There are two days in the year that I dread the most--payment due day for the Fall semester and payment due day for the Spring semester. Wednesday was one those and as typical, it was a mad dash from the moment I walked in the door. I'll never understand why students who have months of advance notice wait and scramble right up until the deadline. It started out with 85 students receiving "impending drop" notifications. We were able to work the list down to 22, who did end up getting dropped. This was much higher than normal. (I later found out that PTC had a record drop number. Curious if it is a sign of the economy.)
In the meantime, I learn that they do not have enough instructors to cover my six sections of chemistry. They promised me last year to hire someone and that I could be a part of the interviews. Well the latter didn't happen even though the former did; however, they kept the new guy on the main campus. So I was faced with having two overload sections past my commitment to do two online sections. I called my boss to let her know and she was not happy. She went straight to the top. Long story short, I was relieved of the sections, but the solution is definitely not in the best interest of our chemistry curriculum.
In the meantime (again), my full-time faculty received new computers. Now PTC has been on the BHSLR campus for over 7 years and it has never been a problem to have them connected to the network so that we could have internet access. But all of the sudden, the IS department has decided they don't want to put computers not purchased through them on the domain. So they canceled my request. At this point I was still patient because I thought it was a misunderstanding. But I entered into frustration when it was confirmed and I was told my instructors could go to the student lounge to use the internet. I consulted the school's administrative lead and we've gone back and forth all week with IS. First it was run DSL lines from the guest network to our offices. Then it was a wireless connection option. Then it was PTC should buy computers through BH-IS (yeah right)..... Now I'm moving into the realm of anger. I have not gotten one good reason why these computers can't be added other than "we can't" and am getting the feeling they are going to disconnect the ones that are still there. Late Friday I was told they were finally going to honor my original request, but 15 minutes later, I get a call that the computers will be connected wirelessly and that I'm responsible for buying the wireless network cards (with no budget mind you). That's where we are at right now...somewhere between thinking it was done and being back to a wireless option. In the midst of trying to get a semester off the ground, this has been the single-most worst experience I have had in this job.
And that's just work. Shall I get started on all the things I have to do for church in the next several weeks?
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