Category Archives: School

Catching Up: January 27, 2023 Edition

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Long time, no see!

[+] Grief. On January 14th, I learned about the death of my friend Dottie Evans. It wasn’t necessarily unexpected because she was 92, but I miss her terribly. She was one of the first two people to welcome me at the door of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church when I started attending in 2016, and the two of us bonded over being pastor’s wives and some other similar interests. She was always incredibly interested in what I was doing at the college, how my students were doing, and how Daniel was doing. Everyone who knew her was saddened by her passing.

[+] Work. I have Accounting students again! I also have a Business Math student this quarter, so I’m playing to my strengths.

[+] Health. I went to Urgent Care with a sinus infection two weeks ago, and the witchy doctor who saw me told me I couldn’t possibly have one, but she gave me a script for doxycycline in case it persisted. The doxycycline made me incredibly sick, and it has only been a few days since I’ve been off the antibiotics and able to eat again.

Catching Up: Things Your Tutor Would Like You to Do (College Edition)

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I just finished Summer Quarter, and this is my list of things I’d really like students to start doing.

[+] Please read your syllabus/course documents. Seriously, read them. Your instructor is listing out a lot of information that you need to know in those, and they’re putting the time in to create those documents.

[+] If you have a question about your instructor’s expectations for the assignment that is not covered in the instructions, please email your instructor. I feel like I need to make a recording of me saying this because I honestly don’t know what your instructor wants if it’s not an instructor that I have had before. They’re willing to answer your email, so talk to them. Also… stop asking me five versions of the same question and getting cross with me when I reply with the words “asked and answered.”

[+] Stop complaining when your instructor deducts points for things listed in their syllabus or things they have told you to fix multiple times. You know what I said about reading your course documents? I meant it. If your instructor told you that assignments need to be double-spaced and in 12 pt. Georgia font, they’re not kidding. If your instructor tells you that you need to write out dialogue, listen to them. If I remind you to do those things, stop complaining about me making more work for you. Your instructor is within their rights to deduct points if they’ve stated the requirements or given you that feedback.

[+] Stop taking free extensions from instructors unless you need them. Extensions are an emergency thing, not something to depend upon. There is an instructor at the college who consistently gives his students extension after extension for non-emergency reasons… and it cuts into the time they have to do the next set of work. I’ve had to tell my students not to take the extensions because it creates a snowball effect in terms of not being able to meet deadlines and needing more extensions. I’ve had to do things like set guideposts on dates that they need to get assignments done so that those extensions are no longer necessary. So please, STOP TAKING THOSE EXTENSIONS UNLESS YOU HAVE AN EMERGENCY.

[+] Please, I beg you, STOP PROCRASTINATING. Procrastination on your part does not equal an emergency on mine. I’m totally happy to help you figure out a schedule to get things done and avoid having to do too much on one day, but I can’t help you if you’re going to slack off and save everything until the day before it’s due.

[+] Please at least look at your classes’ Canvas sites before we meet. Ideally, you should at least attempt your homework before you see me, but I can deal with you coming without doing that if you’re stuck on being able to start. However, please at least KNOW what your assignment is so that I can help you. When you come and haven’t even looked at what you have due, it makes it really hard to help you because your instructor may have not given me access to that Canvas page.

Catching Up: July 23, 2022 Edition

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Oh mercy…

[+] I’ve been asked how people can pray for me job-wise, and the best way currently is to pray for clarity because there is still a lot of vagueness about what will happen.

[+] I’ve heard ALLLLLLL about “beaver nuggets” from my Texan friends and Emily of Snake Discovery is obsessed with Buc-ee’s, so I found a site where you can order food from them and ordered myself some of their gummy bears and some beaver nuggets. The gummy bears were forgettable, but the beaver nuggets are brown sugar covered pieces of puffed cornmeal that are ADDICTIVE. However, the owners of Buc-ee’s are huge supporters of Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz, so I won’t be ordering any more of their food… at least, I won’t order any more of it without making a donation to Beto.

[+] My schedule for the summer is still in flux, and I got four new students this week. I’m doing LOTS of Interpersonal Communication classes, Business Math, Business Computers, an Ethnic Studies class, and a Sociology class.

Catching Up: June 10, 2022 Edition

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Last week, I was a little too scattered to post, so I guess we’ll resume tonight.

[+] I’m done with one-on-one tutoring until the summer unless one of my students needs to reschedule with me. I have two drop-in shifts next week, and then I will be done until July. As much as I love my students, I’m pretty burned out. I’ve been sick almost all quarter, and I’ve had some harder students.

