Thanks to ye men who invented such technology as dishwashers, contraceptives, and especially laundry machines, all of which allowed us women to leave home, continue having empty wombs past twenty years of age, avoid scrubbing and wringing our hands' skin off, and most importantly: thank you for giving us the freedom and time to explore the depth of our minds' potentials...

This week has been somewhat of an oddity. Perhaps partially because Monday was off, perhaps because it falls approximately half-way through semester (so does the upcoming one), perhaps because the weather changed abruptly to the crisp chill one would expect of Autumn, or perhaps just because. Anyhow, this week has been tough, and not just for me alone - a lot of people in my program were feeling the same way. Alas! Perhaps long weekends are bad?!
So, let's see... not that much worth mentioning happened this week. I discovered that the hot-water dispenser near our office outside does not dispense free hot water. They charge us $1 (plus tax) for hot water, to which I gave the poor lady at cash a polite but disapproving lecture on how at my "old University we had hot water dispensers all over campus and it was always free..." to which she replied she felt everywhere charged for hot water and asked me where I was from. So I told her I was from Victoria and my old University was the University of Victoria. She was sweet enough but she still charged me for the hot water, which is appalling. Water should be a right and so should warmth. Our office in the basement of the Social Sciences Centre building is always very cold, and particularly in the afternoons. And somewhere on some contract we had to sign to get the office spaces we agreed not to bring kettles into the office. That's perhaps what should have been my first sign that that students get a lot of abuse here. But no, it didn't send off any warning signals. This weekend did. Not only do we have four assignments due every week (including this past week), and a week from tomorrow our week of 3 midterms begins, and it is mandatory to hand in Scholarship applications for the Ontario Graduate Scholarship (due this past Friday - I'll get to that) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Scholarship (due this upcoming Friday), but this weekend was almost a complete homework-write-off -- thanks to my lovely University, UWO. On Friday I had to prepare materials for the undergraduate tutorials I teach, then I taught 3 tutorial sections in a row, 12:30-3:30pm. Finally, I had a brief break - during which time I went to the grad club and socialized for maybe an hour. At 6:30pm I had to start preparing for a proctoring/invigilating session I had from 7-9pm, which really lasted past 9pm because after the undergraduate students have finished their exams, the proctors have to collect them, do some counting jobs, and take them back up to the professors. The first twenty minutes of proctoring were eternal. All we do is sit there or walk around watching students to make sure they don't cheat, etc. Then we started the walkabouts checking student cards and collecting signatures, and it started slowly feeling less long from there onwards.
I finally got home to scarf down some leftovers for dinner at around 10pm. Then yesterday, Saturday, I had two more proctoring sessions. Each one takes up about 3 hours of your day. So there went 6 hours of my Saturday. Those sessions didn't feel as long as the first - thankfully - but the last session was a mess. The last session was for the "Principles of Micro" first year undergraduate students -- those are the ones I hold tutorials for. Of course I only hold tutorials for a very small subset of those students, and the ones I was proctoring for were a new mix, but the professor and whomever else was in charge of the organization did a very poor job. We were about eight exams too short, the professor noticed this and then disappeared. Then I started scrambling around other classrooms (after the time the students were supposed to have started) trying to find more exams. The poor undergraduate students were mostly being very patient and understanding of the situation, but what a disaster show for their first midterm as undergraduates at UWO. We found a couple more exams here and there - from other nearby classrooms that were also proctoring the same exam. But then we were still short a few exams and we were also short on Scan-Tron sheets (bubble sheets for filling in the multiple choice questions so they can be sent through a machine and marked automatically). Then, 9minutes past when we were supposed to begin, the professor comes in. By this time only one person was missing an actual exam (a real personality disorder type person, too). Plenty of people were still missing Scan-Trons though. The professor came in carrying a huge pile of newly-photocopied exams. But there were about 20 page 1's in a row followed by 20 page 2's etc. all the way to page 18 of the exam booklet. So we had to madly race through this giant pile of papers trying to collate the pages into one complete exam booklet for the one student. The professor told everyone they could begin, now 13 min. past the start time. I never though so much could go wrong in the first 13min. of a proctoring session. We ended up allowing the necessary students to write down the answers to their multiple choice questions on scrap paper while we still scrambled to find extra bubble sheets. Finally everything was sorted and we could relax and just sit and watch the undergraduates like what is supposed to be the bulk of our responsibilities. The guy who was the last to begin - the one I mentioned I thought had some sort of personality disorder - kept putting up his hand to ask me sassy questions. I forgot to mention he wore his dark, shady aviator sunglasses the whole time during the exam. First, when he was the only person without an exam he asked me, "Can I just leave now and get 70%?"
"No."
Later he was asking me about a multiple choice question and said, "Any of these answers could be true under the right circumstances," which was actually not correct according to the economic theory he had been taught. He went on into some examples and I couldn't really say anything because I couldn't tell him what was right or wrong, but I just told him that if he had a problem with the question he would have to take it up with the professor (who was not in the room at the time) later. Another while into the exam he goes, "Can I go have a smoke?"
"No."
He already wreaked of smoke. My goodness. He left the exam early, too. I feel bad for whomever is teaching his tutorial classes... if he ever shows up.
During that proctoring session I also had to escort one undergraduate student to the washroom. The poor guy had just started, and about twenty minutes in he put up his hand and was embarrassed to tell me so but said he really had to go. I was proctoring with one other graduate student (a girl in fourth year PhD Econ), so she stayed watching the other students while I left the room with the one student.
And that's about it.
Now today is going to be dedicated almost exclusively to getting all my assignments done. But oh let me tell you about another mishap that happened this week. It was Thursday evening and I thought I would do some laundry - the towels. I went to the laundry room on my floor but the better of the machines was being used so I went down one floor and chose a machine there, hoping it would be better than the vacant machine on my floor. Maybe there is one good machine per floor? After I'd put my coins in and started the machine, a lady comes by and says some of the machines haven't been working that well lately. I thought, oh well, mine seems to be fine. I came back the "26 minutes" later to discover the spin cycle was what wasn't working well on my machine. I had to spend over twenty minutes wringing out my water-absorbent towels, each weighing about an extra 10lbs in water. Not only that - I got totally soaked while I was doing so. I had dreamed about wrapping myself in warm towels coming out of the dryer before I'd started, but now that dream had turned into a damp nightmare of tiresome wringing and wringing and wringing... My hands started feeling raw from the repetitive motions and the overexposure to water. In the midst of frustration and fatigue, I learned to appreciate our mothers' mothers and all their mothers before, who must have had skin like leather and patience of a thousand Buddahs, who sacrificed -- or perhaps never even saw -- their personal potential, for the pure purpose of making and keeping their families and their families' families. And it made me so grateful for laundry machines. I would have never made it in that era. My arms are too weak and my patience too short.
There is a brief happy ending for me, though: After 25ish minutes of wringing and another 65min. of the dryer's work, I finally achieved the long sought dream of wrapping myself in warm towels, fresh out of the dryer... Mmmm...