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Kind of a lousy day today
Apr. 15th, 2010 05:06 pmAnd the worst part is that it is entirely my fault. I might rant about Professor Famous, but at least when he makes my day miserable, he's the person responsible. I have plausible deniability. I might be unhappy, but that's because I am a victim, not because I'm an idiot.
I can usually rock the victim of circumstances role pretty well. For example, yesterday I was snarked at and probably lost whatever good will the instructor who uses the room right before my 12:00 section ever had for me. She usually runs over by at least five minutes, but that day she was still going strong (or rather, her kids were still going strong on a quiz) well past the end of class. She came out and promised me they'd be done right at 12:10 (the official start time of my section), which is a bit annoying, because it means I can't go in there early and write my agenda on the board and so on, but okay. However, at 12:10 on the dot she still showed no sign of stopping, so I just marched right in. I am not going to take instructional time away from my students because she can't write an exam that her students can finish in time. So I marched in, started erasing the board, and told my students (all of whom were milling around in the hallway with me) to come in after me. It got a bit crowded in there, what with two classes' worth of students crammed into the space that's barely big enough for one, but her students finished up and I didn't lose too much time. She was mad, though, and decided to make it known by saying with a very significant look, "Thank you so much for your patience and flexibility." It was probably designed to be cutting, but I was, as they say, "armed so strong in honesty that her passive agressiveness passed by me as the idle wind."
That's the not-my-fault type of stuff that slides right off. Today, however, it was entirely my fault. For example:
1. I scheduled two people to participate in an experiment I'm running, and then completely forgot to be there, so they showed up at the lab for no reason.
2. I didn't check my email, so I couldn't confirm a meeting with someone else that in the end never took place.
3. I discovered that I made a stupid, stupid error when building my experiment file, so that the entire second block presents the data not randomly, but rather sequentially. This ruins half the data from 20 subjects.
And now I'm writing this instead of preparing for my elicitation session. Grarg.
I can usually rock the victim of circumstances role pretty well. For example, yesterday I was snarked at and probably lost whatever good will the instructor who uses the room right before my 12:00 section ever had for me. She usually runs over by at least five minutes, but that day she was still going strong (or rather, her kids were still going strong on a quiz) well past the end of class. She came out and promised me they'd be done right at 12:10 (the official start time of my section), which is a bit annoying, because it means I can't go in there early and write my agenda on the board and so on, but okay. However, at 12:10 on the dot she still showed no sign of stopping, so I just marched right in. I am not going to take instructional time away from my students because she can't write an exam that her students can finish in time. So I marched in, started erasing the board, and told my students (all of whom were milling around in the hallway with me) to come in after me. It got a bit crowded in there, what with two classes' worth of students crammed into the space that's barely big enough for one, but her students finished up and I didn't lose too much time. She was mad, though, and decided to make it known by saying with a very significant look, "Thank you so much for your patience and flexibility." It was probably designed to be cutting, but I was, as they say, "armed so strong in honesty that her passive agressiveness passed by me as the idle wind."
That's the not-my-fault type of stuff that slides right off. Today, however, it was entirely my fault. For example:
1. I scheduled two people to participate in an experiment I'm running, and then completely forgot to be there, so they showed up at the lab for no reason.
2. I didn't check my email, so I couldn't confirm a meeting with someone else that in the end never took place.
3. I discovered that I made a stupid, stupid error when building my experiment file, so that the entire second block presents the data not randomly, but rather sequentially. This ruins half the data from 20 subjects.
And now I'm writing this instead of preparing for my elicitation session. Grarg.