Argh - while waiting for this silly program to load, I totally spaced what my basic premise for writing was.
Oh, yeah: my MIL is on lockdown in the home due to some sort of virus, so we are perhaps totally free from a trip to the State of Insanity this weekend. I have dangled the promise of painting my SIL's living room soon though - so perhaps next weekend.
Annoyance-du-jour: students unclear on email-as-professional-communication. A sample: "Hey. did u get my last email? i was wondering if u wd give me more time on [assignment] b/c i am now just getting [insert Classroom Management System name here] to work on my computer."
Dude. That's "Professor SnoCones" to you. It is 7 weeks into the semester. I have been posting notes and announcements and lectures on the course website for 8 weeks. Where have "u" been????
I am just too old-fashioned, perhaps, in dreaming of old-skool decorum. (E.g.: there any reason nowadays why men shouldn't wear hats indoors? I am always tempted to mock the hat-frat-boys for lack of manners - but what is the reason, I wonder, for asking boys to remove their hats in the classroom? (For starters: so I will know their names; one hatted joe looks just like the next - but perhaps they like it that way? but I really know all their names and can call on them at will - even if they are slouched down as if lack of eye contact makes them invisible. (Hint from the world of optics: it does NOT.))) Not rocket science, boyz.
Related annoyance: homeworks that produce the bare minimum, in which students are not willing to expend a single second to produce a better product, when in their judgment (ha!) the slacker half-assed job adequately meets the requirements of the assignment. I'm talking about graphics here, and students who wouldn't take 30 seconds to clean up a chart or graph of extraneous information, because "it's good enough."
I exhorted them yesterday: "have some pride in your work, people!" They stared dully straight-ahead, unimpressed by the harangue.
Good advice from an unrelated meeting yesterday: make all your objectives align; be strategic in what you do (and don't do) so that you move your own goals forward. Ha ha. If academics really took that dictum seriously no one would serve on any dopey administrative committees and the whole structure of academic governance would fall apart. (But would anyone notice??)
Ah, onward! I strive for excellence in a milieu of mediocrity.