I had a very long and tiring week at school. I won't bore you with all the details, but it culminated with an anonymous person sticking a copy of our recent first issue of the newspaper in my box with some mistakes circled. My favorite one was the "adviser" in our masthead which was circled and "or" was written next to it. Anyone in the journalism world can tell you that the "er" spelling is the preferred spelling when referring to a publications adviser, but even in the non-journalism world, it is recognized as an alternate spelling for the more common "or" ending. I mean, if you're going to point out my mistakes and not have the courage to tell me who you are, at least get it right. My favorite part of the whole thing was them circling an article on one of the pages and writing "B-" next to it. What? You're doing my grading for me now? Thanks! This person obviously knew what they were doing was a bit out of line, or they would have left a note that said, "Hey, I found a couple mistakes, just thought that you would like to know about them," and signed their name to it. I can understand a person disliking seeing mistakes, as I am one of those people (which adds insult to injury that there were any mistakes in the paper at all, and then for multiple others to point them out), but come on people, these are a bunch of kids doing a newspaper. No one calls up the choir or orchestra directer (oops, I mean director) after the concert and says "Boy, they really missed that one note. B minus." No, people always say what a good job those kids did, mistakes and all. But if it's kids putting out a publication, there better not be one single mistake, because that's all anybody will hear about after it. And another thing I would never do is feel like it was my duty to grade another teacher's students, as if to say they were not capable of doing it themselves, or "how could you have let this B- article go into the paper?" I just still cannot believe that the person who did that was doing it in a spirit of trying to help the brand new journalism teacher. To me, they were just being mean.
Enough ranting. So I decided this weekend would be a work-free weekend, because last weekend I did nothing but work it felt like. Grades were due, I had to do a bunch of stuff for the yearbook, and so I didn't quite feel rested up going into this week, which may have something to do with me being so tired and ready for this weekend to come. So we've invited a few people to come over for the A&M game today, and we're also having some college kids over for lunch tomorrow. You know what that means...time to clean! This is good though because Erin, Mom and the kids are coming in next weekend and hopefully we won't mess up the house too much in the next week and it will already be clean for them. So I decided I was going to get into the fall spirit, since it is cooling off here. I went and bought a couple fall decorations (wreath, scarecrow, some little pumpkins for the mantle) and got a bunch of B&BW wallflowers that smell like pumpkin. Yummy! I also got some cinnamon & clove oil from B&BW (it's $3 on sale right now...but Barbara you probably already knew that) and a couple of candles from Big Lots. Big Lots had a lot of good stuff for not much money. I was glad I went there. Anyway, I have always wanted to decorate my house for the seasons, and I always said I was going to when I had a house of my own. I'm not going to go crazy with it, but maybe I can add a little bit of decor to my collection every year. I decided not to get a real pumpkin yet, but we might later. Anyway, so this morning I'm going to do some cleaning and go to the grocery store, and then watch the A&M game. That's all I'm going to say about that.
Chad just got off work this morning, so I'm waiting for him to wake up so I can vacuum, hence the time to blog about every detail of what I am going to do today. He was on a roaming truck yesterday, because they finally have enough medics on his shift so he was just assigned to an ambulance that drove around a certain part of the city that they were assigned to all day long. Sounds boring and tedious to me, but Chad said it was his best day of work yet, so that is great! He has scheduled his microbiology test for less than two weeks from now, so he's been studying every day to get ready for that. After he passes the test, he will actually be able to start his 7 nursing courses. I'm proud of him for being so motivated.
That's it for now. Gig 'em Aggies!
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7 comments:
1) By the end of the year when you are more familiar with all the faculty you will probably be able to guess who did that. 2) That borders on harassment and is totally unprofessional and unacceptable. 3) If it were me I probably would have come home crying because I'm so sensitive to criticism so I'm impressed that you just called your week "tiring."
I thought the paper was great. You're doing a great job. Keep it up. See you next weekend!
Thanks for the encouragement, Erin. I agree that it was unprofessional and unacceptable, and Chad will tell you that when I told him the story I did cry, since that was the 3rd bad/frustrating thing that happened to me that day. At the same time, I am trying to keep everything in perspective and remind myself that even though this is the first time something like this has happened this year, it definitely won't be the last.
That's true, but maybe you can put a disclaimer in the next issue that since you and the kids aren't Jesus, perfection is out of the question. How rude! I'm praying for a better week next week...and I would have cried too...I don't handle mean criticism very well.
Don't let the few comments hamper what a great job you are doing though...it's easy to let the mean ones outweigh all the good ones.
Ditto on what Erin and Emma said. We all know that you are good at what you do and nothing will ever be perfect. I am glad that you have chosen to take it easy this weekend. You just need a break sometimes. I hope that you have a wonderful week this week.
I wouldn't worry much about what other people think. I know it was a good publication. As a matter of fact, would you please send me a copy. I would love to read it. By the way, with 6 min. left, Tech 35 - A&M 7. Glad y'all have had a good day.
Dad
Lesley,
I think you should run a front page article, "B- Teacher Anonymously Critisizes Journalism Students." What do you think? You can doooo it!
Ouch! We talked about this on the phone - I hate to suggest this, because I've been thinking about methods of retribution, but really, the best path to take is still the high road. It's a tough road, but cheaper than satchel charges. /s/ Your Professional Advisor/Adviser
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