Day 8 - LA County moves into yellow tier

Mondays are still work days…no change!

5/10/21. Monday.

8:30 – 9:30 - Up and I need to put my trash cans out. I weigh 100.5 today. Downstairs and the dog is awake and running around.  She jumps up on the couch and rolls over on her back so I can rub her tummy, but after the second rub she’s ready to go outside. We go straight out – no toy today – and she chases birds before she finally goes potty. Return inside: pieces of rigatoni for her, coffee for me. I put the trash cans out.

Kitchen duty.  I fill the dog food dispenser, then go outside and unclog the fountain.  Pick up dog poop on the patio. Trim my flower arrangements and change the water in both vases.

9:30 – 11:00 - I go to work. I didn’t post this week’s module last night for my classes at College No. 2, so I check course content, then “publish” both classes.

-Check email at College No. 2. As you know, I’m being evaluated/audited. Administration notifies me that the Student Survey results are in, but I have to use the Review Snap software to access them.  This website is not user-friendly and it takes some time before I finally locate the results.  

Part of my self-evaluation involves interpreting the results of the surveys for my Dean and my “mentor” [the Hispanic male who is evaluating me.  I don’t know his credentials or what subject he teaches or why he was selected to evaluate me], but when I open the PDFs in Review Snap, all I find are columns of percentages – I have no idea what I’m looking at. When I’m evaluated at College No. 1, I receive copies of the actual surveys, to include the students’ comments, not some…matrix. It takes me a good hour before I finally figure out what the numbers correspond to.  Additionally, the students were only asked to respond to five questions so, honestly, what’s the point of the survey?  5 questions?

I just received the student survey results today and yet my self-evaluation must be completed by Friday. This is ridiculous.  

-11:00-12:00 – I take attendance for my classes at College No. 2. Email blast to those students who didn’t complete the assignments notifying them that they were marked absent and received 0s on the quizzes. Email blast to those students who received a 5 or less on the Video Quiz – what happened? (it’s impossible to receive an F on the Video/Podcast Quiz if you actually watched the video or listened to the podcast which means they didn’t do either).  Personal emails to those students who are getting a D/F warning them that the last day to drop with a “W” is Friday.

12:00-1:00 – Twelve students submitted their extra credit essays so I print those out, then sort through them.  One of the students who submitted the assignment is getting a 52% in the class. Why she bothered to submit the extra credit assignment is beyond me.  I’ve been trying to get her to drop the class for two months.  I need to grade this paper post-haste - otherwise she’ll turn on me later and say, “Oh, I didn’t drop the class because I thought the Extra Credit assignment would move me up to a C” and then blame me for not returning her graded paper fast enough, before the last day to withdraw.

1:00-2:00 – I have to submit a 2-minute video of my thoughts/impressions of Elle for my French Cinema class by midnight tonight so I prepare my script.

2:00-3:30 – I design my Syllabus for my July-Summer Semester-Asynchronous class.  I’m close to finishing, but still need to change the due dates for all the assignments in the Canvas shell.

-L. surfaces.  Today’s Mothers Day/birthday gift is a heartfelt Mother’s Day card with nice comments written in the card saying I’m a great Mom [L. previously left the card at the Art Studio and wasn’t able to give it to me yesterday] AND “merch” from my favorite podcast, True Crime Garage.  I already have a T-shirt that says “Ban the white van” because criminals/rapists/psychopaths always drive a white van.  Today’s T-shirt says, “Ban the tan sedan” because criminals/rapists/psychopaths drive a gross, tan sedan too.  I love it!

3:30-4:30 – I have my leftover chicken from Fire Fly and read Raising a Thief.

4:30-6:00 – I’m scheduled to attend a Zoom Awards Ceremony, honoring five students [one of them is my student, whom I genuinely like], at 7:00 for College No. 1.  Their parents and friends will also be in attendance so I have to “go glam” which means putting on a shit-ton of make-up. I hate Zoom – it magnifies everyone’s imperfections, especially mine.

Shower. Lotion. Professional blouse on top-yoga pants on the bottom. I put on false eyelashes and spackle on the make-up. I look ridiculous.

6:00-7:00 – I have some time before the Awards ceremony so I create the 2-minute Zoom video for my French Cinema class.  I make several attempts because I hate the way I look on camera.  After the third attempt, it finally dons on me that I CAN’T CHANGE WHAT I LOOK LIKE. I deem my last attempt “good enough” and hit ‘submit.’

7:00-8:00 – I Zoom into the Awards ceremony and sit as far back from the camera as I can because I hate close-ups.  Two of my colleagues are there and, surprise, so is our new Dean.  I’ve never met him before, but he wears his hair in a pony tail.  Need I say more? I say positive comments about my student and my part is done – I sit politely through the rest of the ceremony, smiling continuously because it hides my wrinkles and makes me look younger.  The only drawback – it’s exhausting.

8:00-10:00 – Although grades were posted for my College No. 1 classes, the SLOs [Student Learning Objectives] still need to be compiled.  By that I mean I have to determine if each student has exceeded, meets, or failed to meet two separate objectives.  This information can only be determined by opening up every student’s individual Final exam and seeing how they fared on the set of questions for Objective No. 1 and the set of questions for Objective No. 2 for Core Classes Nos. 1 and 2. 

Each individual Final. For 60 students. The SLOs have to be officially submitted on the Lumen website by Friday.

10:00-11:00 – I finish with Core Classes No. 1 and 2, but now I need to get to work on the SLOs for Specialty Class 1A.  This calculation is not so bad. I need to determine the average score that 18 students received on two papers to establish if each student has exceeded, meets, or failed to meet two separate objectives.

See, we’re not allowed to look at how the students fared on all of their collective assignments throughout the semester, NOR can we use their final semester grade as an indicator. Yes, dear readers, per some bureaucrat, I am only allowed to use the Final exam as the sole determinant as to whether or not the students met the SLOs in my Core Classes and just TWO papers for the SLOs in Specialty Class 1A. I’m saying this a lot today, but it’s ridiculous.

11:00-12:00 – I tweak my Summer Syllabus a bit more – almost done – then purge unnecessary paper/paperwork from the College No. 2 file in my filing cabinet.

12:00-1:00 – And, I have officially worked the entire day. How. Depressing. I close up shop.

Kitchen duty.  I prepare my coffee and lunch bag for tomorrow. Take the dog out. Lock up and set the alarm.

1:00-1:30 - I read a Money Diary.

1:30-2:30 – I do an Insanity – Cardio Resistance workout.

2:30-3:00 – Recover.  I have a glass of champagne and work on a blog post.

3:00-3:45 – Nighttime routine. Bed. I lay my clothes out for tomorrow and set my alarm for 7:30.