grumpyABDadjunct

Long but useful hiatus

2009-07-08T06:38:00.000-07:00

Obviously I haven't been blogging, but really it has been going well! I had a committee meeting last month, and we agreed that I should proceed at as high a pace as I can manage and I went to work. In the past 3 weeks I've basically written my methods chapter from scratch, and it doesn't all suck. I'm supposed to hand it in on Saturday and it looks doable.

I'm really back in a writing groove and feel much more confident which is great. I feel so much less like a loser!

juice

2009-04-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

I may have just reconstituted my committee. Perhaps this thing will work out after all!

Are the wheels falling off?

2009-04-25T04:44:00.001-07:00

Perhaps. Still no resolution to supervisor dilemma. Still grading. Still chewing obnoxious gum. But hooray for spring!

random bullets of crap - Saturday night edition

2009-04-18T18:07:00.000-07:00

•I might be addicted to a really expensive brand of berry flavoured gum. Damn you free samples!

•I just read some advice for parents about serving your kids sugar in packets to help them understand how much a serving is...whyTF is anyone letting their kids eat sugar just as sugar anymore? Do people still put sugar on cereal or something? And why is a PACKET any more of a teaching tool than a SPOON?

•and while I'm ranting about parenting stuff, hey people stop setting girls up for the whole you-aren't-really-valuable-unless-you-are-pretty thing by saying how pretty they look before you even say hello to them. And stop setting boys up for hyper-masculinity by looking at me funny for putting my boy in a pink shirt; the kid likes pink okay?

•supervisor issue is not resolved. I am starting to freak out. The opportunity that might have been great? I don't think it exists. I'm not sure, but pretty sure. Damn. My academic future looks somewhat bleak at the moment.

•had a delicious dinner tonight! Scalloped potatoes, carrot and sweet potato soup and chard stir fried with garlic and hoisin sauce, oh yum! All organic veggies, and cheese bought from a local shop that mostly has local cheese or cheese from Quebec.

•the three-year-old loves chard. Happy, happy day.

Deep breath

2009-04-10T07:46:00.000-07:00

My supervisor is on sick leave again. Not really sure what to do with this news. And there is a settlement in the labour dispute, which we have to vote on, the settlement and the voting both make me feel sick.

Possibilities

2009-04-09T07:32:00.001-07:00

were presented to me yesterday morning that would be AWESOME if they come to fruition. In the short term they have me much re-motivated on the dissertation front, in the long term they would set me up to finish and have work afterwards. After that the day went to hell in a hand-basket: lost library card, streetcar tantrum (O's not mine), peed on snowsuit (again, O), two more tantrums from O and then poop in the bath tub. Any couple of those things in one day would be okay, but all of them between 1 and 8? Ai yi yi.

Is it just me?

2009-04-07T08:07:00.000-07:00

Or is this email inappropriate? (I paraphrase to protect my identity, and the student's).

"Are you still teaching your course on universe/society that you taught at the Uofp? I am doing a phd at WONKA and interested in the subject area.

thanks

Student"

No salutation. Incorrect spelling and grammar. Doesn't even use hir last name, let alone mine. No indication of how ze came to know that I taught the course and what hir specific interest in the frankly huge subject area might be ("universe/society" is not even that far off the breadth of what the course covers). Does ze want the reading list? Hoping for a TA position? Wants me as a committee member? Ze knows ze is emailing a prof, right? Okay, I don't quite have my degree yet, but I wouldn't send an email this bad to a fellow PhD student, let alone a Course Instructor.

Random bullets of what happened to spring??

2009-04-07T07:33:00.000-07:00

•Snow. Not a lot, but enough, and cold with wind so a -12 cº windchill this morning. I was really done with winter, and yet here it is again. Sigh.

•Students. The usual requests for extensions, and could I explain the assignment that was already explained, and I can't post it to the website.... I would like to be done with this!

