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.

Last week, “Lisa the Iconoclast” (1996) was up for discussion in my Simpsons class.

(Lisa discovers that the town hero, Jebediah Springfield, was actually Hans Sprungfeld, a pirate who fought George Washington, hated the town he founded, and took credit for taming a “land cow” (buffalo), even though he had simply shot it. No one but Homer believes her, and the town historian actually covers up proof she’s right. When she confronts him, he admits it & is prepared to let her tell the townsfolk. Lisa reconsiders, though, since “the myth of Jebediah has value too.”)

When I last taught the class, in 2019, we had a robust discussion of whether Lisa made the right choice in ultimately keeping Hans’s secrets.

We did this time as well, but we spent more time talking about how this episode would likely be very different if it were written today.

While Miss Hoover calls Lisa a “PC thug . . . who keep[s] the rest of us from landing a husband,” today, Lisa would be derided as “woke.”

I also postulated that our recent grappling of history, specifically the removal of confederate statues, might have changed Lisa’s perspective on preserving a false legacy.

When a student asked why Lisa is okay with abandoning her quest to spread the truth and protect her reputation, it occurred to me that maybe it’s enough that the town historian validates her, especially after he gaslit her. I noted that “gaslighting” wasn’t a common term in 1996 (and that we overuse it now).

I’m not sure exactly what would happen in a cromulent 2024 version of this story, but I’m sure it would embiggen my streaming time.

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.

Today in 1875, my (Grand)daddy’s grandfather, John Andersson Waltonen, was born in Finland, on a prosperous dairy farm.

He and one of the milkmaids had a “miracle baby” (according to my GDaddy, “a baby miraculously born only a few months after the wedding”). His family didn’t accept her, since she was lower class, so they immigrated to America.

John’s wife never did learn English.

Without class struggles, lax immigration policies, and premarital sex, I wouldn’t be here.

This week, I got the Atwood journal out, after finally getting a missing piece. It was important to me to do that before doing the all-day upper division comp exam scoring yesterday.

Since then:

There weren’t enough scorers, so I have to find time this weekend to score a bunch more essays.

Came home to a dead water heater.

Thoth brought in a rat and put it in the food bowl, like “I made dinner!”

I spent most of the night sick in the bathroom.

Just got an email that the last piece of the journal has a mistake they didn’t catch, so it’s technically not done.

I’m tired.

On stand-up comedy class days, we play a five minute headline game, wherein I bring in headlines, and we pretend we’re in a late night writers’ room, coming up with punchlines.

Here’s one I wrote today:

Today in 1849, the first woman graduated from medical school.

Also today in 1849 was the first day a male patient said, “Sure, sweetie. Now go get me a real doctor.”

A not insignificant reason why it’s easier to have IBS when working from home:

At work, I have to remember to take my phone into the bathroom with me, for its flashlight function. UCD’s bathroom lights are motion operated, but only counts motions outside the stall.

When I have terrible diarrhea, as I do today, it’s not fun to find myself in a completely dark bathroom.

7 p.m.

Roessler Hall 66, UCD