January 21, 2022

From Gerald R. Lucas

Updates from the Work Week covid-19: day 664 | US: GA | info | act

I’m finally making some headway on finishing my syllabi—that is coordinating between my documents here and Reddit and D2L. I have mostly been working on my schedule for ENGL 2122, and I think it’s shaping up nicely. Mostly, I should work on annotating some more poetry, adding a couple of reading quizzes to D2L, and making my initial Reddit posts for each assignment.

Speaking of Reddit, I’m impressed with the community-building tools it offers. r/LitWiki is really looking good. I added some resources in the sidebar, and I think I programmed the automoderator to post a comment in each new thread that reminds students what they should be doing. I’ll test it later today.

I have so many students this semester. I’m already feeling stresses and overwhelmed, and the emails are already coming in. And I have my self-assessment coming up. It used to be a simple affair: one form to fill out. Now, the explanatory email from the dean was long and complex—adding much more for us to do to prove that we professors are doing our jobs.[1] I don’t know why I can’t just send my cv to them. I dread this process, but I have a bit more real work to do first.



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  1. I think all of this extra stuff is, again, more about middle-management justifying their own jobs than it is about what we profs are doing. That said, I wonder when we’ll be able to evaluate them. That’s something I would look forward to doing.