazing lecturers will also therefore be pitted against each other.

I’ve already won a teaching award, so I will probably never get a merit raise again. As one of our tenured colleagues put it to Melissa, we could win the Pulitzer, and they would tell us no.

I could stop mentoring, serving on committees, teaching the independent and group studies the university gets paid for, but that I get nothing for, researching, etc, and get the same excellence raise.

If I were smart, I would stop.

Teaching faculty like me don’t get to decide what the standards are for raises. The research faculty have decided that our research will never be rewarded, even when it directly relates to our teaching, and that clearly outstanding teaching can only be rewarded in an excessively limited manner.

I wonder how they would react if someone got to make the same rules about their raises. What about if only “award-winning” research counted?

While I’m happy I got my-probably-last merit raise, I will also admit that the first thought that popped to mind was how the Department of Education might decide my monthly payments need to be even higher!

Which bring us to:

The Student Loans:

When Melissa and I had a wonderful lunch at Chao Pascao in SF, I got a call from my contact at Mohela. She said my request to de-consolidate the loans has been approved!

!!!

When the consolidation went through, it took about a month before all of the sites updated to reflect it. So I’m trying not to panic that everything looks the same now–that everything still looks consolidated.

I don’t know how all of this is going to work. Will everything go back to the way it was, as I hope? Or will I have to fight them to recognize the 14 years of payments I made, even after de-coupling? When I start the TEPSLF application again, how long will it take? Will it even get approved? (Less than 1% of people who filed for forgiveness under Trump were accepted. We don’t have numbers under Biden yet.)

I’m going to hire a student loan consultant to help me through everything.

I haven’t let out the breath I’ve been holding yet. I won’t be able to until I see the sites say I’ve made all those qualifying payments.

But this is the face of a woman after she got a great call from Mohela:

A couple of hours after this picture was taken, Melissa and I were having a drink on the rooftop of the Van Gogh exhibit.

When my phone rang, it told me Senator Dianne Feinstein was calling. One of her staff members wanted some more information from me so they could contact the Department of Education on my behalf.

I got to tell him that they might not need to intervene.

Say what you want about the Senator, and I know a lot of my friends don’t like her, but she was the last government official to receive my request for help.

And she’s the *only* one who’s responded.

Thanks, Dianne!