Last weekend, I finished grading my SCC lit class, which leaves me with just three courses for the next three weeks. And then I’ll get a whole week off before my summer courses start. (My goal, in addition to finishing my three courses successfully, is to prep my June course well enough that I can actually take that week off from work.)

The end of the SCC lit class could have gone better. One struggling student cheated on both her last paper and the final. Another, who needed an A+ on every remaining assignment to pass, skipped assignments, turned in a research paper without any research in it, and then turned in an incomplete final AFTER I’d turned in the grades.

(Did he tell me he needed another day? Of course not. That would entail communicating with me.)

My comedy students’ final is soon, so I need to write my routine, since I’m the MC.

A beloved colleague brought my attention to a temporary fix the DOE might have for people like me, who paid an incredible amount of money to the “wrong” plans. So I’m filing for that. Do they want ink signatures from UCD to prove I have worked there all this time? They do. Is the website confusing, because it says I’m not eligible since I, like everyone else, is in automatic Covid deferment, but then also have a paragraph about how I should ignore the giant warning on every singe page about that, since they’re the ones who deferred me? Yes.

I tried Jupiter Rising, but didn’t like it. Tried Invincible. Might like it. Tried Hacks with Jean Smart. Fucking loved it. Started Ted Lasso. Will binge more soon. Couldn’t quite get through Army of the Dead last night. Started and finished this season of Shrill, which is awesome. Watched Jason Alexander et al in The Sisters Rosensweig via Zoom and The ABCS of Love via the Sacramento French Film Festival.

I’m mourning Paul Mooney and Charles Grodin.

My upper division students are struggling, because I’m making them write a grown up argument (one in which the thesis is actually debatable (for reasonable people) and defendable, and one that works to inform and persuade its intended audience, and one that fully and fairly engages with counter-argument).

You’d be surprised how many draft theses are unconstitutional, EVEN AFTER I SAID IN THE VIDEO ABOUT THIS THAT THEY SHOULD NOT MAKE UNCONSTITUTIONAL ARGUMENTS.

I spent 9 straight hours giving feedback on drafts on Thursday. Then, I tried to join some high school friends for a Zoom reunion, but I felt so sick with exhaustion that I had to go lie down.

The most stressful thing this week, though, was another visit with my TMJ dentist.

I told his assistant that I wanted to talk about getting a lower night guard and/or a dental device for mild apnea (since the dentist is convinced my tongue is in the wrong place when I sleep). The dentist was dismissive of anyone who’s vouched for lower guards. (“Well, I guess your friends have made literally thousands of upper night guards like I have, right?”) But he agreed to let me have a lower one and “run [my] own little experiment.”

But, I said. If you think I need that apnea dental device, shouldn’t I get that and not use any type of guard?

We came to consensus on trying that first. I have to do a sleep study for insurance to approve it.

Then he brought up all the other things he wants to do: the frenectomy, sawing down some of the protruding bones in my mouth, braces, etc.

I said I’d like to go in stages since I have other doctors who want to do things to my body that are also extreme.

We left that conversation with him knowing nothing more about me, but with me knowing about all of his surgeries. Sigh.

He said to get the sleep study done and then we’d do a scan for the device.

When I was alone again with the assistant, who had been in the room the whole time, he tried to schedule me for a scan for a lower night guard.

“That’s not where we landed,” I explained. “We need to schedule a scan.”

“For braces?”

No.

Once I got him to realize we were trying for the apnea device, he wanted to get the device going right away.

“Don’t I have to get the sleep study first?”

“I don’t think so. They’ll want to study you with it in.”

“But the doctor said I needed the study before insurance would authorize the device.”

“Oh, yeah. That makes sense.”

He scheduled me for a scan next week, saying we can do the scan without authorization, but I don’t trust him, so I’m calling tomorrow to talk to someone who can parse conversations better.

Overall, though, it was a good week.

My son and I celebrated the end of his first year in grad school with a sushi feast.

A beloved friend got me an amazing gift:

And I am celebrating that, as of last night, it’s no longer been a year and seven months since I’ve had sex with another person.

Yay vaccines!

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.

This week, we’re watching the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump. The first defense move was to argue that he could not even be impeached.

NPR reported this week that one constitutional scholar has a problem with how he was cited in the Trump team’s defense brief.

His argument was that Presidents could, in fact, be impeached under these circumstances, but Trump’s team said he said the opposite.

I would never let my students get away with that.

Q: Karma, now that your grades are in, what are you going to do with the rest of your day?
A: Continue prepping the four classes that start in two weeks, start putting together the Atwood journal, do some mandatory manager training online, and get an echocardiogram.
Q: Weren’t you supposed to say you’d be enjoying the season and the break?
A: [incoherent sounds]
Q: Are you hysterically laughing or crying?

A few years ago, I had an idea that maybe I could illustrate the right and wrong ways to open and close a narrative essay with a choose-your-own adventure-style story.

This week, I finally tried it.

It took way longer than I thought it would, and there was some cussing at the program when it wouldn’t save certain links in the chain, and trying to get all the threads straight kinda broke my brain, but the draft is done.

Wanna play?

https://www.inklewriter.com/stories/14788.

When I first started teaching, I had anxiety dreams. I would show up without my materials, without a plan.

All these years later, I’ve gained confidence. I showed up without my book once; it was fine. Classes have gone off track, productively or not, and I got us back on track.

I’ve improvised an activity for the class to do so I could leave with one student, who was in such crisis she needed to see a mental health professional right that second.

My dreams have to work harder to throw me.

