For Inner Circle Members, only!

So, let’s see:

• One of our department assistants suddenly quit without notifying any members of our department, yesterday afternoon at 4pm. Though I was one of the people who defended her and helped keep her in her position this semester, she decided to stick me with the crappiest class assignment possible — Monday and Friday night, as late as possible. That’s been fixed, as there was no way in hell, but it’s all a mystery. (She also stuck someone in the other English department in an unfeasible course assignment, too.)
• That someone else is a foreign prof in another department who seems to get any course she wants, even when someone else has requested it. Well, except now she’s kind of in someone’s bad books because it turns out she was teaching elsewhere last semester, as well, and that she ditched classes at our uni to do so, telling students not to tell on her.
• My effort to restructure the horrid English magazine against the will of the current editor resulted in her turning up at my supervisor’s office to complain. I happened to drop in — mostly to find out what had prompted the resignation mentioned above — and happened to arrive in time to hear my supervisor basically make the same point I made to the editor. We’ll see if change actually happens, but I’m pushing for it, and now I know I’m not alone.
• Supposedly I have four courses next semester, the fewest I’ve had since coming here, including two that involve creative student work: a Drama course — I can’t decide whether to have students write & stage their own play, or to have the uni buy a playbook for something and have put on a famous play or a musical or something — and a graphic novel-writing course, which will, at the very least, end up online.
• This week is course evaluations week. If I’d known that, I would have brought some kind of bribe to class, like candies or something.
• Despite initial resistance, Lime is now hooked on The Sopranos and working her way through Season One. I feel victorious!