Tuesday, April 7

Soon I'll have my Mondays back

One more hellish Monday to go and finally I will be over and done with teaching for this sem. I particularly hated this sem's teaching because my so called lecturer was totally absent from manning the teaching on the tutor side. Miss-haps on her side include: giving a one-line project specification in which she basically asks students to choose their own topic and later altering it to add more confusing and un-explained lines and THEN not scheduling a meeting with us tutors such that we know what to tell our students. This resulted in a continuous back-and-forthing and contradictions between what she says and what we/I say.

Next, she formulated the midterm wrongly such that one questions had 3 possible answers (b,d,e). Because of an unfortunate sickness of her husband she couldn't grade the midterm and as such we graded them for her (150 scripts each) using her answer (b). Then when students go to her to ask about said question she says and I quote: "go talk to your tutor".

Next, it was uploading the new tutorials but not sending us neither the tutorial nor the solutions (I got the tutorials from IVLE and luckily they were the same as last year so I had the solutions - wrong as they were - from then). Next, she uploaded two tutorials in one file (i.e. Tutorial 9&10) without letting us know which was which (there were 5 questions in that file, so then I didn't know which tutorial had 3 and which had 2). She again reused last sem's tutorial but changed the order of the questions (ha! - but only in the questions and not in solutions of course).

Next, and I think is one of the worst, she gave the students an extension of the deadline for the code until the very day in which they have to demo their code to me (which means that I can't view the code b4 they present). Not only that, but she didn't let any of the tutors know. ANYFUCKINGONE. Which of course led to me being high-jacked in class. Pfft. I know that the code extension is for her to up her good feedback points from the students, but still... Top everything with a less than great class this sem and thus my mondays were hellish. Hellish because I try to recap the important points discussed in lecture BUT either (a) students do not attend lecture; (b) the lecture quality sux; (c) students suck so I end up in talking and trying and talking and drawing and talking for three-fucking-hours.

In no particular order, here is a list of things that I did when my brain was mush on Monday afternoon:

  • Bought two laptops instead of one.

  • Bought plane ticket home and did not think that mom's bday was around that date, hence missing it by a week

  • Lost confirmation number for US Visa appointment - trying to get it now -> cannot call US embassy until 2:30pm GOT IT!!!

  • Stood in line at DBS bank holding a form and frantically calling Marian who was in the middle of a meeting with the Prof. to tell me what to do with the form

  • Being depressed and scared shit that I will not get my passport back from the US Visa in time for me to leave to Romania - apparently they only hold it for two days (provided I get the confirmation id) hence 21 april + 2 = 23 April (leaving on the 24th) - but last night all I could think about was that they hold it for like a week or so

  • Writing demo schedule on the whiteboard based on student options for all my 17 demo groups and then copying it wrongly. Realize mistake after erasing said whiteboard.



Wow I finally let it all out - I had problems complaining about her because of her husband's illness but wow it really needed to come out.

2 comments:

jensen said...

Shit happens. And it's over! Except the passport thing. Relax!

claudia said...

yeah, if not, pretty soon I'll have to say that wednesday is my most productive day of the week! Or even worse, Friday!!