A Rare Work Post

I normally don't talk about work on here for several reasons. First, there are privacy issues being a professor, and second, this blog really was started to talk about our experiences with Dermot. But work is taking over all of my thoughts and I haven't blogged for a while.

This semester is going to be a big "sucker of time". I don't know what I was thinking. I will be teaching six courses. I will be teaching two intro to psych courses, but one will be writing intensive, which means tons of assignments. I will be teaching one section of human growth and development - three assignments. Two sections of child psychology - one online and one ITV which means that I will have students on two campuses and there will be a camera on me beaming over to the campus I am not at. Finally, I will be teaching human sexuality which not only have I never taught before, I have never even took it as a student. Sigh. So much work. Child psych and human sexuality are two hundred level courses which means that I have to assign a serious writing assignment in each of them. So my big things are that I'm going to have to create a brand new course - which means creating lectures and power points for 19 chapters (I have 2.33 done), and I'm going to be doing a ton of grading of 2-7 page writing assignments. Also, the online course involves constant feedback since all of our communication is basically written.

I know this seems like nothing to K-12 teachers. I am officially only in the classroom 15 hours plus the online course, but I get no down time when I'm in the class. I'm an old fashioned lecture only type of gal.

I also have a ton of service work to do. This is the part of being a professor that people don't know about. That and research, which I don't have since I'm at a two year school. I am on a ton of committees. The faculty basically help run the place. We do a lot to keep things going and to make improvements to how things are being done. For example, I was just picked to be the faculty liaison to the president regarding student success. I have to pick two other faculty members to work on this committee. Our goal is write a report by the end of the semester giving suggestions about how we can help our students during their time with us. A great deal of our students do not officially graduate. We are trying to figure out why they leave and to see if there is anything that we can do about it. This is true across the nation at all two year schools, but we need to figure out what we can do for our particular situation. Important work, but hard.

I'm also co-chair of a committee that is in charge of writing a report regarding the state of online courses and other types of distance learning at our school. That report is really due some time next week. Then we get to spend the rest of the semester merging my report with about 12 other reports into one big final report. This report will help determine if we get to keep our accreditation. Which basically means that our degrees will continue to be valuable instead of just a blank piece of paper.

I'm also on the writing committee, the general education committee, the assessment committee, and the educational technology committee. Sigh. I get scared just seeing all of that in print. Fortunately, most of these commitments just involve attending meetings and thinking on the spot. Although, I am in charge of one project for Ed. Tech and that's going to eat up some time.

I also have a lot to do for my department. There are only three psychology professors at my school. One is chair of the entire humanities and social science department, and the other one is in charge of a huge project and a big committee. So a lot of the work has been given to me. We need to decide what we expect psych "majors" to know after two years and worse, how do we intend to measure what they have learned. That's another big project I have to work on this semester.

All of this being said, I may be posting even less regularly. Dermot's getting older and there's less to talk about other than his intense love of me, and that's getting a little creepy to see in print. Living it is fine, but once I see it in writing, it seems strange. Wednesday he told me I was a hottie (again with the too much TV). I asked what that meant and he said that it meant I was gorgeous. So he really did get the meaning. I then told him that it creeped me out a little bit. I told him that it sounded like he wanted to date me. Then he said that he did not want to date me, but that he did love me. So hopefully "hottie" will disappear. Ethan, however, was fantastic to me and told me that I shouldn't be upset with Dermot since he was just being honest and pointing out the truth about my beauty. How fantastic are my two guys?