Nothing Much

Hello, all!

There's not a lot of new information to impart, but I thought I'd post anyway to let everyone know I'm still around.

I started university classes last week. I had thought I signed up for Victorian Lit for my upper-level English class, so imagine my suprise to find out that it was actually "American Nightmare: Violence and Gore as American Entertainment." Well, I sat and listened to the prof go through the syllabus and ultimately decided that maybe it would be a good thing to step out of my comfort zone and read some things I never would have chosen for myself. I'll let you know how it ends up.

The other class is "Curriculum and Standards Based Assessment for Secondary English" and while it sounds like a really worthwhile course, it's with a prof I've already had and he seems to hate Fellows. To prove this further, he revamped his syllabus for this class and added in a LOT of bullshit busy work ("we will share our feelings in class in journaling exercises, which you will then be expected to go home, edit, and type up before handing in") and two huge papers which then will have to be presented in class. If you look at the schedule, he's convienently arranged things so that there are 6 weeks out of the sememester where he will be sitting on his ass listening to us present, rather than him actually teaching. As a final straw, he chose 5 entirely new books for the course, totally over $150. He's such a jerk, I just can't get over it! He actually said that he won't accept any late work or absences without a doctor's note, so we're going to be stuck listening to him ramble about himself for 3 hours every week!! He also scheduled class on the week that the public school have Mid-Winter break, and purposely made one of the papers due that day, so forget that vacation! This semester with him is going to suck!

Okay, I'm done ranting about that for now. The girls are doing well. I'm so happy to be home with them over the weekend! With having night class, I've been getting home really late and not able to spend as much kitty quality time as I'd like.

At school, I volunteered to help design the school yearbook. Out of the 6 or 7 people who signed on for the task, only 2 of us actually showed when the company rep showed yesterday afternoon. At first I was just a tiny bit irritated, then I realized that with just me and this one other teacher, we'll have total control and not have to engage in long conversations about what anyone else (save the principal) sees as the "vision" of the book. Throw in that I just found out that we get paid "per-session" (about $35/hour) for every hour spent on this project, and it comes out to a pretty sweet deal!

Only 10 more school days until Break!