Faculty orientation spring 2020

This is really kind of a collection of stuff.

Shout-out to the guys despondently shoveling the garbage back into the garbage truck.

We just finished faculty ‘orientation.’ Now we have a few days to prepare our classes before they start. I could use a good long hike in a forest, but we’re settling for the best thing available today: a trip to Abidjan to the Indian restaurant and then the big grocery store.

There is some sort of construction going on. I’m not sure what, but there’s a whole string of guys digging a long ditch beside the road in which to put cables. By hand.

AN just read the news about the strike on the US base from Iran yesterday afternoon. The article made her think we were already in war and nuclear war, at that.

Some people look rested and ready to go. My colleagues in this hallway all look tired. AN spent her energy over the holiday season decorating at her church (the youth apparently wouldn’t help). The business instructor down the hall is in the hospital for some cardiovascular problem (high blood pressure related– I can’t discuss this with AN because she seems to believe that you can pray your anxiety away (brain doesn’t work like that short of a miracle, folks), and although she denies it, she talks as though this would also have lowered her blood pressure and prevented this). LM has been working hard on curriculum.

Actually, though I do not know how closely stress is related to high blood pressure. If anyone knows, tell me. Better yet, send me a good review article.

Orientation is a series of plenary sessions and workshops at the start of teach semester. This year, apparently everyone insisted on being a plenary session, so we had the joy of sitting through very technical presentations on the proposed switch from CFA to a non-France-based currency and very irrelevant presentations aimed at the language and academic skills teachers. Yes, in theory, it would be ideal to move the desks together and to do an exciting activity every 20 minutes because the students can only concentrate for that long, and have flipped classroom, but in practice our lab benches are bolted to the floor and no force I’ve yet found in Heaven Hell or Purgatory can get half the students to read the book to an extent they can discuss it in class. Plus, half don’t understand English anyway. BUT who knows, I’m going to try a discussion anyway, combined with a short quiz at the beginning of class on the reading. Wish me luck.

Actually, probably the biggest problem was that there is a striking disconnect between presentation tips that we give to students and presentations we actually give ourselves.

The tradition here is that when someone dies, all their friends and coworkers give the family money. The family comes out in the red on this because they are expected to host everyone who comes to pay respects and it’s a big to-do and frankly because there are so many people there’s a lot of time and energy spent attending funerals around here. It also means we get a lot of death announcement emails. Last semester, the AC chair tried to initiate ‘dues’ that replace voluntary giving, and also go to some ‘team-building activity.’ I always follow my office-mate’s lead on this, and she refused because she did not trust the funds would be handled well. I agreed, anyway (plus I’ve learned by now that team building activities usually are painful affairs— I was not wrong, and am glad that I never paid for that unfortunate lunch outing). Anyway, this year, we have a new AC chair (there is a long story behind this full of politics and infighting but it’s convoluted enough that I am not clear on all the details). He’s been thinking about this. He brought up the fact that few paid last semester, suggested reducing the dues and giving them to the guy in charge of classroom supplies and equipment (who I do trust) and two ladies, “ladies because the World Bank has found that when ladies are involved there is less likely to be a misallocation of funds.” AN and I laughed from our seats strategically chosen to be farthest from the air conditioners. Nobody will QUITE admit the problem, but it’s clear. Then, someone stood and suggested to go back to the system of voluntary giving, for both the grievance fund and the group activities. Never in history has a group of academics reached an agreement so quickly.

There were a few good and helpful workshops.

BY THE WAY. Gentlemen, when a lady is cold to you, it’s because expressing friendliness has been taken the wrong way one too many times. We recognize that you MIGHT be a good guy, in fact chances are in your favor, but we’re still trying to shake our previous misjudgements. It’s not personal.

This is what happens when you are polite to certain coworkers. COWORKERS. That was maybe two years ago now. I have not responded to him in months. I’d block him but I’m a bit afraid of the consequences.

So I found these screenshots I took while I was borrowing LM’s iPhone. My favorite part of that phone was reading the “reviews” on the advertisements in the games.