Anyone Else Hit a Wall?

[secundem_artem]

Artem U has a sort of "all hands" conference before the start of the fall term each year.  This year, it became clear that absolutely everybody was stressed out of their minds and only hoping to get through the year without contemplating serious self-harm.  Somebody in one of the Zoom breakouts made the comment that grace and forgiveness would be deeply needed this year.

So this year, every Zoom class I have has a welcome slide that reads "Remember.... Grace & Forgiveness"

And it's worked.  Students forget to turn in homework and expect a penalty?  Nope I extend grace & forgiveness.  I screw up an assignment question or a due date - they in turn provide grace & forgiveness for my fvck ups. 

This ain't fun, but we are getting through the semester a bit tattered but more or less intact.

My advice - offer grace & forgiveness to all and especially to yourself.  It's either that or start drinking hand sanitizer.

[little bongo]

I've been going a few weeks where I can a) more or less clean myself and b) show up. It's not me at my best. Also, I narrowly missed retrenchment.

So I might be turning a corner.

[Langue_doc]

I'm finding the constant online presence to be overwhelming. Last weekend I took two days off from course-related matters. This weekend, I took today off. I have to schedule at least one three-day weekend break a month for the next semester, especially because Spring break has been canceled.

[mamselle]

I miss France, planning to go to France, thinking about France....I'd be doing all that around about now, prepping my usual research trip.

Instead, lots of emails and texts to friends and relatives, and the occasional Google-maps virtual walkabout visit of towns I usually get to see live.

And I have lots of catch-up work to do from pictures and notes never really filed from the past few trips, so there's that.

Ca va, la vie, c'est comme ca...

M.

[evil_physics_witchcraft]

Sorry to hear that larryc and others have hit a wall. I feel as if I have been repeatedly hitting a wall, getting up, taking infinitesimally small baby steps and then crashing again.

It has been rough. Everyone, please be kind to yourselves.

[Langue_doc]

Sorry to hear that larryc and others have hit a wall. I feel as if I have been repeatedly hitting a wall, getting up, taking infinitesimally small baby steps and then crashing again.

It has been rough. Everyone, please be kind to yourselves.

+1

[secundem_artem]

And, of course, THIS is the time when all the tall foreheads and deep thinkers in our IT department, have decided to roll out a brand new LMS.

[downer]

And, of course, THIS is the time when all the tall foreheads and deep thinkers in our IT department, have decided to roll out a brand new LMS.

Probably because it is cheaper! I know how it feels.

[cathwen]

My university switched to a new LMS starting this fall, but at least they warned us at the beginning of the summer and provided workshops and a "sandbox" to play with so that we would be fairly comfortable with it in the fall.  They also decided to keep the old LMS until the end of the spring semester (that's when the contract runs out), so no one was forced to adopt the new one right away.  And yes, IT said it was because the new one is cheaper.  (And actually, now that I'm used to it, I like it better than the old one.)

Implementing a new LMS, smack in the middle of the academic year, seems like strange timing! 

[Anon1787]

Yes. The most senior faculty in my department pushed most of their teaching loads to the spring semester hoping that face-to-face classes will resume, which (along with budget cuts) resulted in maximum teaching loads this fall for more junior people like me. Being assigned in late July two courses I have not taught in a while (making them de facto new preps), not having any break between Labor Day (one whole day off!) and Thanksgiving (this year we only have Wed-Fri off instead of the full week), and the LMS (which I find clunky and time-consuming) have made this semester a relentless grind with little joy in teaching even my favorites courses.

[AmLitHist]

We're keeping our LMS (Blackboard. . . yay?) for the foreseeable future*, but a notice went up last week saying that it will be unavailable from Dec. 22-January 5? 6? 

That's a PitA for people like me who don't do Christmas or travel for the holidays.  I always work on Spring prep ahead of time and finish up during Christmas week, so I can have a nice stretch of not thinking about work for a couple of weeks.  And with the pandemic, there will be many more who will want to do the same this year.

In addition, we all have to use the Official Course of Record (TM) for the classes I teach, and the dimwit who developed/maintains one of them has said she'll try to have the updated version** ready after Thanksgiving, so we can get everything loaded and customized (schedule, due dates, our own version of the syllabus, etc.)  Based on her lack of responsiveness in general over the years, I think we'll be lucky to see a similarly half-assed version by Service Week.


*  We've been "changing LMS's" since long before I did my stint as acting OE director in 2010-11.  We still periodically get an email, begging us to serve on a committee to investigate and recommend, but usually they can't draw enough interest to actually do anything.  I think a committee was finally bullied into existence convened in the spring, but again, I'm not holding my breath.

**The COR should be scrapped until Fall 2021, because at last check, the list of errors, inconsistencies, typos, and complaints about outright stupidities (i.e., in this Comp I class, as written, a student can fail every essay and still pass with a C if they turn in all the many busywork homework assignments) was over 250 items submitted from those of us teaching it this fall.  There are a number of us ignoring the "you MUST use this class as written" edict this fall by tossing a lot of the overwhelming busywork BS, reassigning point values to prioritize essays, etc.  Our union has our backs if we get busted, and with all the general chaos of most everything being online and the OE director and her staff of dozens being completely overwhelmed (that's what you get with an Admin who's never taught), we're thinking we probably won't get caught, or if we do, we might get a weak finger-wagging out of it.

[Cheerful]

We're keeping our LMS (Blackboard. . . yay?) for the foreseeable future*, but a notice went up last week saying that it will be unavailable from Dec. 22-January 5? 6? 

That LMS unavailability is beyond ridiculous.  Faculty should make it clear that this is unacceptable.

[downer]

We're keeping our LMS (Blackboard. . . yay?) for the foreseeable future*, but a notice went up last week saying that it will be unavailable from Dec. 22-January 5? 6? 

That LMS unavailability is beyond ridiculous.  Faculty should make it clear that this is unacceptable.

Totally agree.

I have taken to putting all the docs I prepare for my online classes on my Google drive and making them available to the students by sharing them with links. It gives me less work and frusration when schools decide to change their LMS, accidentally delete a shell, or the LMS goes down.

[waterboy]

I'm at that stage where I can begin to at least contemplate retirement. So, I dunno if it's a wall or possible retirement. But. Every. Single. Effing. Day.

[polly_mer]

We're keeping our LMS (Blackboard. . . yay?) for the foreseeable future*, but a notice went up last week saying that it will be unavailable from Dec. 22-January 5? 6? 

That LMS unavailability is beyond ridiculous.  Faculty should make it clear that this is unacceptable.

The problem is sometimes the IT folks need a good week to get everything transitioned over, upgraded, tested, and then fixed when something goes wrong.  It's far better to schedule that over Christmas when fewer faculty will be using it daily than to pick the week before courses start when everyone should be using the LMS daily.

There's no good time to make the LMS totally unavailable, but during Christmas week (if IT can make it work with their employees' schedules) is a much less bad time than many other common choices that work better for the employees in IT.