Occasional cases

Next term's schedule, which has just been released, makes me so annoyed. Because it contains core classes, I can't even drop them, so it looks like for 13 weeks next year, I'm going to have to take this utterly fucked-up schedule, which not only contains two 3-hour classes (not back to back, but ugh) in one day but also two night classes. I utterly loathe night classes, not only because I am so not a night person and not being a teenager anymore I can't go on after 8-9pm* but also this means I can't teach in the evening any more on those two days. This results in the really awful prospect of having to teach on other evenings, which does mean that all my weekday evenings will be taken up. The alternative is, of course, to do without an income stream, but you know, I like eating.

(I can't even take the damned module next year, because I finish up at the end of next year - all going well - and it is apparently only offered in the winter term for my course - and of course, there is no gurantee that even if I do the extreme thing and stretch my study plan out just to take it in winter 2014, it will NOT be a night class. Because the school's planning skills are so awe-inspiring, really.)

So it's Hobson's Choice.

I mean, really. I have already had to put up with all kinds of shitty scheduling problems due to shipping law but I can't blame anyone because it's an elective that I chose, so I keep my grumbles to a minimum, but this goddamn compulsory class's timing is giving me all sorts of die-in-a-fire rage.

*I can teach after that time***, but that's because I'm the one talking and in control. Plus in fact I'm already about to collapse on the inside; my latest classes - the ones I teach, I mean - last until 9.30. I stretch my concentration further by drinking lots of tea and giving myself surreptitious pinches to keep alert. To ask that I take a class from 6 to 9.15pm** is ugh... a little bit beyond human endurance? Keeping in mind you're marked on class participation. You have to do class presentations. It's just- I did it last term and it was very exhausting. I did it, and I don't want to do it anymore.

**The other night class is until 7.30pm. Not too awful timewise, but it does kill off any opportunity I have of teaching that particular evening unless I can arrange to teach from 8 to 9.30pm.

***I do, however, do my studying (and writing) late at night out of pure lack-of-time-ness and also that there are less interruptions at night. I keep nodding off between paragraphs. I'd really just prefer to study during the day, or mornings.

ETA: And that's not including the goddamn make-up classes. Because the school has a policy that if classes fall on public holidays, they should be made up on Saturdays. Which in next term number three. Three holidays, I mean. Two for Lunar New Year, one for Good Friday. All will be made-up on Saturdays the week before or after. And you know what, people have regularly scheduled stuff to do on Saturdays! Look, if I cannot teach in the evenings, then I have to teach on Saturdays, and I really cannot cancel on Saturdays more than once. It's my most heavily scheduled day of the week: 10 to 6. It's bad for my students and makes my boss side-eye me a lot, okay?

So, back from China. And need things to read that aren't in Chinese.

You know what I hate about the library? (Yeah, given my love of reading it'd seem like I love the library, but not really. I have much fondness for the old Stamford building, but library-wise... most days it's a qualified hate.)

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John Scalzi slagging NYT and bloggers. Tho' what he says of bloggers? Totally true. Well, that doesn't bode well for the continued existence of this blog. Ah, we shall see.