Almost at the end

I had my last classes of the semester today. It was, as always, a sad time. I love my students. Most of the time. This week has provided a couple of exceptions.

Exception #1: MP, a freshman pre-pharmacy major, one of my pre-pharm advisees. He has made appointments with me and not kept them. He leaves me phone messages and post-it notes on my door, complaining that he needs his advising hold lifted. Yet when I make an appointment with him, he doesn't keep it. He comes by when I'm in class teaching, and though my schedule is posted on the door, he apparently is illiterate and cannot read it. He leaves phone messages at times when no faculty would be expected to be in their offices. And of course, it is my fault when he fails to find me in my office when he thinks I ought to be there. (Midnight on Saturday? Get real.) I "fired" him. In other words, I had him reassigned to a new advisor. I suspect he's REALLY majoring in Partying 101. His high school gpa was only 2.75, so there's no way in hell he's going to get into pharmacy anyway.

Exception #2: One of my super-religious students in Advanced Comp complained in a journal that she was tired of her faith being "berated" in class. Unless she's talking about the time I told them that the phrase "under God" was not original to the Pledge of Allegiance, I don't know what she means. I wrote her a long email and told her that she obviously needed to have her faith shaken up if she had never been asked to interrogate the basis of her belief system. She also may be upset that I don't allow them to denigrate homosexuality on the basis of religion.

I left at 4:30 and headed back to the apartment. My head is pounding. There's a front moving through, with changes in barometric pressure. I've planned a weekend grading marathon. What I do for love. I do love teaching. I am praised constantly for my excellent teaching. Yet I am growing more and more tired of the constraints placed upon me by the "system." I hate grading. I made the analogy of preparing a huge meal with various and wondrous dishes, having 23 guests come to partake of the feast, and then having to clean up afterward, all alone. Class prep is making the huge meal. The 23 guests are the students. The clean-up is the grading. It's lonely, it's dirty, and it's unfulfilling. I know my friend Ellie is dealing with much worse problems with her ongoing classroom discipline issues in the high school setting, but I don't have to deal with discipline issues very often in the college environment. I do have to deal with narrow minds and limited visions. At least high school students don't think they already have all the answers in terms of faith.

Or do they?

I've purchased a Kindle that I've yet to see. It arrived Tuesday. I'm looking forward to playing with it. My Esteemed Spouse has said he'll bring it up if the weather allows him to drive up on Saturday. We're both so busy right now that I'm planning to stay here for the weekend. He's got GVSU graduation Saturday and a School of Business Christmas party this Sunday. I've got grading to do, so why waste time driving back to Grand Rapids for a couple of days?

I'm pretty pissed about DADT. It's so stupid to ban gay people in the military. I hate Republicans and conservatives. Why are they so damned narrow-minded and limited in their visions?

Anyway. As Ellen Degeneres (a lesbian) would say.