Suzanne's Very Crazy, Busy Day

Started with me sleeping until noon-but I had a TON of stuff to do!

Then, I realized I never took my cell phone off 'silent' when I left class last night.

So, a nearly 3 hour trip to Panera later, baking mini cupcakes, making dip, mini caramel apples and setting up, we had a Boy Scout board of review.

Oh, and in there somewhere, I think I got a professor in some hot water.

Now, I have a paper due in 40 minutes. AAAAAACCCCCCKKKKKKKK!

I'll fill in details AFTER I write 500 words on my favorite childhood book. As is typical, I had a hard time picking just one, but I kept coming back to the same one, Sydney Taylor's All of a Kind Family. It put me on a path for further exploration. You could say that the love for the Faye Kellerman Peter Decker/Rina Lazarus series seed was planted with this series...

ETA: Since I said I would tell, and Lou asked, I sorta got a Prof in hot water. Here's the Reader's Digest version:

Web based class. The instructor never communicates with class, not by email, phone or via the Blackboard discussion bpard. She wrote four discussion board posts to say 'welcome to my class' the first week, as replies to specific students, then nothing until some classmates contacted their advisors. There are numerous discrepancies in the syllabus and assignment tabs on Blackboard (due dates do not match, etc)

Apparently, someone contacted her. She wrote an extremely nasty discussion board post which blasted all 40 or so students that turned in the first assignment for what one student submitted. She disappeared again. Anpther assignment was due, then the means to submit it was taken down, but the syllabus states if you email it to her, you'll receive a zero.

She didn't respond to emails (at least a dozen that I know of, there may have been more). Another week goes by without any contact and many posts/emails about some pretty major issues. We still had no responses. Several students call their advisors, but I called her department chair (figuring he's the one who hired her).

The department chair left me a fantastic voice mail. In it, he states he forwarded my voice mail to the person who handles these issues on my campus. Dr. T called me, and starts off by saying 'she's new and may not be familiar with Blackboard'. Nope, the three Universities she listed as teaching courses all have Blackboard. Dr. T speaks of glitches in Blackboard since a summer upgrade and I politely list the glitches that I've seen since said upgrades in my four web classes. How do you explain the lack of response to emails, since that has never been an issue with the upgrades?

There are a few more things involved that led me to apply corporate world thinking to academia, but in a nutshell, she's in trouble for not providing students with a course that meets USF standards...


Comments

I love the All of a Kind series! Ella, Henny, Sarah. Charlotte and Gertie...
Unknown said…
See? This is what I don't like about this changing over to a Reader - I keep running into sites I've somehow missed.

It normally takes me about an hour to write a thousand words of a story (Usually because I try to edit on the fly, rather than to go back to it later) - so hopefully you got your 500 words done on time and in a satisfactory fashion. And how might you have gotten a professor in 'hot water'?
Suzanne said…
SB, I adored Sarah and when Charlie came along. Sarah's ear piercing, the tea spilled on the dress and Charlie's arrival are the stories that stick in my head nearly 40 years later.

Lou, I had that problem with the reader and Loralee's blog-it said she hadn't updated, then I got a months's worth of posts at once!
500 words is a little longer than my usual blog post. If I know what I want to write, it takes about 15 minutes, then about 10 to edit. It was turned in on time.

I wlll ETA the professor story, it's too long for a comment!

Popular posts from this blog

Glad that I'm not "Guilty By Association" on this one

Wal Mart Your Zone $500.00 Gift Card Contest!

Webmaster Alex speaks Anonymously