When last we left off…
Thursday, January 10th, 2008Yes, the “to be continued” updates, as promised in yesterday’s post. Alright, well we left off at Thanksgiving where I proceeded to catch a very nasty cold and also where the realization hit that finals and grades were rapidly approaching. I swear that from Thanksgiving until now, the only thing I’ve done is catch up on grading, write final exams and then grade them. Honestly. No lie. It was eerily familiar to being an undergrad, but from the teacher’s side, which I will say can be similarly as stressful. ESPECIALLY when…yes, here come the usual ridiculous parts.
So anyway, clearly December is lacking posts. Well, it honestly was a whirlwind. First off, Christmas was no extravagant ordeal here. In fact, the lack of family and having to teach on Christmas just made it a regular day, which is exactly how I dealt with it. So, no Christmas in 2007, but that’s ok because…my mom and sisters announced they would be visiting in mere weeks!! Actually, they will be here next Saturday. So, that also put some more craziness into December with flights, visas and all of their travel arrangements. And of course, that was in addition to getting all of Ryan’s stuff ready for his Asia adventures. Definitely good things to be busy with!! Yay for seeing everyone soon!
All right, so school. Well, of course I had been wondering about the final exam schedule for weeks but that’s a whole other fiasco. Anyway, condensed version: Lack of planning and notification is just another day here. So, when at last the secret dates were revealed to me, I was told that my four sections of VLS could have their final exams during the last week of classes. Ok, that’s fine. But, we would have to hold out for the writing exam until January 18 since it’s a core class for the major, blah blah blah, etc. Of course that’s not cool since the family arrives the next day and I’ll have 75 finals to grade and get paperwork lined up for (more on that to come). And after much protest, it seems that the almighty gods from some very authoritative department that I don’t even know, refused to budge on the date even with my reason. Throughout all of this, my students had also been badgering me to change the exam date because they wanted to go home earlier. No go. So that explains my current presence in Kunming waiting until next week’s final. So, whatever, no change on that. Well, so I thought I had everything lined up until it was sprung on me that I should give all four sections of the VLS exam together on one day and needed to make those arrangements. Ironically, the purpose would be to cut down on cheating since the almighty gods choose from two versions of the exam you present to them and select the one that will be given as the final. The other will wait until those who fail the class appeal to retake the final. Efficient. Right. So anyway, there was this whole fiasco in arranging a date and time that worked for all 140 of the students and finally resulted in me washing my hands to the matter and telling them that if they couldn’t make it to the final, it wasn’t my problem (Yeah, this is the part of December when I became utterly stressed out and pretty much resembled every evil Disney villain. I’m not even lying; the runaround with everything was out of control.)
So put that one aside for a minute. The good thing that happened was that I read the fine print on some of my IBS forms and found out I could give their final exam a week earlier than expected AND could cancel the last week of class if I went that route. SWEET! So, we crammed in five-paragraph essays and had a final. Voila. Ok, so that was finished, except for the grading and a little bit of paperwork.
Then came the waves of e-mails about the paperwork for the English Department. Very helpful ones, but the fact that there was this much was crazy!! And in Chinese!! (p.s. I went to IBS to ask for help with my Chinese forms and they thought it was strange. Did I also mention my life began to resemble a bizarre sitcom for the last few weeks? Honestly, it was weird.) So yes, on top of the paperwork came the instructions about how to grade the finals. I thought I had accomplished something by mastering the format of the exam (nothing was logical in December either), but the icing on the cake came with the absurd “check, half-check and ‘x’” grading system. Yes, every question on the exam must have one of those. EVERY question. Plus, each section needs a signature. I’ve now signed my name 1,042 times. Ok, so all of these crazy instructions came and I felt like someone was making this hugely insane maze for me. I was on my own for it, too, since there are only three of us teaching for that Department and one of them was vacationing in Hawaii and the other is pretty illusive. So anyway, needless to say, I was waiting for another set of instructions saying something like “wrap the exams in a purple polka-dotted ribbon with a Hallmark Gold Crown sticker and seal with a kiss after barking like a dog three times.” Really, it was that insane.
Back to the VLS exam. It backfired…miserably. The whole purpose for combining it was the Department’s idea to cut down on cheating. Well, the room I was given was just big enough to accomodate 140 students…meaning they were elbow-to-elbow and quite cozy for looking at their neighbor’s test. Luckily (yes, another fiasco) someone else from the Department was available to help supervise so it wasn’t just me. It was like babysitting monkeys. And there was cheating. I actually threw a student out for using notes. No sympathy.
So currently I’ve finished IBS. I went there yesterday to enter my grades since their Website is in Chinese, so probably better to get help. Three of us showed up at the same time to do this, however, Shelly (the woman in charge) looks at me and is like “why do you need help?” Um, well because I don’t understand the directions in Chinese and hello, there are three of us, so clearly I’m not the only incompetent one. Again, truly a hateful relationship from both sides there. So, of course both of their logins worked, but mine didn’t. Of course. So then I was accused of changing a password for a site I’d never even logged in to. Why MEEEE?? Ugh. Anyway, got them finished. Turned in everything for them and said “good riddance.”
That now leaves me with four exam boxes (yes, things are very official) on my floor with completed paperwork, waiting to be turned in on Friday. And while waiting for next week’s exam, I have 70 term papers to read. I’ve already discovered several of them pop right up on Google, so now we’re on to plagiarism issues. Awesome.
As far as social life. Well, I attended the English Club Christmas party. Of course my students were cracking up that I was there and then there was this whole thing with the male students wanting to dance with me. Made the mistake of dancing with one…note to self not to do that again. And then dancing with one caused a whole line to form. EEEEeek.
We did have quite the New Year’s celebration as well. Well, actually it had started a few days prior quite on accident. Anyway, we made the mistake of going to a Chinese club without any male protectors so that lead to a whole fiasco with drunk Chinese men. However, on the upside, later that evening Havvah and I won a dance contest and got a case of beer. It was quite a sight and the video is NOT going on YouTube EVER!! Haha, but it was pretty fun. Other than that, all of the other teachers are starting to head out for the break. I’ve got to stick around late because of my last final. We do have one last soiree planned to celebrate my birthday on Saturday. And seeing as how we usually cause a scene wherever we go and have to avoid certain bars for a few weeks after, we’ll have a good amount of time over the break to hope that we can show our faces again come March 
So, if you’re in Kunming, come out for some birthday partay-ing. Otherwise catch me on the U.S. leg of my upcoming Kunming-Beijing-Bangkok-Koh Tao-WI-MN-Des Moines-Phoenix escapade. Let me know and we’ll see what works out!
Happy 2008 as well!