One Student Left

I've got one student who still owes me work--she's delaying my ability to wash my hands of this whole teaching thing. She hasn't turned in her two papers, and didn't show up for her presentation, and has had a crisis of one sort or another every time I confronted her (friend dead, car towed, computer crashed, car retrieved from towing but not functioning, rode bus but ended up in Essex instead of Towson, dog run over by grandma, grandma in a car crash, grandma run over, dog towed, dog ate computer, grandma ate dog, etc). I just called and left a message on her voicemail: "You have until noon Wednesday--I've already delayed enough. If you wanted to pass this class you would've gotten this work to me by Monday as originally agreed. The last couple excuses weren't even good enough to merit my contempt. At noon tomorrow I'll be posting the grades for the course, and unless I have your overdue work on my desk at that time, and quite possibly even if I do, you'll be receiving an F. Have a good break!"

I failed three students last semester, I'll gladly fail another this time around--I mean, come on--read my ratemyprofessor.com remarks: my classes are "EASY," and "if you don't get an A in this class you don't belong in college," etc.

One student wrote, cryptically: "Def smokes up."

I wanted to start aggressively shifting tonight, as I'm in charge of resetting the entire Bound Periodicals section and need to get it done before we leave for Honduras in January. Alas, shifting books is goddam noisy, and the students, who are actually serious about studying here quietly for a change, don't appreciate me clanging around with carts and dusty old volumes. So I did some video orders instead. Tomorrow I've got training on the new Aleph during the afternoon, which will eat into more time I'd like to devote to this project.

I had some personal time and a holiday I needed to use before January or I would have lost it, so Thursday I'm taking a half day and Friday I'm off! Woo-hoo, a three-day-weekend before a two-day week and a nice, fat, break. I'll be missing the Tech Services Xmas bash Thursday, though, which kind of sucks, but we 2nd floor folks don't mingle too often with the 3rd floor royalty anyway.