Baltimore Diary

Not Exactly Making the Grade

Mr. Burns: Now, let's get down to business.
Homer: [thinks] Oh, man. I have to go to the bathroom. Why did I have all that beer and coffee and watermelon?
Mr. Burns: Now Homer, I know what you're thinking. I want to take the pressure off. Now, it doesn't take a 'whiz' to know that you're looking out for 'Number One'. Well, listen to me, and you'll make a big splash very soon.

—The Simpsons, "Last Exit to Springfield", 3/11/93

---------------------------------

There's a lot of things that have been going on lately. Work is busier than ever this year. I had two classes last semester. GF and I have been thinking about getting another house. I'm sure there's other stuff going on. But it's starting to pile up on me now, and it doesn't help that this is the time of year that I start to get really discombobulated.

Over the last few weeks I refinanced my house to get a loan that we can use as part of a down payment on the new place. We almost had a house in Violetville, but it turned out to have some serious structural problems. But because we were thisclose to making an offer, getting another house has turned into a kind of obsession for GF for these last two weeks.

Last semester I had the one class in Supervision and the first half of my practicum. Work had me so crazy that I knew I was far too distracted to earn decent grades. And it showed: my grades came in the mail today and they were dismal. In the Supervision class I got a B+. I knew that was coming because the professor called me, concerned. The practicum grade was a complete surprise: C+, which is the worst grade I've gotten since I was an undergrad who didn't give a crap anymore. Worse yet, this means that the City is going to be looking for some of its tuition money back. Basically I've spent so much time doing the job I'm preparing for, that I'm flunking the class that's supposedly training me to do the job. I'm not even sure at this point of the specific reason that the grade was so bad. It could be my attendance, it could be that my portfolio is missing something important; I really have no idea just now.

But with the house thing and the workload that I've got, I'm seriously considering putting off those last three credits.

No Good Deed...

Last week, in Supervision class, we were reviewing the syllabus, going over the readings, the assignments and other stuff, as one does during the first class. The woman sitting next to me had a dual problem: first, she'd ordered the wrong edition from Amazon.com. This meant that most of the case studies weren't in her book. Second, because she'd ordered the book from Amazon, it hadn't arrived yet (being a used copy, I presume it didn't come directly from Amazon). So not only is she without a book, she's without the wrong edition.

So I, being a gracious fella, offer to lend her my copy so she can go to the basement of Gibbons Hall and photocopy it after class. She accepts, but at the end of class discovers that she doesn't have the money to pull it off. So I, moving now into Nice Guy Schmuck mode, let her borrow the book and we make arrangements for her to drop it off at one of my schools on Thursday, including instructions that if I'm not there, drop it off anyway with my name on it and I'll pick it up later on. That turned out to be a good idea, since my schedule changed and I didn't go to the school on Thursday.

The whole thing, however, turned out to be a bad idea because my book never made it there. I came in on Monday and nobody had come by with it. So tonight I had to go in and tell the professor that I wasn't able to do the reading because my book hadn't been returned. (She'd seen the transaction last week.) Fortunately there weren't any writing assignments and I was able to keep up with the discussion but what a pain.

She did come in with my book (late), and she did apologize, although I really wasn't listening to her excuse. But sometimes it doesn't pay to be kind. And I hate having that attitude, never mind that that's pretty much my default state.

Free At Last, Free At Last

Thornton Melon: [after answering 27 parts from one question of the final exam] No more!... I feel like I just gave birth...to an accountant.

—Back to School, 1986

-----------------------------------

Free until September, anyway.

The Curriculum Development class had me incredibly busy these last few weeks. There was at least one paper, and usually two, due at every session. So in between the Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes, there was Your Humble Narrator, frantically doing readings, writing papers and in the meantime trying to get Summer Team work done.

So the class is over, now, although there's one more project to deal with, although that's due next week and we get to mail it in, so not nearly as much stress on that score. Now I can actually concentrate on the kids for whom I've been doing meetings; my co-workers have been taking up way too much of that slack.

