Home again

After a couple of days of hectic meetings and various departmental functions, I'm home again. One of my new activities was voting in a faculty meeting. We were voting on whether to permit adjunct faculty to serve on committees. I didn't say anything, just cast my "yes" vote with the majority (only one "no"). But boy, oh boy, I'd have loved to say a lot. One thing I would have told them is that adjunct faculty would feel much more involved on campus if they weren't treated like lepers. I truly believe that schools that expect adjunct faculty to teach well and to exhibit loyalty to the school and department are just pissing into the wind if they don't show adjunct faculty that they are valued members of the department. So many faculty decisions affect adjuncts, too, yet adjuncts are left out of the decision-making process. They are deprived of medical benefits, retirement contributions, and support for professional development (travel funds, for instance). They can be hired and fired on a whim. They often don't get office space. But should they show the slightest trace of discontent, BAM!! The hammer comes down on the poor adjunct's head. Fortunately, this year Ferris is making great strides. They're providing benefits now! And adjuncts got raises this year.

Last night, I put my sheets on Betty's bed and slept well. When I took her sheets off, I looked for the label to try to find out what that horrible fabric might be. The fabric content was not given, but the label informed me that these sheets were made in Pakistan and were to be dry-cleaned. If I had never before slept on silk sheets (but I have), I might have assumed that these sheets were made of silk. Alas, unless the silk worms were inbred with sandpaper somehow, these sheets were not silk. Whatever they are made of should be banned as unfit for human use. (Betty's house is full of all kinds of beautiful things, but I've begun to notice that many of those things are kind of cheap. Her "brass" toilet tissue stand is really plastic. Yet she claims to boycott shopping at Walmart because of their labor practices. Maybe she buys directly from the overseas child-labor factories, avoiding the middleman?)

Today my department chair asked if I might be interested in serving a stint as the Writing Center director. I told her yes. I hope she doesn't mean this fall.

I really like my mentor, Ruth. All the mentors and mentees had lunch together today, so we got to know each other. Most people have one or two amazing incidents in their pasts. Alas, poor Ruth's "amazing incident" is that her ex-husband is now her ex-wife. Kevin is now Kathryn. They still share a house (a rental). It turned out that Kathryn's office is a couple of doors down from mine. She looks like a woman (a very plain woman), but her voice still sounds masculine. Ruth seems so sweet, so it's hard to imagine how such a development affected her emotionally. I can only imagine having married someone that you expected to love and live with forever, only to have your spouse declare that he is really a woman trapped in a man's body and was going to undergo a sex-change operation. I wonder: does the divorce come before or after the surgery?

I also found out why my classroom for the last afternoon class was changed from Starr 216 to Science 308. My first two classes are in Starr 216, and I was scheduled for the same room for the third class, until quite recently. It turns out that a senior faculty member (a loudmouth man) threw a temper tantrum and demanded that he be given that classroom. So now I finish teaching at 1:15 and then have to hustle down the stairs, across the length of one building to the elevator, go up three floors, and then hustle down four very long halls before getting to Science 308. I can stay indoors the whole time, fortunately. Maybe I should take up roller skates, because it's going to be hard to get to class by 1:30. And I discovered today that my classroom key won't open that classroom. The Dean's office is having to make a new key for me. Thanks a lot, O Gracious Senior Faculty Asshole. I'm sure your sh*t doesn't stink, either.

I'm still having trouble with the school's website. I can do anything on my campus computer, but at home I can't access much of the website. I just get a message saying "Access Denied." I've called tech support several times, to no avail. It's probably some nefarious way of making us stay on campus to do all our work. Sigh.

At least today is beautiful and cool. It's a perfect day for sitting outside on the deck. Unfortunately, my poor spouse is backlogged with work, so he is busy at his desk. Shortly I'm going to have to do something about supper, though. Maybe we can sit outside to eat.