•Birthdays. O's was in February and because of schedules and illness we still haven't actually had a party for him! Shockingly bad parenting, but at least he's not too stressed about it. We can't do it this weekend because of Easter. Sunday is also his sister's birthday, but since she's dead it isn't much fun, although O is totally pumped about it and can't wait to blow out her candles in her absence. On the one hand it is nice that someone is excited about her birthday, on the other hand it is mighty depressing that she is absent.

•Holiday. We are supposed to be taking one next month and are having a hell of a time organizing it. Let's just say that being married is sometimes (often?) the hardest thing I have ever done. I don't mean this in a mean-spirited sort of way, I am as much the problem as the other party, but just that figuring out what everyone wants, and needs, and all the discussions and compromises etc etc is difficult. I'm sure it will all work out somehow but right now it feels like the impossible dream.

Wow

2009-04-03T11:12:00.001-07:00

So the issue I was so pissed about in the post below has been resolved. I managed to write two carefully considered emails to the parties involved, I was very restrained and diplomatic but got my point across. Within hours I received an apology from one of the parties, and another one from the Dean, and assurances that steps were being taken so that other people were not put in the same position. For the first time in a long time people did the right thing, myself included. I am relieved on two levels. First, the situation was handled quickly and appropriately. Second I acted on it in a measured way instead of flying off the handle (I did do this, but with my partner!), which helped to resolve it, which means I can move on instead of stewing about it. I tend to stew about stuff like this, and that's not good.

Phew.

Holy

2009-04-01T19:58:00.001-07:00

crap I am pissed off. I don't even know if I can say why, but man I'm pissed off. Tenured people who make over $60,000 a year should know better than to ask me to do their work for them for free, that's all I'm sayin' right now. Fuck.

Today is slightly better day,

2009-03-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

despite teaching about war images this morning. The cold is slowly going away. I'm still a bit plugged up but the stupid feeling is largely gone. I bet if I could get a long uninterrupted night of sleep I'd feel like a million bucks.

That 60 hours of TA time/money? We couldn't get a TA, so they are giving me the money. I think that is fair considering I have done everything related to the course. The money will come in handy because I have zero spring/summer employment so far and I'm not sure I'll qualify for EI.

Now if I can clear out my email inbox I'll actually have some time to do diss work Thursday and Friday - and that would turn slightly better into MUCH MUCH better.

UPDATED to add - this is so gross, I just had to share. There are dozens of dead flies on the window sill in my shared-by-four-adjuncts office. Eeew! And two more buzzing around waiting to join the graveyard. Ugh. Does no one ever clean this place? Do I have to clean my own office on top of everything else? The 'public' areas of the campus are spotless, this place, not so much.

Random bullets of crap

2009-03-17T07:51:00.000-07:00

•I have been sick for three weeks now, first the flu and now a cold. I'm so done with it, yet it is not done with me.
•through this sickness I have been teaching and grading. I did cancel one class, I admit, only the second one in my teaching career. But grading, grading, grading whilst one has totally blocked up sinuses and ears is no fun - it makes you dumb, which either makes bad papers worse or brilliant.
•students need to back off. I'm doing my best, I am sick, I have a life, wait for your damned grades. And I will not meet with you to discuss your final paper until I'm better. And I don't have time to respond to several of your emails every day. I think I respond so negatively to this stuff because I get excuse after excuse, sickness after dead grandparent from students, and yet I am treated like a brain on a stick. The compassion and understanding that I attempt to show is not returned and it pisses me off.
•I have no idea how I got up so early so often during the strike, the one day a week when I have to leave the house at 7 is soooo haaarrdd. I am really not meant to get up at 5:30 a.m..
•I am starting to resent that teaching is taking up so much time. Because I'm sick all I can really manage is teaching stuff and then life, but I really need to get back to my diss.
•it looks like my co-supervision plans are going to be approved, which is a big relief, but it also heightens the need to get back to the diss. Please let me get healthy this week so that next week, when I don't have any grading, I can get some work done!

