An old, unpublished, unfinished post...

I was doing so well for a while.  My Dropbox was clear and caught up.  (This is where the students submit their assignments online for me to grade.  I love to see the Dropbox for all of my classes showing 0 items to grade, but that's pretty rare.)  For a brief, shining moment, I was caught up.  Then Friday happened. My C++ programming students submitted the two programs that were due, my Java students submitted their programming assignments, and my MIS class submitted their Excel workbooks.  I am so far in the hole, I feel like crying.  I am grading every spare minute I get.  Additionally the programming students are continuing on with their next assignments, so it takes a great deal of time to answer their questions/emails/and get them "unstuck".  I love my job, and I enjoy these tasks for the most part, but it can get extremely overwhelming. It's especially tough to take when then piece of shit uneducated governor, who makes way, way more than I make and works 1/10 as much/as hard, makes statements about UW professors needing to do more.  I guarantee the cheating dropout couldn't survive my schedule or workload for a week--not even for two days, I'm betting.  I'd love to see his face after trying (and failing) to keep up, he saw the salary

When it rains, it pours, so of course we have sick animals now, too.  Petey (cat) has an anal gland infection.  He had this a few years ago.  We caught it early, so he just needs a round of antibiotics, but wrestling pills into a cat twice a day isn't the most enjoyable task.  More distressing, our Fergus (rabbit) is quite ill with pasteurella.  He may or may not live through it.  It will be a dicey few days.  He's on several different kinds of medication for it.  The biggest risk right now, though, is that he stopped eating (from nausea), and that can quickly become a death sentence in rabbits.  I'm hand feeding him with a syringe round the clock.  He's not very cooperative about eating, so I'm not getting a great amount into him.  I only hope it's enough to keep him alive long enough for the drugs to kick in.  It's hard to eat or sleep or focus on anything, knowing he is so uncomfortable, and his life is hanging by a thread.  I'm tired and quite overwhelmed by life right now, so I'm having a hard time handling this.  I'm constantly on the verge of crying and just want to curl up in a ball and pretend this is not happening.

The only reason I'm able to squeeze in a blog right now is that I'm stuck in my classroom, giving a midterm, and the PC will only boot Windows in Safe Mode.  I don't have the rights/access to fix it, and our IT dept. is apparently gone for the day (WTF?!  We have evening classes that rely on technology).  I can't load Visual Studio or Eclipse in Safe Mode, so I am unable to do my grading.  It's extremely frustrating, because I counted on this chunk of time to get some work done.  I was hoping to grade during my two office hours today, but I had students who needed programming help, so that window was closed as well.  I woke up with a migraine Monday which continues on and feel like yesterday and today have been a nightmare of disasters. Next week has to be better.  Enough whinging.

_______________

I opened my poor, neglected blog today, hoping to force myself to start posting again and found this unfinished post that I had started back in March.

It was a brutal semester.  I got out of the habit and so far behind that it's hard to get back into it.  I'm trying.