Maybe It’s Time to Quit My Job?

In light of massively reduced funding, the university has reduced the number of classes being offered and piled more students into each class. I thought that “increased class loads” would mean that maybe instead of 20 students, I’d have twenty-five. I was shocked when I logged into my class role today and saw that I have forty-three.

Now, I know that forty-three students doesn’t sound like a lot for most university classes, but for writing-intensive classes like introductory English courses, it’s huge. And since the vast majority of the work for English teachers is grading papers and exams and holding student conference, doubling the class load is effectively doubling the work load, and they just don’t pay me enough for that, particularly considering that I spend fifteen bucks in gas each time I drive to the university at which I work.

I wonder if it’s time to quit, or if I should just re-vamp the amount (or type?) of work I assign to the students. I’m going to spend some time exploring pedagogical alternatives that reduce the amount of grading without reducing the quality of my students’ education. I wonder if the department could be talked into holding a short-notice panel on it.

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Aw, shucks.

Well, I didn’t make it into the final round of the FNBO contest. It would have been lots of fun, but at least I got the easiest 500.00 I’ve ever made!

Congratulations to the winners. I look forward to reading their stories. (I’ll post linkage to them when FNBO announces who they are.)

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A Pleasant Grocery Surprise

Isn’t it amazing how your cognitions about a situation can make it seem a lot worse than it really is?

Last time hubs and I went grocery shopping, I lamented how much money we were spending (probably because I was trying to make the point that no, he did not need Doritos in order to have a well-rounded lunch).

Well, somehow in the middle of my grousing I got the number “seventy” in my head, so I’ve been walking around for three days thinking that we only had seventy dollars left in our monthly grocery budget, which was livable, but not grand.

Today, I decided to bite the bullet and see how close to seventy we actually were. 79? 63? Just how bad was it. I flipped open the grocery ledger to read:

167.00.

Then I opened my envelope system and saw that I had 21.00 cash in the grocery section there.

And I remembered that I also had a 20.00 credit at my local grocery store for transferring a prescription there.

So, instead of having almost no money left, it’s the 20th of the month and I have more than half the entire grocery budget left.

See how confused you can get when you function in denial and fear? LOL.

Why such a large (400.00 feels huge to me) grocery budget this month, you ask?

Well, I decided to just see what would happen if we ate yummy yummy healthy healthy foods this month. I’ve been serving eggs even when they’re not on a bogo sale. I bought Mr. MD salmon. I actually bought bacon! We’ve been inhaling produce (Green Smoothie, anyone?), and I’ve even started buying a few things from the dirty dozen list organically. Plus, it turns out that LittleGuy is horribly allergic to Pampers Cruisers and Walgreens’ brand diapers, which I stockpiled, so I had to go out and buy all new diapers. Also, this is prescription refill month, so there’s about fifty bucks there too. So don’t think me frivolous for my grocery budget! Please!

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How to Use Your FeedReader To Spot the Best Deals at Amazon

Amazon.com offers several RSS feeds that are valuable for bargain hunters who also visit their feedreaders several times a day. By getting feeds of which items are selling the most, and which are quickly skyrocketing up the bestseller list, you can often spot some of the best bargains on Amazon. Only if you spot a gorgeous jacket for 90% off, don’t waver. The next day when you go back, it will double the price. And then you’ll cry.

To Get RSS Feeds for the Bestselling Items: Simply go to the page of bestsellers and choose the category in which you are interested. Scroll to the bottom of the page, where you will see a link which lets you subscribe to the feed for the bestselling items in that particular category.

To Get RSS Feeds for Movers and Shakers (the items that are skyrocketing up the bestseller list, usually because they’re on a massive sale): Simply go the page of movers and shakers and choose the category in which you are interested. Scroll to the bottom of the page, where you will see a link which lets you subscribe to the feed for the bestselling items in that particular category.

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A Penny Saved is About 1.5 Cents Earned

I’ve got a new post up at Pinching Your Pennies’ Blog. When you’re deciding how to use your time for frugal endeavors, the penny saved principle comes into play, and it never hurts to be able to explain it to inquisitive friends and family members either.

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