Or, to be more precise, someone who has -- at least for a bit -- managed to use time wisely and had it pay off.
Y'all know I had surgery 5 weeks ago -- and was off work for 3weeks plus break.
What I may not have told y'all is that I need another surgery -- it's scheduled for Monday. It isn't a horrible ordeal or anything, more of a precaution -- but, it's necessary. The recovery time is 1 week.
Last week was my first week back to work from surgery #1. I worked my butt off to get stuff ready for my next week off, and to be ready for finals etc. This entailed writing quizzes and exams etc. In fact, I pretty much finished my class prep for the semester.
This week I started on the summer syllabus. I'm not kidding -- don't hate me :).
It's a good thing I didn't procrastinate like my students -- because one of my colleagues needed me...
Dog Dad had a non-life threatening but pretty-danged-painful medical emergency.
On Tuesday night my Dean called to tell me Dog Dad was in the hospital and we needed to arrange subs for him first thing in the morning.
Turns out that Dog Dad has a hell-a Wednesday, and I have one class.
It also turns out that my class doesn't meet when Dog Dad's 4 classes (including a night class) meet -- SO, I could sub for all of them.
Dog Dad subbed for me so I was happy to return the favor --plus we get an hourly rate for subbing and prep time--- so, I made some bonus $$ yesterday...
If I hadn't planned ahead and worked like crazy last week, I'd be up crap-creek this week.
I think it's that kid of planning my students just don't get. They don't see that stuff you'd never expect can throw your plans off in a big way. Yesterday, instead of no prep and 1 hour of teaching I had about 4-5 hours of prep and 7 hours of teaching (his 6, my 1 -- all the prep was his..). I could be flexible because I was ready...
Also -- Dog Dad was well-prepared too. He sent files with teaching notes and the quizzes I gave to his classes. His teaching notes taught me interesting stuff -- and they were an interesting look into how he thinks about topics/articles I teach too. He also had really nice classes -- which is probably a reflection of Dog Dad's overall niceness.
So -- even though I've taught a boatload in the last three days, I'm happy with the results.
And -- I spoke with Dog Dad today. He's planning to be back next week -- and healthy. I'm really happy about that.
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3 comments:
Glad to hear things worked out. I hope your surgery goes well and your recovery is speedy.
Some of my community college students seem to think that taking a class merely means showing up to a room (most of the time) for a few hours a week. Procrastination may also be a problem, but the bigger problem is that some students don't realize that there is anything to procrastinate about.
Mine seem to understand that there are assignments, but not that if you wait until the last minute to do them -- things often come up. When those "things" come up, somehow they think that's an excuse for not having done the assignment.
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