Happy Valentine's Day!

Ah... the weekend again. A better one for me since midterms are behind me and my monster projects are 4 weeks out. Just one moderate one for this week.

Think we may go to the beach with a picnic later to celebrate our special day, assuming it warms up. Damn cold out there still and threatening rain. Oh well, wine and chocolate in front of the fire is another possibility!

Or maybe whine and chocolate would be more accurate.

Rough week and man did I need to get home and have my snuggles. I am the president of the student government at our tiny school and it seems that if I am otherwise occupied, there IS no student government! I feel like I'm herding cats. But we need this organization to 1) help with the accreditation process and 2) be eligible for a chapter PsiChi. Students just love to whine and threaten about leaving the program, but few are willing to chair a committee to work on the problems they say are so dire or actually speak to the faculty face to face in any fashion. Sigh...

Then there's the ever present practicum, in which I'm doing ok, but realizing that couples work is NOT for me. This is the only thing in my education so far that has not come easily, so while I'm learning and slowly improving, it's not fun at all. The occasional highs are not enough to compensate for the frustration and because my supervisor is a long time mentor and a family systems person I feel as if I'm disappointing him.

Then there was the midterm course evaluation from my class. They said many lovely things about me, which was edifying. They also said the same two negative things, consistently. There was too much lecture at first, and they felt overloaded. Next they complained I was disorganized. Hmm.. well I can see how they'd think that based on the external things that have happened so far. The librarian posted some readings for each class, so when I went up and reviewed them they looked complete. A student had to complain twice before we both saw that there were omissions. My bad for not looking more closely. Then twice portions of the materials I requested for the class were not in my box when I got there. I teach a night class so everything is locked up and there is nobody there to help me with anything. We've had audio visual nightmares and stuff missing that I've had to work around, so yeah, I can see that probably made me look disorganized. I've stuck to my syllabus though, and despite the hardships we've covered the topics I said we'd cover and every assignment has been graded and returned promptly and discussed in class. I'll chat with them this coming week and make whatever changes I can to address their concerns so that hopefully the final evals will be better.

What sucked was the program chair's response. She told me she's not sure about having me teach the class again next term because the feedback was so negative. Yikes! Her concern was that this cohort will complain to the one behind them and I will get a seriously biased group next term, so she says in these cases she will pull a prof for one quarter so the biased group moves on through. I was pretty spun about that. This isn't the final eval and both of the negative comments were related to things beyond my control to at least a degree; course content and structural issues that the staff is supposed to handle. Nearly all my students liked my style, said I brought in interesting real world material and that the assignments were fun. So I'm feeling frustrated that my chair's reaction is that she won't invite me back!!! She said she'll make the decision this coming week as the next cohort registers. If she hears whispers that people don't want my section then she'll pull me. This sucks... I'm alternating bouts of 'roll up your sleeves and fix it' and 'I'm a failure and I'm going to quit this whole thing and be a Biologist again.'

So it's Valentine's day and I just can't pull myself out of this funk. It's cold and overcast and I have two enormous projects and one moderate one to get done on top of prepping for CAPIC in case I don't match this coming Friday. Ugh... I will be in school on Friday, so after hearing what might be some of the most difficult news of my entire program if I don't match, I'll have to go straight into class.

But that said I've gotten a ton of fun valentines today and my workload is more evenly distributed now. Friday the match apprehension will be over, for better or for worse, and I have only one quarter left until my coursework is done! I have a wonderful spouse, wonderful sister, wonderful niece and wonderful friends and pets to support me. Really, life is good and this is only a pothole. :)