Just one of those weeks
Posted 09-12-2010 at 07:07 PM by EmmyNoether
The last couple of days have been rough to say the least. On Thursday, I finally got my teaching contract, even though I've officially been teaching for the previous week and a half. It was 2,300 dollars less than what I had anticipated... Considering that I am not set out to pay roughly half of that in tuition and fees, I was shaken to say the least! When I went to talk to the main person that creates the contracts, I began the conversation upset but composed. About 4 sentences in I began to crack, and just like the dutch dam, that's when the water works began to flow. I stood there crying at this poor account specialist/secretary when she and I both knew there was nothing she could do about it. I then went and cried in my office, which I felt very uncomfortable about since I was now sharing an office in very close quarters with someone I have always maintained a strictly professional sort of relationship. He was surprisingly supportive and agreed that the department certainly had screwed me over by making me believe my stipend would be one thing when in reality it turned out to be a whole other thing, 2,300 less to be exact.
None of the officers of the math department who could help me understand why I had been so severely misled were available to talk to me that day. As much as I really didn't want to trudge off to my evening office hours, I still did so, because unlike my department, I feel some responsibility to my students. I finished the evening by going to yet another info session for a company I would really like to work at, actually. Although I wanted to begin sobbing whenever I thought about how much debt I unexpectedly just acquired, I used all my acting background to look interested and bemused by engineers who asked the most specific questions that were sure to lose everyone else in the Q&A except themselves and the geek representative answering them. I got home, burst into tears, and then found out that a trip home I was planning on to see some friends was going to be canceled. The mere crying from before turned into uncontrollable sobbing because I just could not have taken any more bad news. With burning eyes and the waves of chills that only come from an emotional implosion, I went to bed early.
It turned out I needed the sleep. On Friday, I woke up and the burning eyes were now accompanied by a sore throat and the chills were matched by aching muscles. I dragged my body out of bed, confirmed appointments with both the Department Chair and the Director of Graduate Students in the Math department, and after drinking a mug of chicken broth, and a travel mug of tea, pulled every little piece of energy out of me to go teach. I felt it was a fairly good lecture, all considering, and when the last student left, I was smacked in the face with the exhaustion and illness I was fighting. I gimped back to my car and drove, stiff, sniffly and tired to the department to have my meetings. I explained the situation to the chair and how I felt that this was rather unfair because even though I did the due-diligence of my financial landscape in August, I was railroaded yesterday. He agreed that it was indeed unfair and set out to try and do something to rectify it. I explained to the DGS what his role of misleading me caused and then slinked back home to discover I had a 101.6 degree fever. I spent the remaining part of the day in a feverish haze, half-awake but unable to sleep. The department might have screwed me, but I got my little revenge by spreading my germs... hahaha! No, I actually did feel very terrible about being there when I was so clearly sick. However, I was supposed to turn in my contract by 5pm, so I needed to try to work out something.
The chair pulled some strings and helped me out a little. Instead of getting paid what I was going to, he reduced that amount and wiped my tuition and fees off the record. This means that combined the $5700 for teaching +3000 tuition and fees = 8700. Normally, as a less-than-or-equal-to 5th year, I would have gotten 9,800. So, I'm still under, but not as bad as the original package, Paying tuition and fees and only making $7,500. So, I considered it a better offer and gave my acceptance of it via email.
Saturday, even though I no longer had a temperature, I was still pretty wiped out from the illness, whatever it was, and took the time to fill several kitchen-sized trash bags with the used tissues that I had taken to throwing all over the side of the bed onto the floor. I also washed my sheets hoping to remove any of the illness germs and took a shower to feel better. As one can imagine, I was tuckered out from that and again went to bed early. Today, I wrote Monday's lecture, worked through a large part of an example for my research, determined that I was just going to copy the lectures I have previously given on Wednesday's subject and wrote Wednesday's quiz.
As I think back on the last several days, a couple of memories spring into my head. I spent a good portion of my 1st year in grad school breaking down and crying in the department and haven't really done so since (well, third year when I failed my prelim - but I made it out of the building and across a parking lot before bursting into tears). It makes me wonder if I'm going to find myself under so much stress and injustices this year, that I will regress to that of my 1st year self? The second memory was back to my last year of college where I wrote and researched 2 separate theses during the spring semester. For some reason, beginning immediately after returning from winter break, I had serious illness after serious illness beginning with bronchitis and ending with either the flu or having lip surgery from a complication of a previous infection. I joked with my professors as I handed them my parent's graduation party invites -- I said the party was not to celebrate my graduation because my parent's didn't think I'd make it, but to celebrate the fact that I survived and was alive long enough to graduate. It will be interesting if this year mimics either or both of my last year in college or first year in graduate school. As much as I would prefer neither, I cannot help but recognize that it would be a rather poetic end to my academic life.
