Thursday, March 29, 2007
Friday, March 16, 2007
I still have my grade book from that semester, so I went back and after a good hour of searching I found their grades. (They'd each attended a different class, and none of them attended the class with the others in their major.) I typed up the "missing score" email explaining the mix up, and sent it to my contact lady. I received her reply fifteen minutes ago. To sum up: It's too late to change, and the students are out of luck. These students were set to graduate after this semester, but now they'll have to wait a year (because the necessary class is only offered in the spring.)
I've been lobbying for the right to enter my students scores into the system myself, instead of the current system where I turn in my scores to the department and they have a grad student mis-enter them for me. Now I'm going to get belligerent about it. This is completely unacceptable - the students passed the class with flying colors, and now they have to wait to graduate because a grad student didn't bother to type their grade into a computer. And now that the mistake has been caught and explained, the registrar will not make an exception to the "all-changes-must-be-submitted-before -the-end-of-the-next-semester" rule.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Friday, November 05, 2004
Doug's New Blog
Monday, September 06, 2004
First, let me tell y’all about my class schedule for this semester – it rocks. Here’s why: I am teaching the same class (different students) that I taught last year. This means no new lesson plans. I also have every Friday off. This’ll let me do a whole lot of short trips out of Beijing. Also, I start on the 20th of September. (That’s a week later than everyone else.) I’m doing everything I can not to gloat in front of the other teachers, but it’s really hard.
I just returned from a short trip to Shanhaiguan – the place where the Great Wall meets the Pacific Ocean. It’s a beautiful small town (150,000 people) with a really laid back, friendly attitude. It was pretty much everything Beijing isn’t. Let me give you a quick breakdown of what happened. First, Mike and I took an early train from Beijing to Shanhaiguan. We rode “hard seat” class – the least expensive and most uncomfortable way to travel. Thankfully the ride only took 4 hours. Upon arriving in Shanhaiguan, we walked around in an attempt to find one of the three hotels which are listed in the LP. Since the map included was lacking in detail – and the fact that I only saw one street sign as we wandered – we managed to get more than a little lost. Thankfully we did stumble across a pedi-cab with a driver who knew of a great hotel and took us there without too much trouble. The hotel was a remodeled courtyard house and it was in great shape (for China.)
After getting situated Mike and I went for a wander to get a feel for the city. The Great Wall runs along the east side of the city and the part of the city that had our hotel was inside of a gate in the wall. (A gate in the Great Wall was a walled compound that housed a whole lotta soldiers to protect the gate from invaders.) The ocean is South of the city and the Great Wall meets the ocean at laolongtou (old dragon head.) Eventually Mike and I found a museum, which we toured with a guide who spoke English fairly well. An interesting tidbit about this museum – it had no point or purpose. It was a little bit of everything from everywhere in China. Most museums in China have just a little bit of this problem but this one was completely random. After that, we went to dinner at a crazy restaurant recommended in LP. We were the only people in the restaurant and when we finished eating the guy took a picture of us to hang on his wall (the wall was covered with pictures of foreigners.) Also, I ordered a can of coke and watched the waitress run down the block to a convenience store to purchase my coke.
After dinner we wandered around for a while and eventually found a row of shops that were selling tourist junk at remarkably reduced prices – most stuff sold for a tenth of the Beijing price. The next day we went down to laolongtou and saw the ocean. It was a beautiful day, not a cloud in the sky and a steady breeze. We headed back to Beijing in the afternoon – another long and painful train ride – and dealt with the impenetrable crowds around the Beijing train station.
Mike took a lot of pictures and he has website where he'll be posting them soon. I've added a link to his website - feel free to check out his pics.
More newbies arrive tomorrow; I’m writing a short guidebook that should answer most of their questions. I also bought English maps of Beijing to give them and hopefully this will solve most of their problems here in Beijing. The problems that they’ve taken with them I can’t do anything about.
It’s thundering outside, and it’s bound to start raining at any minute. The sky’s all ugly and bruised, so it’ll be a doozy. The air was thick with pollution today, but tomorrow it’ll be clean and crisp for awhile – until the pollution rolls back in (around noon, most likely.)
Well, that’s enough for now.
Wednesday, September 01, 2004
The past few days have been a blur – I haven’t been feeling too well and I’ve been taking it really easy. I spent Sunday with the Brassers, Monday I went to PriceSmart, a bulk goods store like Sam’s Club, and browsed around, Tuesday I wandered around the embassy district, and today I moseyed down around the
1. The weather has been spot-on perfect. Bright blue skies, minimal clouds, and a nice breeze is all we’ve had for the past three days – no smog or oppressive grayness.
2. I went down to Silk Alley with Mike T. (the teacher – Mike B. is my friend of Calvin fame.) Mike T has been almost everywhere in
3. Today I had the strangest dish at lunch – it was beef jerky in a peppery sauce. It came on the recommendation of a waitress, and I don’t have a clue as to what it is called. But it was really good.
I still haven’t heard when classes start or what I am supposed to teach. I’m trying to be patient, but it’s getting hard to be calm here in