My response to Bleecker’s article is taking longer than I expected. Once again a sobering reminder of why you promise a date only when you have something more or less written.
In the meantime, with the rapid approach of the first day of class on Monday, the panic has finally set in. And there’s probably no better sign of the impending deadline than my decision to change everything. Seriously, since I was rather young, I’ve been making last minute decisions to completely start things over at the 11th hour. To this day, my mother has yet to let me forget a decision I made to completely rearrange my bedroom at 9.00pm on a school night while I was in Jr High. Needless to say that didn’t go over well.
This case is a little less drastic. After getting wise council from other Faculty members on Friday, I decided to switch up the books that I’ll be using for my Principles of Printing class. Instead of Adam’s Printing Technology
, I’ve opted for the time honored favorite Pocket Pal (it’s a little embarrassing that I didn’t think about Pocket Pal in the first place). Overall, its an improvement on multiple counts for the students. Pocket Pal is easier to read, far more tactical, and most importantly about one quarter the cost.
The only problem: all of my books were already in. So I had to go to the Bookstore and nicely ask them to send the existing books back and reorder. I got a bit of the stink-eye when I announced my intentions to the clerks. After that initial reluctance, she was quite helpful and the switch was made. During the process, while making small talk, we had the following exchange:
Matt: Sorry to be a pain about this.
Clerk: This isn’t too bad, what really bugs us are the profs who decide to switch their books at the end of the second week.
Well, at least I know I’m not the only one at RIT who goes in for last minute changes.
