Since my last post, I completed my first year at FCU (which was no mean feat!):
- Individual meetings with all of my students to discuss mid-term grades (in future semesters, I will need to seriously rethink this practice).
- Individual meetings with most of my students to discuss final papers (including seven hours of these meetings in a single day).
- Ensuing frustration of the "are these students really this stupid?!?" type (I am not even kidding: one student sat in my office staring at the first page of an article, wondering why the last paragraph didn't make sense, before finally asking "Do you think that I should turn the page?").
- The worst week ever involving: a conflict with a member of the administrative staff (who expects me to pay for my own office supplies), visa problems (tentatively resolved after numerous emails and phone calls), and the cancellation of one of my fall courses (being replaced with an intro course - ugh).
- An end-of-semester breakdown, when I seriously started looking for a new job.
- End-of-term exams and end-of-term grading (one student bumped into me in the hallway less than 48 hours after the final exam and asked for hir final mark because I should clearly have finished grading all exams and been able to recall the final grades of every single student).
- End-of-year faculty reports (because I clearly had time to write and submit a ten-page report that was due on the day that final grades were also due).
- An end-of-term meeting with Department Chair to discuss my performance (I haven't yet seen my student evaluations, but Chair informed me that they were much better than those of the first semester).
And now that we're all caught up, future posts should be more interesting (and less bulleted!).
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