So for all of my snowflake bashing...I have a horrible confession.
Today - I - was the snowflake.
Today is the first exam in my Intro to Everything class...the one with 160 kids in one section and mysteriously, 40-odd in the other. The menacing horde meets at 930. Last night I faithfully slogged through the task of making the exam (which takes more work than the average snowflake seems to realize, especially when one is using a new textbook), along with the other tasks of reading and commenting on the draft job letters of my Dazzling Golden Boy colleagues, editing a volume introduction manuscript ('it's such a great honor'), and grading some writing assignments...for people who also apparently have a hard time deploying their first language.
Then I went to sleep, setting my alarm for my usual 545.
Now, had I actually arisen at 545, the process normally aided by Dog + Alarm and sometimes by Atom Smasher and often by screaming nightmares about accidentally sending a draft chapter of an erotic novel to the search committee at the University of Maryland, things would have been fine. I could have copied my exam in plenty of time for my class.
However...nothing doing. Lo, my sleeping peepers snapped open at SEVEN THIRTY. And I beheld a shitstorm.
It is pouring here on the Eastern Seaboard. I work about 70 minutes from my house on Tuesdays and Thursdays...on the other side of a mountain on an interstate with a lot of truck traffic.
I managed to restrain myself to only five or six words of profanity, hurried through a shower (which I actually really, really needed because I would have struck dead any student within a 6 foot radius without it), fed the dog, hurried her outside, emailed my exam to my department secretary and begged her to please overlook my utter and profound snowflakeness and kindly make me 160 copies of this...and got in the car...
...to discover Atom Smasher's trip yesterday left the gas tank on E. Not E for enough, but E for Evidently You Are Screwed.
Long story short, I made it over the mountain, the parking gods smiled upon me and I did not have to utilize East Jesus Nowhere Parking Garage, AND Glorious Secretarial Angel made my copies. She was even NICE about it and told me that she usually did stuff like this for faculty and that as long as I didn't need it five minutes ago, it was no problem.
Holy crap! Really? My years of adjunctness have indeed convinced me that your copies are your problem, period.
I arrived in my exam room at precisely 927 to discover far more students than I have ever seen in that 930 lecture. Surprise!
We are now awaiting the completion by the Bitter Enders.
But yeah. I was the girl who almost overslept and almost came to class unprepared for the exam so...yeah. Today, I am the snowflake. Coo coo kachoo....
You are not a snowflake. You did everything right in order to make class on time with the right materials. You'd only be a snowflake if at 7:30 you just rolled over, went back to sleep, and then called the department secretary at 9.
ReplyDeleteI agree with ELS; this was near heroic. You didn't just show up late, etc.
ReplyDelete[From your description, I may know where that is (or at least a similar area) and, given the current storm going across the state, the ride could have been nightmarish!]
Bah. You're not a 'flake. A 'flake would do exactly as ELS said and do it EVERY day. A lot of my colleagues here in the northeast were late today. I'm just amazed most of your students even bothered showing up in this weather.
ReplyDeleteI want to cancel class -- the county around me has let schools out, the main CCs around here is also closing early due to this mega-storm. But the CC and the county cover a LARGE area, so it's mostly for students on the eastern side, not the poor western side where I am.
ReplyDelete3 students emailed to let me know that due to the weather (or a cold) , they can't make it in, which I understand. But one of them CC'd my PERSONAL address. Uncool, guys. Seriously. Why isn't my @theschool address the only one you use. How do you even know my gmail one? (I may have had a gDoc projected to the class, but it's just tacky to take that info.)
I liked the story but I don't get the point. You wouldn't have been late. You can't be late. Being late means arriving after class begins. Class can't begin without the professor. Therefore, the professor is never late.
ReplyDeleteBlackDog, let me echo and paraphrase what others here have already said:
ReplyDeleteBlackDog, I have taught snowflakes. I know snowflakes. Snowflakes are not friends of mine. BlackDog, you are no snowflake.