Just in case you thought it was all bullshit,

2009-02-18T07:33:00.000-08:00

the stuff I was just on strike for I mean, let me share with you this little gem. As contract faculty I get shit support, and what I do get is given to me at such a late date (like the contracts themselves) that is almost doesn't matter. Seriously. We are halfway through the term and the tell me now that I have 60 hours of TA support and should they pay me for it or do an emergency posting? For goodness sake, people, if I had known that I had 60 hours of TA support at the start of the term I would have organized the course differently! It would have been better for the students, not to mention for me. Jesus wept.

I want fair remuneration for the work I do, not 1/3 of what FT faculty get for teaching.
I want job security, and really this means a contract that is signed MORE THAN two weeks before the course begins.
I want job security in terms of knowing the rules of the game (TA hours, for example) BEFORE the course begins.

This is ridiculous. The same thing happened last term. I don't even know what to do.

UPDATE - Now they've scheduled my (required) final exam for a SATURDAY from 7-9 p.m. Hello?! If they won't change it students are getting a take-home, there is no way I'm paying for a babysitter and getting home at 11 at night for that bullshit.

random bits of weirdness

2009-02-17T13:12:00.000-08:00

I got legislated back, so am now indentured labour. My students have been great, my department not so much. Staff are great, faculty seem not to know what to do with themselves. Am only getting paid 90% for the work I do, so I am phoning in anything that isn't directly related to the students and their progress. Great.

Meanwhile, at my other contract, one of my students in under threat of deportation (along with her family). They usually wait until the end of term to deport students (she does have a student visa, after all) but for some reason the government is hot to deport her back to a place where she was threatened with kidnap. She could stay here if she could afford a "business marriage" - great option! I find this situation to be incredibly depressing, particularly because there is not a damned thing I can do about it.

Strike related stuff continues. Meetings. Resistance of all types. Drinking. I'm still often awake at 5:30 a.m., ready to leave for the early shift. I must find a way to channel this energy into dissertating or else I will expire from the exhaustion.

Alienation

2009-01-28T08:38:00.000-08:00

The longer the strike goes on, the weirder it gets, the more alienated I feel not just from the University and people who are actively working against us, but from society at large. The government is now working on legislating us back to work, so basically they are taking away my rights and I will have to go back to work or risk a $2000 a day fine for myself and a $25,000 a day fine for my local. Yesterday we had a peaceful demonstration that turned violent because the cops decided they didn't like the way one of our people was trying to keep us safe (she dared to question whether letting big trucks whizz by in the next lane was safe); so I yelled at cops while 4 of my fellow teachers were beaten and arrested right in front of me. And no one really cares about any of this because the economy is bad and the federal budget came out yesterday.

So next week I will probably have to go back to work under duress, ordered by a special piece of legislation just for me, and teach ethics. How the hell can I teach ethics to people under circumstances in which the State has ORDERED me back to work, with grossly punitive economic measures if I refuse? I mean, really, I'm supposed to help people learn and understand ethics under these conditions? I don't think I can actually do that because my rights have been revoked, which is unethical, people have been unjustly beaten, which is unethical, and I am effectively being treated as forced labour, also unethical. But everyone seems to expect me to shut up, carry on and be grateful that I have a job at all. Hey everyone, let's turn unionized work places into forced labour camps - work shall make you free and you'll be thankful for it!

Sometimes I honestly think I must be crazy, or the rest of the world is, and this is not a nice way to feel. Again I understand why people become further radicalized under circumstances such as these.

I'm not even sure

2009-01-18T19:21:00.001-08:00

why I still post, but whatever. I just popped in to say that I am really, really sick of people who make over $100,000 and who got raises in the range of 4-22% last year telling me that I am greedy for wanting a 3-4% raise on the $7000 I make per course. If I gross $20,000 a year working at two, sometimes 3 campuses it's a bloody miracle, and these folks have the fucking audacity to tell me I'm greedy for a raise that barely keeps up with the hikes in my transit fair.

