Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Woo-hoo! Snow day!

The university cancelled all classes starting at 12:30 pm and later today because of the 20-bazillion feet of snow that are supposed to be dumped on the region this afternoon and evening. Guess when my first class is? Yup -- 12:30.

This is the first ever snow day I've had in my entire history in higher ed, as a student or instructor or professor. Of course, that could have something to do with the fact that 3 years were spent an a residential university in a city with an underground transportation system, 1 year was spent at a university in a part of England not known for tons of snow, and 9 years were spent in a place where it hasn't snowed (except in the nearby mountains) since 1940-something, and that was a total freak event.

But still -- woo-hoo! Snow day!

And yet...I'm completely spazzing about how I'm going to rearrange the reading and assignment schedules in my classes to deal with this. There's one class where it will be relatively easy -- we'll just read one the plays over one fewer day than originally planned. But my medieval survey class is *tightly* planned and consists of a lot of short texts over the next few weeks. Do I throw one out? Or rush through it on the same day as another assigned text?

Ack! Remind me next winter to allow some give in the schedule for snow days!

2 comments:

Heo said...

Even at this very moment, I am at home having a snow day for the same storm. But I am also participating in an online discussion so that we don't have to rearrange anything.

Technology ruined my snow day!

Hope you're enjoying yours.

- Heo Cwaeth

Dr. Virago said...

God, even if I *wanted* to do that, I don't think I could get my students electronically together for it. *We* have the resources, but many of *them* don't and rely on campus computer labs (and making them come to campus to use the computer seems to defeat the purpose of classes being cancelled, eh?).

Seriously, I think this is a big and important issue. My wacky uni is proposing that every student be required to take a DL course as a way of requiring familiarity with the online world, without realizing that so many of our students have to come to campus to get online anyway, so why not have a F2F class instead?! *headdesk*