Day 6 - California Reopening Plan - Phase 2
7:30-The dog is up. You know the drill. I go upstairs and back to bed.
11:00-12:00- I read a Money Diary, drink my water, and listen to The Daily.
12:00-1:00- Shower. Wash hair, but I let it air dry. I dress in my Covid-19 uniform: t-back sports bra, Fila tank top, but mix it up with silver cropped leggings that L. gave me about 100 years ago. I wipe down my bathroom counters, clean the mirror, and do a swish-and-swipe of the toilet.
1:00-2:00- I eat an orange then put the dishes away, sweep the floors, and take out the trash. I do more refrigerator damage control and also check the freezer and pantry for supplies - I start compiling a grocery list for the next time L. goes to the store. I return my patio cushions to the patio - no sign of rain today - and refill the dog food and water dispensers. I unpack two boxes - Simple Green and diaper wipes - then put the boxes in the recycling.
Can you tell I’m stalling? I’m supposed to Zoom into my French class at 2:00, but I didn’t complete the assignment. Yet. My professor puts us in “breakout” groups at the beginning of class so we can discuss our 1-2 pg. papers regarding the week’s reading. Unfortunately, I have nothing to discuss and do not want to embarrass myself in a breakout group. I’ve found that by entering the class a little after 2:30, the breakout groups have concluded and the main lecture has begun.
I work from 2:00-2:45, putting together a compare-and-contrast essay concerning Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. My second assignment is to come up with a topic for my paper due on 6/3/20 and this mini-essay seems as good a place as any to start. I can expand on this essay later, in a longer paper. Did I also mention I have a presentation due next Wednesday on Driss Chraibi? I’m especially interested in his book, Inspector Ali, since it allegedly features a “Sherlockian sleuth.”
3:00-4:00- I Zoom into class, one hour late. While my professor lectures, I email her my paper. There are still 11/12 of us in the class and, as usual, only three of the students are showing their faces. Because I’m incognito, I work on other projects such as:
-Finally, this college’s Summer Semester schedule is up and I check to see if French classes are being offered, but there’s nothing. I return mentally to the class and we all read a play together. My professor wants to put us in more breakout rooms to share notes on various authors - she says this will help us prepare for the Final, but I got an A on the Midterm doing my own prep and I have a 96% in the class. I leave the meeting and exit Zoom, In real life, this is the equivalent of leaving class to go to the bathroom and then never returning. I have some of the macaroni I made last night.
4:00-8:30- I check email at my state job and decide its time to set up an Etrade account before the market goes back up again. It just tanked, after the Fed Chairman revealed - as if we didn’t know - that our economy will never be the same again. I have been putting this off for some time because it seemed so overwhelming, BUT Etrade makes it very easy. I open an account. I transfer some money to the account. I’m a day trader, y’all. I want to be a responsible trader and only purchase shares that I’ve ethically sourced…so, I’m thinking about what to buy.
-Still trying to get that HELOC so I can reno my bathroom in August or September. I reach out to Mr. Cooper, my current lender (the loan’s been transferred four times), to see what they can do. Yes, Mr. Cooper is the actual name of the mortgage company.
-I grade an 11-pg. paper.
-I debate whether or not I want to go down the rabbit hole of student emails, then decide to take the plunge. I immediately regret it when I see an email from my Dean. One of my students complained - in fact, it’s the very student whom I posted about yesterday - in a long, rambling, incoherent email to my Dean.
Although I told the student she could continue using a previous edition of our text and take Inquizitives on a different “platform”, I unequivocally told her that she would HAVE to contact the publisher to have her grades transferred to MY platform, i.e., my gradebook. If that’s not done, there’s no record that she completed 15 assignments and no record of her grades. A screen shot will not suffice for final grade compilation.
The fact that I’ve been telling her this for four months was not noted in her email to my Dean and she continued to ‘lie by omission’ throughout, stating that I told her it would be okay to use an older edition, that she can “show” my Dean the email thread between us, that she has worked “really hard” to try to get a C in the class (she currently has a 48% and received a score of 2 out of 20 on the extra credit assignment), etc.
In her schizophrenic musings to my Dean, she made no mention of her previous lie to me, wherein she said she received a low score on her latest Inquizitive (23%) because she had used an older edition of our textbook; however, upon further questioning, she admitted she lied. In truth, she abruptly stopped taking the test because she had things to do. That’s why she got an F - not because she had an older edition. Of course, none of this was relayed in her email to my Dean.
To make matters worse, the student emailed me, right before she started trashing me, that she and my publisher’s representative were working on the problem. Then, she reported me. Why was that even necessary? We were close to achieving resolution. In 18 years, I’ve only had 4 students complain about me. I. don’t. like. it.
In her email to me, my Dean didn’t even bother to start with a greeting. She just forwarded the student’s babblings and told me to respond to the student and cc her [Dean] on the email. When I looked at the database, I could tell the publisher was having difficulty locating the student’s ‘mystery’ grades. Other than a bogus screen shot, neither he nor I have no way of knowing if she actually completed the work. At this point, it hardly matters as I really need this job. I put a 90% in the grade column and deem the problem fixed, emailing my student that her grade increased from 48% to 65% - yay - and dutifully cc’ing my Dean in the process. Congratulations - you are now getting a D in the class. My student responded effusively, but I didn’t bother to reply. My Dean said nothing.
-The last day of class is Monday and some of my students are starting to panic about their grades. A few of them emailed me, asking if they could complete the last 15 assignments they missed. No.
Disgusted, I shut everything down.
8:30-10:00 p.m. - I create another makeshift trellis out of more gardening wire, this time for my Lady Banks rose bush, on the other side of the yard. Like before, it is slow going, but I manage to hammer a screw into the cinder block and use that as a central point for the ‘spokes’ of the trellis. It turns out okay. A helicopter circles continuously and is so annoying. **Later, L. will tell me that someone was mugged on the paseo and law enforcement was searching for the suspect.
10:00-12:30 a.m. - I put lemon/basil fish in the oven, previously prepped by Whole Foods, and microwave frozen rice that L. picked out 1 1/2 months ago when there was a run on rice and she couldn’t find it anywhere. I haven’t worked with this rice previously, so was putting off using it for dinner as I’m used to box rice, but it was fine. I put the dinner away then make two batches of Almond Butter cookies, topped with diced pecans. I listen to True Crime Garage and drink champagne while I work. Tonight’s dinner is cookie dough and that’s about it. Not hungry today. L. said the cookies were good.
12:30-2:00 - L. and I watch Married at First Sight.
2:00-3:00 - Bedtime routine and sleep. Four days without exercise. I’m such a sloth.