Monday, July 28, 2008

Feels Like the End

Well, it does. Because it is. It's the end of the summer term at Rose State College, so today I turned in the grades for my lone section of Fundamentals of English. It was an interesting term, and I'll give you the breakdown:
  • We had eight weeks to cover sixteen weeks worth of material. We had the same number of class meetings that we would in a normal semester, but instead of twice a week we met four times a week. The classroom time was not a problem, but the students' out-of-class work time and information processing time was seriously truncated.
  • I had thirteen people registered when I last checked before the term started. I had ten on my roster the first day of class. I had eight on my final roster, and I never saw three of those. One dropped the first week of class and another stopped showing up on the last week of class.
  • I had one day with only one student present.
  • I had one day with only zero students present.
  • Since this was a developmental class, it was great that I was able to give them so much one-on-one time. Unfortunately, these students were true developmental students and had the usual problem of unpreparedness. The one-on-one time could have been more productive.

So now I'm getting ready for Fall semester. I have five sections at two colleges: one Comp I, three Comp II, and one Intro to Philosophy. I haven't taught any of these courses at the schools where I'm going to teach them, so I have four preps. This should be interesting.

But now I'm faced with a decision I haven't wanted to make: do I pursue my interests or do I meet my obligations? There was hope through the summer that I'd be able to do both, but that hope died. Actually, the death of that hope has changed me. I'm still going to teach, because that's the only work I've ever done that I think was worth my time, but my inability to parlay my qualifications and general personability into full-time teaching means I'll have to take other work, too. At least for the short term.

So this feels like the end of hope, too. And at the end of the month I'll put this blog to rest and start the next one.

7 comments:

Jess said...

Bye Bye, Cynical Dog Blog!

Anonymous said...

what is next? Paranormal pooch?
Hopeless hound?

Jim said...

I fully expect this blog to end with the death of all humankind and destruction of the civilized world.

Anything less would be disappointing.

Mike said...

All good things my friend...all good things must end

Mike said...

Well...except for my blog. In that case even completely worthless and stupid things also come to an end.

Nik said...

sigh Ok, I will resign myself to the fact that the Dog has had his day. However, if I don't get linked on new blog, I will be VERY annoyed! ;)

And wait...hold up a damn minute. Mike, now YOU are killing your blog too?? Good grief!

Anonymous said...

What will we do without the cynical dog? The hopeless hog? The fuming bog?

I think our lives are filled with little endings. My recent one happened a year or two ago after grad school. It ended up being the best thing to happen to me (cliche, but true).