More Off Than Pay

Well...I'm glad I didn't say too much about yesterday's class the other day. It turns out that, even though my teacher said several times that we were "going to meet" a pretty famous person in the educaitonal field, he was speaking metaphorically.

Oh well. Back to the grind. Three sessions, five papers and a project to go.

Payoff?

Daughter went home last night. Naturally her flight was delayed. That whole "first hour free" at BWI's parking lot isn't as attractive as it once was.

Yesterday I went to work and then straight to Notre Dame for class. Then BACK to work to drop off the materials from that day and pick up the stuff I'll need during the day today. That took me till after 6:00 so I told GF to grab the girls and meet me at Italiano's for dinner. From there I took Daughter to the airport.

We get there a little after 8:00 for her 9:10 flight. We're told it's delayed until 9:40. The plane hits the gate at 9:35, so I'm thinking that a 9:40 departure isn't going to happen, and I'm right. The plane pulls away from the gate at about 9:55, which isn't too bad. On the other hand, we've already spent more time in the airport than Daughter will spend in the air. I got home at about 10:30 and tried to do some advance work for today but between the long day and the lack of glasses, I'm exhausted. (GF took the glasses in and they agreed to replace them for nothing, but it'll take a week. Meantime, this was a good reason I should have gotten a spare set. Dammit.)

Meantime I'm still working my tail off for this Curriculum class, but if I understood the teacher correctly, we're going to be meeting a reasonably big name in the educational field on Friday, which will make the ordeal of this class worth my while. Stay Tuned...

First Day Back

Ack!

Yesterday I started the Curriculum Development course at Notre Dame.

My first problem was the thing that happened last week, which I think I mentioned somewhere on Epiphany's site. I went to school and realized I didn't know the room number. So I went to the board outside the Registrar's office and discovered that class didn't start until this week. Duhhhhh.

Not wanting to waste the trip, I went to the bookstore to get the textbooks for the class. Lemme tellya, friends: Textbooks can get pretty fricken expensive, but I wasn't prepared for this. The books for this one class, which runs for three weeks, cost more than the books for my last two classes combined. I nearly had a heart attack right there in the store. The total for this session: $238.  I'm feeling faint all over again just typing about it.

The class started yesterday afternoon. We have eight sessions between now and the 14th. There's at least one paper due each class. I've already written the first one but I get the feeling that I'm going to come out of this exhausted.

Two Educations for the Price of One

I didn't win anything in Atlantic City, but that's OK. I lost about $120, plus another $20 bill that I just can't find even though I know I didn't spend it. I have to wonder if someone got a really good tip late in the day.

Tonight, despite the holiday, I had to go to class. But I had another bit of business to take care of, first. I had a little trouble doing my homework because there was a problem with one of my textbooks.

I'm not proud. I don't have a problem with buying used textbooks. They're a little bit cheaper, and often you can get a pretty clean copy. I don't worry about highlighting or notes in the margins although I do ignore them; I have no idea whether or not the person who had the book ahead of me was a complete moron and highlighted all the wrong stuff. So I expect a few imperfections.

I expect highlighting.

I expect notes scrawled all over the book (one book of mine had football picks from some week last season).

I expect a little wear on the cover and a little dogearing or smudging on the pages.

However, silly guy that I am, I also expect that the book have all of its pages. It turns out that some of the pages in the book have these "quiz yourself" type of tests, where you figure out whether you're a Type-A, whether you have good self-monitoring skills, and so forth. And furthermore it turns out that the pages are perforated for easy removal. So, they were removed easily, and because they're not all together it wasn't easy to figure out that pages were missing until you got to that spot.

Before class started I went to the bookstore (which, fortunately, is in the same building) and explained the situation. The attitude of the girl behind the counter was pretty much, "Hey, you gotta expect stuff like this with a used book." Um...no, no I don't. She called over her boss, who told me to go get another copy and we'd make an exchange.

Naturally, there were no other used copies, so I had to get a new book and pay the difference. While the transaction's being rung, the boss said something about how they'd have to look a little more carefully at the buybacks. Gee, ya think? How long have they been doing this, anyway?

