On The Go Again

So, college has started again, and we're three weeks into it already. This semester I posted a FAQ sheet about why my MATH students shouldn't complain about this course containing a lot of math...seems like a pretty obvious thing, but they are misled into believing it is a history course. I also had to have the "A for Effort" conversation. Students all seem to believe that they get credit just for trying, a bad result of the "self-esteem" efforts taking place in elementary, middle an dhigh schools across the nation. One asked me, "do we get full credit for a problem even if we don't get the right answer, but we gave you a full explanation of how we did it?" Ummmm. No. Correctness counts. Imagine the engineer, "I tried to build the bridge correctly, really. It may have collapsed, but don't I get to keep my job because I tried hard?" Or the surgeon...the list is endless.

I'll be quitting at Huntington after the October SAT because I've got enough private tutoring to sustain us. And it's a 4:1 time ratio for the same pay. Four hours of HLC = 1 hour of private tutoring. Which would you choose? I gave them two weeks notice and they looked stricken. Apparently several other people also quit within the last month and they are hurting. So I said I'd stay until the 8th of October. It's only a week more than what I was planning.

I've packed four students into my Thursday afternoons for private tutoring. Last week, on my way to my 2nd student's house, I was rear-ended while stopped at a traffic light. I was so surprised that I actually looked up to see if the light had changed and I hadn't noticed (not that it would matter, because it's still the other guy's fault), but the light was still red and cars were still turning left in front of me. When the cop asked me what happened, I said, "I was sitting at a traffic light and I got hit from behind." What else was I supposed to say? I wasn't looking in the rear-view mirror, so I don't know what happened. "Fair enough," he laughed. Even though the car is still drivable, it has enough rear-end damage, I think, to be considered a total loss by the insurance company (again). That basically means the cost to repair the car is more than the car is worth, so they'll pay me fair market value for the car and wash their hands of it. I can then buy the car back from them for a couple of hundred dollars and get it fixed myself if I want to. Can you tell I've been through this before (with the same car, no less)?

So this morning, Angie and I will be off to collect the police report and drop it at the insurance company. And hopefully that will get the ball rolling.