into the maelstrom....

My first class was yesterday. The only person missing was the girl from last semester who had gotten arrested for theft. I haven't heard from her yet. She could be in the pokey for all I know. But there are others waiting to get into that class if she doesn't show. I've had numerous emails from previous students trying to get into my Advanced Comp classes.

I've already read and responded to dozens of self-introductions from my students. That's the most enjoyable reading of the semester, since I get to find out all about the odd things in their lives. These started coming in Saturday or Sunday, before classes began. One thing online classes do--they blur the boundaries.

Yesterday I was phone-interviewed for the tenure-track job at the school where I currently teach. A whole mass of folks were upstairs surrounding the speaker phone while I was downstairs in my cubicle, answering their questions. I felt naked and exposed since I had to speak loudly and clearly in order to be heard by the interviewers, and in my giant room with its dozen or so cubicles, there were still faculty working, talking, photocopying, strolling around. Nothing like privacy in order to answer a question like "What would your friends say is your biggest flaw?" Wouldn't it have caused a stir if I'd answered that I was a kleptomaniac? :-) I just said that I was a pushover, too easy to approach and talk to, too willing to believe the best of my students. It remains to be seen whether I will get the position, but they did warn me that they would be talking not only to my references, but also to other people not on the list. I made a point of mentioning my long friendship with the man who is the Interim Provost for Arts & Sciences and who used to be the department chair there. Not that I will win brownie points, but I just wanted to let them know that I did have good friends who would vouch for me. Having been burned so badly in the past, I don't allow myself to hope. So many times, I've felt that an interview went well, only to be passed over for someone younger, thinner, and male-er. (Sorry for that attrocious coinage.)

Another minor blip on my radar screen is the sudden onslaught of obscene text messages I'm getting on my cell phone. It's mostly just those penis-enlargement ads that plague people's email, but who would have ever imagined that they'd migrate to our cell phones? After all, I have to pay for incoming text messages, even if all I'm doing is deleting them. I don't know why, but I find them really disturbing, as if I'm being singled out and attacked with garbage and slime. It would be nice if there were a way to block these messages, but I haven't figured out how. The lengthy manual that comes with my phone provides instructions for tasks that I have no interest in--like sending photos with text messages to others in Spanish--but nothing about blocking unwanted texts. If I have to pay for that crap, I should be able to say no to it.

I just had a sudden horrible image of obscene photos accompanying these text messages to my phone. Gross.

And on that pleasant image, I'll close. Dr. S.