It’s barely past noon and today has been filled with nothing but bullshit. First, I went over to the college where I teach to figure out why my magnetic parking pass wasn’t working for the faculty parking lot. Turns out that the dope who gave me the parking pass and my parking sticker a few weeks ago gave me all of the wrong information. Wonderful. This was a real pain in the ass last night as I tried to get into the faculty lot and the damn thing wouldn’t open up!
The folks over at the parking office were wonderful, though, and they gave me the proper information. As it turns out, I’m not allowed to park in the faculty lot since I’m an adjunct professor. I’m okay with that – whatever works. But they made me take off the “Faculty” sticker on my car and replace it with an “Employee” sticker since that was the only one that they had in the office. In other words, I can park on less places on campus now because of the office didn’t have the right sticker. How do you not have the right f’ing sticker?!
Whatever.
After I was on campus I went to the post office because I had about 8 textbooks that needed to be returned to the publisher. You see, when professors get free copies of books (called “desk” or “examination” copies), they can do a few things. First, they can review the text book and choose to use it for their course which is what the publishers are hoping to accomplish by sending a free copy of the textbook in the first place. Second, they can review the textbook and opt not to use it for their course. At this point, they have two more choices. If they don’t want to use the textbook, then they can either a) keep it on a bookshelf in their office or b) return the textbook to the publisher.
Since returning textbooks to the publisher helps to lower the overall cost of the texts for students around the nation, I opt to return the texts. The publisher, to their credit, lets the professor print a “postage due” label so we don’t have to pay a ridiculous amount to ship the books back. However, when I went to the post office, I had to pay $6 for a box to send the damn books back in! Ridiculous! I know it’s only $6, but come on!
On my way back home I stopped at Wegmans to pick-up a prescription. I actually have no complaints about this stop since it was quick and easy. However, the fact that I had to wait a week for my insurance company to approve the prescription is pathetic…and that annoys me.
All of that aggravation aside, I should note that last night was the first night of the course that I teach and it was awesome. For the first time I was able to use this little Kensington clicker device that my Mom got me for Christmas last year. It lets me flip through the PowerPoint presentation from anywhere in the classroom. Plus it has a red laser pointer thing so I could point out certain parts of pictures from the back of the classroom. It was great!
Also, tonight is the first night of a class that I am taking at the college. As an adjunct I’m able to take one class per semester for every class that I am teaching that semester. Since I’m teaching one class, I can take one class. It’s a good deal. I’m taking this course because it’ll put me halfway to receiving a certificate in Public Relations, which can only help bolster my resume.
Let’s hope the rest of today isn’t as aggravating as the first half has been!
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