These first two weeks of school have been very challenging for me. I don’t normally like to blog about a semester, students, or classes until after the completion of the semester. My feeling has always been that this will insure that I don’t get fired. However, this particular semester has already been quite stressful. Here are the highlights:

• After being told that a full-time faculty member couldn’t handle their current course load I agreed to take over one of their classes — AFTER IT HAD STARTED. I only work part-time and technically I’m only allowed to teach 3 courses a semester. I am now teaching 4 and one of them is filled with angry students because after 10 days they were given a new teacher.
• I just finished grading an essay where half-way through the essay the student elapsed into using “texting lingo” instead of actual words. I feel like weeping.
• I also just graded an essay that — well, was bad. I don’t want to say more than that but just so you know my eyeballs are bleeding, and my Shakespeare bobble-head has hung his head in shame.
• Also, the new textbook I have my students using is 600 pages, costs $80 and pages are falling out of the binding. Oh, and the bookstore didn’t order enough so I have students with no books.

When you add this to the fact that I still don’t have a functioning computer, my brand new sink has been leaking water since July without me knowing (and I now have mold growing in places that I don’t even want to think about) and the presidential election has already caused me to rethink my friends, family and political affiliations — I, oh heck, I don’t even know what. I’m tired. I’m going to go rub something soft.

**UPDATE** I just found out that the textbook I’m using for my online courses is different than the book my students were given.