So because of all this grief, and having to fill out paperwork because of the exchange (because I haven't had enough crap to deal with), I wound up late to class and not quite prepared to discuss the reading. Bah. At least the assignment I handed in last week had nice comments on it, although I completely missed the point of part of the project. The professor is letting me re-submit that part, though, since it has to go into my online portfolio as part of the Administrative Certification process.

And, of course, next semester I get the syllabus early and buy my books via Amazon or eBay.

I Don't Know!

I've already gotten a bunch of hits from people who are wondering if Baltimore City schools are closed tomorrow. Here's the official word: I don't know. I go by the Baltimore Sun's website. Try them (link in the sidebar).

And one poor soul came here wanting to know if West Hempstead, NY schools are closed. Maybe Newsday knows that one.

But feel free to stick around and read the "Bitching About Work" posts if you want to hear some stories about the Baltimore schools. They're not all complaints. Not ALL of them. Only most.

This Bird Has Flown

The morning of December 9, 1980 was much like any other at first. I was a Senior in high school. I woke up early for some reason. The first thing I did every morning was turn on my radio, which was tuned to WABC. It was still a music station then. The morning DJ at the time was Dan Ingram. For those of you who remember New York radio in those days, this was a brief experiment on WABC's part, and it wasn't too much longer before he was back at the afternoon drive shift.

If you don't know him, Dan Ingram is probably one of the best disk jockeys ever. He's funny, he's clever, he's sincere. If Bruce Morrow was everyone's cousin, Dan Ingram was the uncle with the bizarre sense of humor. When Chairman Mao visited New York City, Dan suggested that the Chairman looked a little like the guy who did his laundry. Many time he'd talk back to the records or the commercials, usually taking them out of context: "No sir, I would NEVER 'void where prohibited'." Dan's shift usually flew by because you had so much fun listening to him.

This morning, however, he was rather somber. Something had happened and it took several minutes for me to piece it together because of the time that I came in. There were references to "he" and "him" and it was only very slowly that I realized that John Lennon was dead. Not only that he was dead, but that somebody who was known perhaps worldwide for his efforts at peace had died a violent death. A lone gunman, someone described by a local police officer as "a wack job", had ambushed Lennon late the night before, as he returned home from a recording session, the one that would ultimately become the Milk and Honey album.

In retrospect, even though police were there in a heartbeat, and even though they didn't bother waiting for an ambulance (they piled him into a cruiser and drove him to the hospital), he arrived at the hospital alive but it was too late; there was too much damage done. He had no pulse, no blood pressure. He wasn't breathing. They worked on him for maybe twenty minutes before they gave up.

I got to school early every day because I was the guy who did the morning announcements on the PA system. I remember taking notes on all of this because I wanted to share some of this information. When I got to school I realized that there were people who still didn't know everything that had happened. For many of the people in Kings Park High School that morning, I was the person who broke the news that Lennon had died.

Twenty-five years ago today, John Lennon was killed outside his apartment house. I still remember some parts of that day vividly.

We all shine on.

Heads Explodin' Everywhere

Coming back from Florida, I certainly hit the ground running.

I got a bunch of homework done while I was away; enough to get me only a week behind. By now I'm almost done with everything, which is just as well, since I only have one class left. I'm hoping that I can get my last brief done tonight so I can hand in my last two a couple of days early; then all I have to worry about is my presentation on Zero Tolerance policies, which I'm doing on Thursday. Then I'm done with the Legal Issues class. I really did enjoy this class but it's not something to be given over seven sessions for four hours at a time. First, it gives the topic short shrift, and second, we never met for the full four hours. I went through this when I took the Assessment course as well. It was a summer course, so we met four times for something like six hours at a pop. You don't get a good appreciation for what you're learning. Of course, when I get to the Technology course, which will teach me how to post stuff to the World Wide Web (a-hem), it'll be the Interminable Death March of Classes. Feh.

So I've got homework to finish, a presentation to complete, then two reports that are already due from work and a third that will be generated tomorrow when I do another observation, then in the afternoon I'm meeting with someone to start another training session, which means another presentation to BEGIN.

If you see a guy walking around town with a big smoky hole where his head should be? That'd be me.