[+] I’m really loving the Discworld series by Sir Terry Pratchett. I’m on Wyrd Sisters (the 6th one), and it is a Macbeth paraphrase. Reading them reminds me of a dear friend from college.

[+] I’m kind of seriously addicted to Snake Discovery videos on YouTube. I think my favorite video of theirs is when they fed rodents named after people’s exes to their reptiles.

Catching Up: May 26, 2022 Edition

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Yee hah!

[+] I randomly came upon this YouTube channel, and it looks like one that might be something for me to watch when I can’t sleep.

[+] We had the Veteran’s Club doing their Memorial Day barbecue on campus on Thursday, and those serving had never seen so many people on campus before. I had to explain that this was the first Memorial Day one in 3 years, and many of us had REALLY missed it the last two years. I mean, there was a Veteran’s Day one in 2019, but the Memorial Day one usually happens in the sunshine and it’s a lot more fun because people hang out and eat in the plaza. It was like we got a piece of “normal” back yesterday.

[+] I will have a massive dump of pictures from this week tomorrow, but here are a few important ones.

A fund to help those affected by the shooting.

(I verified it here.)

Well, duh!

Catching Up: May 13, 2022 Edition

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I’m usually triskaidekaphobic, but we’ll try this tonight…

[+] I met with DDA this week by Microsoft Teams. I hate this meeting every year because it’s incredibly draining, but it’s important so that Daniel can get services. All I have left is the home visit.

[+] I had to make the decision to sit out the rest of the spring from choir because of my asthma and my drippy throat. It’s not COVID (I have tested myself and I’m consistently negative), but my breathing is screwy. It’s a pain because I miss choir and singing, but I don’t want to have coughing fits the whole time.

[+] I had to give up on my bullet journal as life got away from me in March. I ordered another one, and I’m going to probably make it a June to December one as I will have enough pages to do it. I ordered a blank journal off of Amazon tonight, and I’ll be starting to put it together when I get it and trying to get all of the month’s pages done early so that I don’t have to worry about drawing/numbering a new page daily.

[+] I had to give up on Learning to Pray by James Martin, S.J. because my heart and brain just weren’t in it. I love Fr. Jim’s books, but I’m needing something lighter these days. I just started Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, and it’s not amazing but is keeping my attention. (I think it was a free Kindle book?)

[+] For those who enjoy Wordle and are map nerds, check out Globle.

[+] So, this happened on Monday morning. Thankfully, campus is still pretty quiet because many classes are still online and enrollment is down overall, but it was not fun having my phone explode with emergency notifications.

Catching Up: May 6, 2022 Edition

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So here we are again after less than a week. Woo.

[+] I’m still having coughing spasms and asthma issues. It worsened after I had to clean out the exhaust fan in my bathroom. Great of me to have a dust allergy. My lungs are hopefully done yelling with me over that one…

[+] Bed, Bath and Beyond is also low on items, and I’m hearing whispers of bankruptcy. It’s too bad because I could see myself going there for a lot of stuff if I ever have the opportunity to move out of my parents’ house. (What was supposed to be temporary has now stretched to 6 1/2 years.)

[+] Speaking of such things, the secret to making a multiple generation household work is treating the adults like adults and each one doing their share. My parents own the house, but my mom and I have the same brain, which makes running the household easier. I’m having a lot of G-I issues, so food is not fun for me, and I’m having to cook or deal with my own food. It means that I’m not eating the same thing as my parents (or eating at the same time these days), and I have the right to make that call. If we have company and I can’t eat whatever my parents are making, I’ve earned the right not to eat it at age 41… but my parents are also not making me something else. It’s not a huge deal because I plan for those meals with things I can eat.

[+] I saw something a few months ago on the subject of trans athletes. It was an article in which Lia Thomas and her current times were compared to her pre-transition times. She has gotten slower since transitioning, and it was interesting to see how she (yes, SHE) compared to the top times for each gender. The conclusion was that the reason she was at the top time-wise (good, but not Katie Ledecky good) is that she was a top swimmer pre-transition competing with the guys. It has been interesting to see that trans women athletes are not infinitely better post-transition across other sports (I’ve looked), which kinda defeats the argument that they transition in order to beat all the women when they compete.

[+} Also… PRONOUNS MATTER. There was a fire fight on my Facebook last year on the subject, and it was exhausting. Here’s the thing: using ‘they/them” is not a huge freaking deal if it means that my students or coworkers feel respected. There are a lot of gender-related chromosome things that don’t manifest in visible ways, and it’s none of my business to ask, so I just honor people’s requests regarding their pronouns. Mine are in my work email signature, and I can promise that I haven’t been hit by lightning yet. Calling people by their preferred pronouns sends the message that I see them and I care enough to listen.

[+] This video cracked me up…