I was going to post this yesterday, but yesterday was a long day…an incredibly long, irritating day. It was bad enough that I had to get up early–bad because Ian and my sleep schedules have shifted drastically toward staying up late and getting up later. So getting up early was irritation enough to start the day off rough. The reason for getting up early is because Tuesday I got a phone call from the Chairperson of LLL saying he wanted to meet with me yesterday at ten to talk about the French program. So I went to the meeting figuring that we were going to talk about the fall and spring schedules or that he was going to tell me that the French 301 Advanced Grammar class was going to be cancelled if there weren’t enough students, etc. So I go in at ten and he starts talking about we’re trying to bring more students to the French department, which is why Keri has been teaching classes in English that count for both General Education and French, but that leaves more of the advanced French classes open like composition/conversation, history, and the like. At this point I’m figuring that he’s going to tell me I’m going to have to teach some other advanced course in the spring like I’m teaching French 301 in the fall. But then he starts talking about how “We really need someone with a PhD.”

Eh? So now my brain starts reorganizing this conversation. Keri shows up around this time and they both start talking about they won’t know anything for sure until August 1 at the latest, so there’s no reason to be out of my office until then, and if they don’t find anyone by then, then I will be teaching in the fall. By now the harsh reality of why I was called in was sinking in, and if you haven’t already figured it out: I’m losing my job. That is, if they can find another professor by August. Great. Just great.

They started going on about how I should really continue with education and teaching and how I should go through the “Transition to Teaching” program which would give me a high school teaching license with only a few classes and that Terre Haute South High School is hiring a French teacher part time right away. They’ve even gotten phone calls from school principals as far away as the Ohio border, so clearly there’s a high demand for French teachers at the high school level, and I could probably do the “Transition to Teaching” program while teaching part time at South. I informed them that I had been in the education program for three years and that I had dropped it the semester before student teaching. In fact, two more classes and student teaching would have gotten me my license. Telling them that didn’t impress upon them the notion that I don’t want to teach in a high school; in fact, it just made them believe I could finish the program even more easily. They suggested I go back to teaching University 101 part time; they suggested I talk to various people on campus about various programs; they suggested all sorts of things I could do this fall–just not teaching French at ISU.

They made it pretty clear that I needed to start looking now regardless of the fact that they haven’t found anyone new. I was genial and cordial throughout the entire meeting, leaving only to find I’d broken out in hives on my arms from the tension. It’s not the prospect of not returning to teach at ISU that has me worried; it’s finding something totally new. After all, I’ve been debating for some time now since the beginning of the spring semester whether I want to teach introductory level French, and I came to the conclusion that I really don’t; it just doesn’t interest me and I find it difficult because the majority of the students don’t care. Higher level classes are more what I’d be suited for, but I’m apparently not allowed to teach those regardless of the fact that I took an advanced class or two from an adjunct.

So that was major irritation number two. The first irritation actually took place before and after the meeting in the form of a couple e-mails from a student who is pissed off about her grade and won’t leave it alone. I’d e-mailed her before the meeting to tell her I’d look at the calculations again when I got home–just a note to let her know I was looking into things–and when I got home, I got a pissed off e-mail whining about the fact that I didn’t include any calculations and that I hadn’t looked at it yet. This student is simply reinforcing my resolve to never teach introductory French classes again. There was a time last semester that I felt pretty certain that if she were to continue on in the program, I would leave. She’s that irritating.

The next meeting was Knit Wits at four, and until I left for that, I just sat on the couch and stared at my computer, unable to concentrate on any one thing long enough to get anything done. I’d already decided that in response to the bitchy e-mail from my student, that she could just wait until today to hear back from me. There’s no reason for her to be so rude. Knit Wits was fine, and I got to show off some of Katie’s work to the other lady there. After that, I had a tutoring meeting at the Vigo County Public Library where, oddly enough, I explained in great detail why studying French is useful because my tutee was having a scholastic/career crisis. I probably couldn’t count the number of times I got asked “What are you going to do with that?” when I told people my major. Assholes. I may as well have constantly grilled them on their areas of study as well, but I’m not so unimaginative that I couldn’t come up with uses for their studies. But helping my tutee through her personal crisis made me feel just a little better, and I didn’t get home until around nine thanks to a train.

For the rest of the evening, I called Rook to wish him a happy birthday, found out Chuck and Jane will be down Friday night, called Katie to tell her I gave out one of her business cards, and crocheted the rest of the night while watching an old Hitchcock movie. I went to bed early (Midnight is early when you’ve been going to bed between three and four.) and got up about an hour and a half ago. On the docket for today: nothing, so long as I can help it. The hives are starting to clear up, and I think a nice cuppa will do me some good. May today be better for all of you.