Sometime it makes me weep, but more often it makes me fight back even harder. GO. TO. HELL.

Mash up

2009-01-04T19:28:00.000-08:00

I'm feeling totally flighty at the moment, there is shit going on with the strike that is exciting and stressful, I'm a bit sleep deprived and slightly tipsy...really I should just go to bed and be done with it! Except I have tons of work to do, the new course I've taken on could very likely be hell unless I get a TA that can teach some of the software applications that I can't. I should really nail my syllabus down, but that is really hard when I can't find out about textbooks until tomorrow because the university is still closed, and I have no idea what my own schedule will be because I don't know a) when the strike will be over and b) what the remediation plans will be. I'm a bit fucked, really, and I'm not sure I care too much, which is a bad sign. Or maybe not.

The playlist for this mess? As follows.
The Temps - Papa Was a Rolling Stone
Billy Paul - My and Mrs. Jones
Digitalism - Digital Cairo
MSTRKRFT - Easy Love
Bad Manners - Inner London Violence
UB40 - Burden of Shame

Um, yeah.

Upheaval

2008-12-22T08:54:00.001-08:00

I'm experiencing a kind of major upheaval. I seem to be out of step with everyone and everything else, what I though I knew I don't, right is wrong, black is white, that sort of thing. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, either, difficult but perhaps it will be productive or I'll learn something. I'm glad the holidays are almost here, I need some time to process all of this stuff!

Have a happy whateveritisyoucelebrate everyone!

Ugh

2008-12-11T06:57:00.000-08:00

I haven't done much Christmas shopping, but when I have gone I've found lots of good gifts for all of the dead people in my life. No good gifts for the living. This is a problem, since dead people don't need gifts, but living people seem to want them. I have zero holiday spirit, zero. I'm not even excited about the baking and cooking and eating, I could care effing less. I think I shall drink a lot this Christmas and try and create an alcoholic haze to exist in. I might start that process this afternoon!

I'm having a bad period, just bad. And lots of bits of me ache, my right hip, knee and ankle, shoulders, head, eyes. I have insomnia again, two nights in a row with very little sleep. I'm tired in a kind of epic way, physically and emotionally exhausted. I have a nagging dry cough that won't go away. I feel, for the first time, old in a physical sense. I'm not liking it much.

One of the things keeping me up is the strike. There is some shit about to go down and it won't be pretty and it worries me. A lot. I can't think my way out of it, I can't walk it off. Even if I do manage to graduate next term (or the term after) job prospects are bleak on all fronts.

A couple we know just broke up. It sucks, they are lovely people. I don't know what happened, I just know that they are hurting and that's wrong.

Wow, I'm just, well, done. I can't see a single chink of light today. I'm going to go grade some final projects and hopefully find some way to crawl out of the negativity. Apparently it will involve alcohol.

No bargaining this week

2008-12-05T09:48:00.000-08:00

Lots of meetings, rallies, and of course picketing, but no actual meeting of the parties to discuss a resolution. The fault lies on both sides, however the union has requested a meeting twice and been rebuffed so...? It is hard to know what to make of this.

To honour the Montreal massacre we wore and handed out white ribbons on the line this morning. One guy in his car told me that he was there during the event, and that he regularly visited Ecole Poly, and used the engineering library. Cripes.

There comes a point

2008-11-30T05:51:00.000-08:00

when I just don't know what to think. My employer (the one I'm in a labour dispute with) is doing some truly awful things to us, it's employees and students, and the language they are using to talk about us on their official website (which is supposed to represent the entire University community, mind you) is just, well, fucking insulting. How can they have this much contempt for people who are supposed to be colleagues, people to whom they entrust the education of undergraduates to on a massive scale? I feel totally demoralized on the one hand, and totally justified about the dispute on the other. But how, how can we go back to work with any degree of civility in the environment they are creating? Absolute buggers.