None of the officers of the math department who could help me understand why I had been so severely misled were available to talk to me that day. As much as I really didn't want to trudge off to my evening office hours, I still did so, because unlike my department, I feel some responsibility to my students. I finished the evening by going to yet another info session for a company I would really like to work at, actually. Although I wanted to begin sobbing whenever I thought about how much debt I unexpectedly just acquired, I used all my acting background to look interested and bemused by engineers who asked the most specific questions that were sure to lose everyone else in the Q&A except themselves and the geek representative answering them. I got home, burst into tears, and then found out that a trip home I was planning on to see some friends was going to be canceled. The mere crying from before turned into uncontrollable sobbing because I just could not have taken any more bad news. With burning eyes and the waves of chills that only come from an emotional implosion, I went to bed early.
It turned out I needed the sleep. On Friday, I woke up and the burning eyes were now accompanied by a sore throat and the chills were matched by aching muscles. I dragged my body out of bed, confirmed appointments with both the Department Chair and the Director of Graduate Students in the Math department, and after drinking a mug of chicken broth, and a travel mug of tea, pulled every little piece of energy out of me to go teach. I felt it was a fairly good lecture, all considering, and when the last student left, I was smacked in the face with the exhaustion and illness I was fighting. I gimped back to my car and drove, stiff, sniffly and tired to the department to have my meetings. I explained the situation to the chair and how I felt that this was rather unfair because even though I did the due-diligence of my financial landscape in August, I was railroaded yesterday. He agreed that it was indeed unfair and set out to try and do something to rectify it. I explained to the DGS what his role of misleading me caused and then slinked back home to discover I had a 101.6 degree fever. I spent the remaining part of the day in a feverish haze, half-awake but unable to sleep. The department might have screwed me, but I got my little revenge by spreading my germs... hahaha! No, I actually did feel very terrible about being there when I was so clearly sick. However, I was supposed to turn in my contract by 5pm, so I needed to try to work out something.
The chair pulled some strings and helped me out a little. Instead of getting paid what I was going to, he reduced that amount and wiped my tuition and fees off the record. This means that combined the $5700 for teaching +3000 tuition and fees = 8700. Normally, as a less-than-or-equal-to 5th year, I would have gotten 9,800. So, I'm still under, but not as bad as the original package, Paying tuition and fees and only making $7,500. So, I considered it a better offer and gave my acceptance of it via email.
Saturday, even though I no longer had a temperature, I was still pretty wiped out from the illness, whatever it was, and took the time to fill several kitchen-sized trash bags with the used tissues that I had taken to throwing all over the side of the bed onto the floor. I also washed my sheets hoping to remove any of the illness germs and took a shower to feel better. As one can imagine, I was tuckered out from that and again went to bed early. Today, I wrote Monday's lecture, worked through a large part of an example for my research, determined that I was just going to copy the lectures I have previously given on Wednesday's subject and wrote Wednesday's quiz.
As I think back on the last several days, a couple of memories spring into my head. I spent a good portion of my 1st year in grad school breaking down and crying in the department and haven't really done so since (well, third year when I failed my prelim - but I made it out of the building and across a parking lot before bursting into tears). It makes me wonder if I'm going to find myself under so much stress and injustices this year, that I will regress to that of my 1st year self? The second memory was back to my last year of college where I wrote and researched 2 separate theses during the spring semester. For some reason, beginning immediately after returning from winter break, I had serious illness after serious illness beginning with bronchitis and ending with either the flu or having lip surgery from a complication of a previous infection. I joked with my professors as I handed them my parent's graduation party invites -- I said the party was not to celebrate my graduation because my parent's didn't think I'd make it, but to celebrate the fact that I survived and was alive long enough to graduate. It will be interesting if this year mimics either or both of my last year in college or first year in graduate school. As much as I would prefer neither, I cannot help but recognize that it would be a rather poetic end to my academic life.
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