Discouraged

I made it through another double-duty day on very little sleep. I did a lot of praying to get through it safely, intelligently, calmly, and compassionately. I think I managed all that pretty well, but it was still a pretty discourging day.

My biochem class had an exam that I had inteneded to be straightforward, though not necessarily easy. It didn't turn out that way. Several questions turned out to be rather ambiguous. Why do they seem so clear until the students touch them? The emails keep coming. I may drop a couple questions, which would be a huge hassle since I would need their answer sheets to adjust the grades and I wasn't planning on being back in Detroit again until Monday and I know they don't want to wait that long.

To add to my anxiety about giving exams to lecture halls full of students, a student emailed me today to tell me that several people were cheating on the exam and have done so on previous exams. Just great. I had no idea it was happening and I have no idea how to prevent it. I'll admit that I didn't try as hard on this exam, but on the last exam there were three version with the questions in different orders and the answers to the questions in different orders, and about a quarter of the questions were different. I also had two proctors helping watch the students very carefully. What else can I do? I don't know, but I feel obligated to do something.

A Month Already?

That was an unscheduled leave of absence. I'm still online regularly, but it's all about work and I haven't checked my usually blogs for quite a while. Now I'm afraid to do so since the task of catching up seems so daunting!

I've been bogged down with work but it's about to let up. for the past two weeks I've been teaching Biochem at Wayne State on Monday and Wednesday mornings, then driving to Lansing to teach Microbiology Lab Monday-Thursday afternoons. It's a lot of driving but I only do it for one more week. A week from today is my last day of Biochem. Overall I think the class has gone pretty well. In a few weeks I'll know what my students think; they filled out their evaluations of my teaching today. I expect them to be relatively good, but not great. I wonder if Wayne State will offer me a position in the fall. I wonder if I'll take it. Teaching lectures at Wayne is more work and less fun, but pays a lot better than LCC.

I might stick with LCC just to keep my stress level down. I'm interested in taking good care of myself since I found out that Bill and I are expecting a baby in January. We're both very excited about the impending arrival, but for me the last few weeks have been a haze of work, nausea, and exhaustion. I've just started feelinng a little better in the last couple days. I hope the improvement continues so that I can enjoy the two big weddings coming up.

I hope to get better about postinng soon. There are a lot of things I'd like to write about, but I only seem to have time for a quick update on recent doings. Here's looking forward to the month of July!