School Days

Tuesday was my first day of school for this semester. I have five classes on Tuesday and five again on Wednesday. This is the heaviest schedule I have had in my ten years I started teaching here. In addition, I still have MA students who I am advising for their thesis. 


Tuesdays my classes start at 8 am:
8:00 am to 9:30 The Methodology of Writing the BA Cultural Thesis - Only 2 of the students are my advisees.
9:30 to 11:00 Race and Ethnicity in US Journalism II
11:00 to 12:30 pm Religion: Born in the USA
12:30 to 2:00 Journalism as Portrayed in US Films 
2:00 to 3:30 Library Research Methods 


Wednesdays also start early.
8:00 am to 9:30 Websites and Blogging: 21st Century Journalism
9:30 to 11:00 The Methodology of MA Cultural Studies
11:00 to 12:30 pm Introduction to Creative Writing
12:30 to 2:00 Corp-ocracy - The Corporations of Destruction
2:00 to 3:30 The Mystery Novel


My main computer is still working through the same diagnostics that it started on Tuesday when I turned it on. I have this fear that if I turn it off, it will only start from the beginning again, so I thought it best to let it play itself out. All that and ten courses; I am arranging for my funeral by the end of May. Hopefully, I will last that long.

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Networking

Being social worker, an educator, and having had multiple businesses, I know the importance of networking. I am casting the net and hoping some reader somewhere will be able to point me in a direction or know someone who knows someone... I am seriously considering and starting to look for opportunities to teach online courses. There seem to be a few decent books on Amazon.com, which I will order for Ron to cart home from his trip to the States; however, it never hurts to ask. If you know something or know someone who could give me some direction for getting my foot in a door or multiple doors, please share the information with me. Needless to say, online teaching is not geographically dependent, so the place does not matter.

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The Faculty Meeting That Wasn't

Monday was supposed to include a faculty meeting to discuss who was going to teach what come the fall semester. Since I developed the Journalism, Creative Writing, and Academic Writing minor within the department, our department head announced in September, everyone had to do their share. It seems that "doing your share" does not translate well from English to Hungarian. Last semester, I taught four of the classes, one open elective class, and instituted a tutoring program in a writing center I set up. I have the writing center open for one and a half hours a day, twice a week. My office mate, a Hungarian, taught one course in the new minor. No one else offered any. This semester, I again am teaching three of the courses, one open elective, running the writing center, and supervising supposedly 1o Masters thesis students and 2 BA thesis students. Supposedly, is due to the fact that I doubt they will all finish, although I have been the nag my mother was and I hated. My office partner is again teaching one course, my Department Head has one, and the upper Department Head is teaching another. When the faculty meeting was canceled, I was relieved, but today, my Department Head shared with me that "we" need to encourage others to take the remaining classes to consummate the minor. After hashing around who could charm which fellow faculty, we set out to send e-mails pleading. Mind you, this is for September. The response I received was "I already have to prepare for a new Masters course over the summer, so I cannot possibly do another. Sure it is okay for me to create a fifteen course program, develop the materials for seven new courses, but this one cannot do two courses during the course of three months. Give me a break!! The luck of the Irish... Happy St. Patrick's Day.

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Assorted Thoughts

I received an e-mail from my department head at the university last night. We have to submit our course that we will teach to the secretary this week. The semester has just nearly begun and they are concerned about the next one in September already. There is a rumor, a strong one, that we will be moving our campus on April 1st. At first I thought this was a secret, but the students knew already and are planning for an extra long vacation come April. We are on break until April 9th, so if they planned ahead, they could have us situated in time, but then again, planning is not the strong point of upper administration. Most of my classes are so small, I could have them come to my home and may just do that for most of them. We cannot afford to lose another week's classes, when Tuesday classes only meet for ten sessions as it is. Changing direction, now that we have this lovely mural on our wall, we decided we could not stand the upholstery of the chairs any longer. Ron and I went fabric shopping today. We forgot to bring our little dictionary with us, so when we went into a shop, we had to call Balazs to translate for us by giving the phone to the clerk. The clerks were amused by this and actually were very helpful. The first shop explained that the material they carried was not for upholstery, but gave us the name and address of another shop. In the second shop, the clerk was highly entertained by the phone translation and very accommodating to our needs. We found the perfect material within minutes. She drew pictures to show us how to cut the material for our six chairs, the cut the piece in half to save us some cutting when we brought it home. Ron suggested that it would be mid-week before he got around to doing the work, but I convinced him that as a joint project, it could be completed in two hours at the most. We worked like a well oiled machine, cutting, ironing, and stapling on the material. After two hours exactly, we had all six chairs recovered and they look excellent! I love these joint projects; it gives me a sense of accomplishment.

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