Now, if I have a work anxiety dream, I show up to a class that isn’t mine–in a subject I don’t know–but I’m somehow expected to teach. In the last one, I looked at a board covered in Chinese logograms and turned to the class. “Look, I’m obviously not your teacher.” And then I woke up.

But not all teaching dreams are about anxiety. In many, I’m just doing my job. I’ve woken up having given a whole lecture I had planned to dream students. And then I experience deja vu when I do it for real.

But today, I woke up from a dream of creating modules in Canvas, filling page upon page, converting what I would say to what they would read.

I’d prefer the anxiety dream.

Teaching online has been eventful, which is ironic, since it doesn’t look that way. Watching me teach now is seeing me sitting at my computer, typing. It’s only when you might catch a glimpse of me with a medieval jester puppet as I make a video that an “event” is evident.

There were struggles when I had to teach my first fully online courses at Davis and when I had to convert my Los Rios semester classes to online mid term.

Right now, I’m teaching my first fully online Los Rios course.

I’m better prepared, both through the few months of experience I have and through the course I took for certification to teach online.

I’m grappling with a problem I assume is common. Many of my community college students aren’t doing any of the readings or watching any of the videos. They’re just going to assignments.

And then they fail the assignments because they didn’t do the reading.

The Davis students last term learned their lesson quickly. They either started doing at least some of the reading or they dropped.

My current students aren’t learning that lesson quickly. I can post announcements and videos and write comments on their assignments all day long, but if they aren’t doing the readings/viewings, then they aren’t seeing those corrections.

In class, I could pull them aside. I could make an announcement to the whole class that they would at least be in the room for.

I’ve managed to find ways to pull most of them aside, virtually.

Except one student.

She added the class with a PTA the second day. And I honestly don’t think she’s read anything.

Not the syllabus or schedule. Not the announcements. Not my comments to her. Not the textbook.

She’s failing, not surprisingly.

Over a week ago, she wrote on an assignment that she was confused because the dates kept changing.

I haven’t changed a single date.

The schedule I give the students is complete at the very start of class.

And we stick to it.

It takes an emergency–and not just a personal one. The only time I’ve changed due dates in recent memory was when school closed because of the fires.

So I wrote her a note back, telling her that I wanted to figure out where the confusion was so we could get her on track.

And then I remembered that she didn’t read my comments on her submissions. So I sent her an email through Canvas and an email the regular way.

No response.

She didn’t disappear, though. She keeps turning in failing assignments.

It’s been a week. She’s gotten a second email (I know she uses her email–she emailed me twice at the start of term) and a phone call.

Yes. A phone call. (Their numbers are on the roster in the Los Rios system.)

She didn’t pick up, but I left a message that I wanted to get in touch because I wanted to help her figure out the assignments and the dates.

No response.

I don’t know what to do now.

If this were a movie, I would find a way to find her, neglect my family and my other students, and babysit her little sister, while helping her complete her assignments.

This movie idea–that we should all reach every student all the time–is damaging and pervasive.

At every conference, it’s reiterated that if our students can’t pass our classes, it’s because we’re doing something wrong.

This is an excellent example of how that’s not true.

But I still want to help her.

And she’s not going to let me.

As I’ve mentioned before, I do extra credit book clubs with my students.

After one book club, one of my students recommended The Healing of America, so I made it our book for the next quarter.

Reid lays out the problems with American healthcare, which is fundamentally about our paradox. We spend more than anyone else, but we’re definitely not healthier. And not all of us have access to care. We let people die of manageable diseases.

Reid takes his own imperfect body around the world to look at how other developed nations handle care.

Along the way, he addresses common American misconceptions about the rest of the world, about too-long wait times, rationed care, etc.

I was surprised when my 104F students told me that Reid’s book surprised them. They had believed all those myths.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I didn’t know much about how the rest of the world worked when I was their age, but I thought they might know more about their field–and how fucked up it is.

One smart, tightly-wound student managed to shock me, though. After the other students talked about how they would definitely want to work in systems where insurance companies couldn’t override doctors, etc., one student said she was against affordable healthcare.

“If anyone can come to my office–if it’s not expensive to see me–then they won’t respect my degree and how much work I’ve done.”

Another student pushed back.

“So you would rather work in a system where someone could die because they couldn’t afford treatment?”

“Yes.”

This is the one week until December that I won’t be teaching. It’s the first such week of the year.

The first three weeks of my first session summer class are loaded onto Canvas. The handouts and activities have been adapted for optimal online learning.

The cat videos are loaded into the weekly wrap-up pages.

But I can’t just rest this week. There’s admin work to do, three medical appointments, including an endoscopy, trying to get my fence cat-proofed because one neighbor doesn’t like Thoth, . . .

Still, I am committed to only working half-days.

My problem, though, is how bad I am at relaxing. My workaholism has a big list of things for me to do. Even when I can convince it to let me read or watch tv, it has certain ideas.

“You should watch the foreign films in your DVR, since you usually can’t give yourself time to focus on what you’re watching.”

“You need to catch up on your New Yorkers. Do one a day while you can.”

“You should watch at least one stand-up special a day, even if you’re not in the mood, for research.”

I feel weird when I’m not working or crossing something off a list.

It’s pathological, and over the years I’ve gotten better at fighting it, but I still have to remind myself that I’m not doing anything wrong if I’m not being productive, that I don’t need to justify tv time by doing the most difficult physical therapy exercises while I watch.

This last quarter, I was by necessity glued to my computer–and I will be again next week.

I decided to take Sundays off from school work.

The boy says he thinks it’s doing me good, so I’m going to keep trying.