Exhibits

2008-11-27T07:28:00.000-08:00

Exhibit A: the sinus pressure. I've had wicked sinus pressure all week, especially at night, but nothing is coming out. For a couple days I thought it was an infection, but now I don't think so. Whatever it is it is giving me random shooting pain and interrupting what little sleep I get.

Exhibit B: the strike. Well, it continues, and I think if we don't get some bargaining action this week it will go into the new year. Fantastic. And because of Ex. A I've only been able to picket once this week so we are going to be even more broke than before.

Exhibit C: the dissertation. I am actually working on it! I went through a bunch if my data yesterday and re-coded it just to make sure I'm not missing anything, and I've decided that what I've been doing really is Grounded Theory, and if I can keep this momentum up it will actually get done somehow. My co-supervisor person said yes, so I am back on track, well as much as I can be given my University is effectively shut down by my Union. Yes, I do see the irony.

Exhibit D: the job. The one course is on hold, due to the strike. The other course meets for the last time today, then it will be all over but for the grading and the exam and the grading. And I've been offered another course at Satellite Uni, so that's good. It will require some more prep than usual, but is very interesting and hey I need the money. The commute bites but there it is.

Exhibit E: the child. He is not quite 3 and READING. We are scared. He also has the most wicked memory, I told him our phone number twice and he's remembered it from then on. The only person I know with a memory like that was my Grandpa Herb, who was actually my step-dad's father so not related to me by blood. And he was an annoying old git, so I hope O doesn't turn out like him.

Work

2008-11-21T09:58:00.000-08:00

Picketing is work. Being a captain is even more work. I have to be 'on' the whole time, watching for the unexpected or unusual and trouble-shooting about everything from people's paycheques to making sure they are warm enough. It was seriously cold this morning and I had to shove an adult into snow pants and instruct her to dress more warmly next time. An adult. Jesus people, isn't dressing myself and someone under 3 every day enough? Anyway, I'm exhausted and so glad to be home.

Mixed bag

2008-11-17T07:21:00.000-08:00

Life is much more of a mixed bag than usual these days. I feel a bit scattered, I picket, I parent, I teach, I go to union meetings and do at least an hour of union business online a day, I try and be a citizen....that's a lot of stuff, some of it totally unrelated. I feel divided, and that makes me frustrated. I'm also exhuasted both physically and mentally and sometimes emotionally too. I'm holding things together, but it feels like a house of cards. Hopefully this week will be better.

I have to say that so far picketing has gone well. I'm a picket captain at the gate known as the most polite and friendly. I am relentlessy cheerful with the people we stop in their cars, and for the most part violent or aggressive behaviour has been kept to a minimum on our line. My fellow captains and picketers are also capable, and cheerful, and fun, and all around we are having as good an experience as we can have under daunting circumstances. That makes me feel good, if nothing else our little piece of the puzzle is operating safely and happily and collectively. You can't ask for much more than that from the people that have been thrown together to do this task.

I'm not so happy with some factions of the union, I must say. Many people assume that 6 hour meetings are okay - they are not, people with any other responsibility cannot stay and listen to you blow on. Greater length does not equal better democracy! Many people think that changing our demands is foolish - it is not, that's how bargaining is done. Many people, though, are working on responses to these issues (myself included) so perhaps someday we will get somewhere reasonable together.

And off to the line I go. Good day everyone!

I am really sick of

2008-11-10T12:20:00.000-08:00

people telling me to quit asking for more as I have the best contract in the sector. Damn right, and why should I give it up? Yes, times are tough, does that mean that everyone should roll over and accept wage cuts? I mean, come on, am I in the only sector in the world made up of people with terminal and professional degrees where I'm just supposed to settle with below-inflation raises every single year? I'm going backwards!