Hour

Just one more hour...that's been the story of my life this past week.

I had this mistaken impression when I was younger that when we all grew up, we'd all act like adults!  I'm not sure if I'm naive or if I simply have a short memory span but I am consistently surprised by the fact that grown adults act like petty, spoiled, small-minded, junior high students.

I was surprised this week.

One of my colleagues consistently throws me under the proverbial bus.  Most of the time the efforts of this person are not worthy of my time or energy to address.  Unfortunately this behavior appears to be escalating.

Early last month I was marked down in a performance review because I did not have X in my syllabi.  X comes directly from my colleague who neglected to (a) tell me I needed to include this in my syllabi (which is a part of that position's job description!) and (b) send me X to put in the syllabi!  I politely listened to the feedback from our boss but if I'm truthful I was seething on the inside.  I questioned where I should have found this information and through the course of our discussion he corrected my feedback when he realized I never had access to this information.

It's entirely possible that my beloved husband needed to shower after I verbally vomited all over him when that particular phone conversation was over.

I waited a few days and then emailed this colleague--I've still never received a response.

A new semester starts on Monday.  I found out from a forwarded email that we have a new textbook for a certain class I teach.  (My colleague is in charge of choosing the text and creating course objectives for all of the psychology classes available.)

um, W H A T?!?

I had this particular class finished before we left South Dakota.  I had to wait for the class to 'make' and be added to my portal before I could upload the content.  So here we are with less than a week to the start of the fall semester and I find out through the grapevine that the book has changed?

I cannot reach for the phone because of the time difference, but I promptly set my alarm and marched myself to bed.  The alarm went off in the dead middle of the night and in less time than it took for my Keurig to brew me a cup of coffee I was on the phone.  Of course, our boss wasn't in his office; however his secretary found me a book at the library and personally took it to the post office to try to get it here to Japan as quickly as possible.

A few more cups of coffee and a couple of phone calls later my colleague's response was "Ooops, I thought you knew I chose a new textbook.  Guess you won't be ready for Monday."

-__-

Thankfully I have contacts with several publishing companies from my years of working as an independent contractor.  A couple more phone calls and emails later I have an electronic copy of the text in question, the instructor's manual, and the test bank.  It took me two solid days but I have the entire semester's worth of assignments and assessments completed.

It's small of me, I know, but I truly want to holler out "IN YOUR FACE, ___" while doing a happy booty dance.

And on that note I'll end this entry because I truly think I'm down to needing just one more hour before I'm completely ready for my next set of students!