December 8, 2007.  I can't believe it.  Last week, my students wrote their final essay in English 101, and the department has lost the papers.  These essays are supposed to be scored at a departmental reading, but when I went to participate in that reading, I learned that my class's papers had disappeared – though I put them in the department chair's mailbox.  Fortunately, before turning them in, I had read them and recorded the scores I would have given the essays if I were the reader.  Depending on what the department chair decides, I may have to use these scores, but my students will not have the benefit of an objective departmental evaluation.  That's going to be hard to explain to my class next week, especially when I have lectured them often about responsibility.  All I can say is, "Sorry.  Somewhere someone in the department dropped the ball."

At least I had other, more pleasant things on my mind this weekend, so I haven't had the opportunity to stew over this matter.  Today we had a large group of people over for an open house and the "public launch" of our media room.  Everyone was appropriately awed by the sinfully large (58-inch) plasma TV and the high-definition picture.  I suddenly became the "guru" to consult, since many of the guests were considering upgrades to flat-screen, high-def sets in the near future.  I'm not sure I qualify, but I could at least share what I learned from the research I did before making this major purchase.

I had to take some kidding, however.  Since the system also supports a VHS/DVD recorder/player, a CD burner, an audio tape deck, a phonograph, a DVR, and a surround sound receiver to process the audio from all of these components, I was juggling five remote controls.  Of course, the setup is new, so I haven't had that much experience with it.  At one point, I had everything screwed up, with a half dozen clueless people offering me advice.  That passed, though, when I had the good sense to shut down everything and start from scratch.  The demo, once it was launched, had everyone spellbound, despite all the remote controls I was juggling to make it happen.  (It's a lot easier to operate when one doesn't have a roomful of armchair supervisors making suggestions.)

One fringe benefit of this event is that we got our house cleaned up better than it has been in a long time.  My goal is to keep it that way, at least through the holidays.

December 12, 2007.  The United States Post Office is definitely beginning to live up to its reputation as "snail mail."  It's now less than two weeks to Christmas; anyone who has Christmas packages to mail and has not sent them yet might as well forget about getting them to their destination by Christmas day if the USPO is going to handle the packages.

Recently, my wife shipped a quilt from New Jersey to Phoenix, AZ.  It took ten days to get there.  A similar package, shipped several days later by FedEx, arrived in Phoenix before the package shipped via the post office – and the shipping charges were less, even though the two packages were about the same size and weight.  We've heard similar stories of long delivery delays from friends, as well as scary accounts of packages that arrived badly mangled.  From now on, even though the local post office is only a mile away and a trip to the nearest FedEx is about eight miles each way, we shall not use the USPO to send packages.

You'd think that, faced with increasing commercial competition and the proliferation of means for sending messages, the postal service would attempt to be more efficient and economical.  However, it has gone the other way.  It is a bureaucratic logjam with a rate structure that is as complicated as the IRS tax code.  Its increasingly long list of regulations and specifications is so complex that the postal clerks themselves don't understand all the rules.  One will get different answers from different post offices.

I will concede that the job of the post office must have become more difficult in the last decade.  For one thing, there's more junk mail than ever.  However, I suspect that the postal service has encouraged this trend because this type of mail is a huge source of revenue and profits.  What we as individuals put in the mail is nothing compared to what mail-order catalog companies do.  Furthermore, the movement into Internet shopping must have vastly increased the number of packages being sent.  Still, rather than adapt, the postal service has stuck with an antiquated business plan.  It appears to amount to:  "When profits slip, raise rates and cut services."

Despite the Internet and the emergence of competitors, I've been reluctant to predict the demise of the postal service.  Now, however, I foresee its precipitous decline.  It takes a while for people to wise up to the lesser cost and greater efficiency of using options other than those to which they have become accustomed, but that is starting to happen.  If recent history is any indicator, the response of the PO will be to raise rates even further and erode service even more.  The bureaucrats who are running the system are too stupid to see where this must inevitably lead.

December 18, 2007.  To quote Jabberwocky, "O frabjous day!  Callooh!  Callay!"  I have completed grading my students' final skills tests and essays.  All that remains to be done is to assign final course grades, which isn't as difficult as it used to be.

Until a few years ago, the college's grading system gave instructors only five slots for final grades – A, B, C, D, F.  That was an unfair system.  Under it, I had to give the same grade to a student with a very strong C the same grade as a student who barely got by with a C–.  Or I had to "bump up" the strong C student into the B category, which was unfair to those students who had earned solid B's or were just a tad short of earning an A.  We now have A–, B+, B–, and C+ as possible choices.  For some reason, we don't have C–.  I suppose the reason is that we are thus forced to commit to definitely passing a student with a C, without waffling.  In English 101, a D is not a passing grade.  Students get a point on their grade point average (GPA) but do not get credit for meeting the course requirement; they must take it again.  (An F counts as zero on the GPA.)

I dislike having the D as an option for a final grade, and I try not to give any D's.  The definition of a D is sometimes cited as "unsatisfactory but not failing" – whatever that might mean.  As I said, a student who gets a D in English 101 must take the course over because almost everyone must get a C or better in the course to get an Associate's degree.  My simple-minded idea is that every student either fails (F) or passes with a C or better.  If we can't waffle with a C–, we shouldn't have the option to equivocate even more by giving a student a D.

This semester, it has been relatively easy to assign final grades.  All of my students were doing passing work by the end of the semester – mainly because the sloths and illiterates (43% of the class) had dropped out.  Some of the survivors were very weak and would have gotten a C– if I had had that option, but I couldn't defend a D and, as noted above, dislike that meaningless grade (useful on individual work but not as a course grade).  Most of the students fell quite clearly into the A, B, or C slots.  The only difficult calls were in deciding which of the C students deserved a plus and where the B students fell within that broad slot.  There aren't ever enough A students to create decision-making a problems.  If a student is strong enough for me to even consider an A, I'm not going to quibble and attach a minus to the grade.  The only exception might be an especially hard-working B+ student who deserves to be bumped up a notch.

Sometimes I wonder if students realize how much thought most teachers put into assigning course grades.  It is not something that most of us do casually.  I, for example, always "sleep on" the grades I assign.  After weighing every relevant factor, I pencil in the final grades but do not report them until I've had a good night's sleep and have reviewed them the next morning.  There's nothing impulsive or casual about it.  Perhaps it's simpler for instructors in subjects such as math, where all work is numerically scored and the teacher can devise a formula for reaching a numerical result.  Then wherever students fall on the numerical scale equals a certain letter grade.  In a writing course, however, I recognize, realistically, that no human being can objectively distinguish, say, an 80 essay from a 79 essay or even a 78 from a 74.  Furthermore, one must grade on improvement.  A student who is doing D work at the beginning of the semester and works up to a B– may have a C average but deserves more credit than someone who has coasted along with middling C's from start to finish.  Students might do well to recognize that assigning fair grades is, in many respects, just as difficult as earning good grades is.

December 19, 2007.  I ventured out to do some late Christmas shopping during the day today, and I must say that the situation doesn't look good for retailers.  Although it was a weekday, the parking lots are usually full and the stores quite busy this close to Christmas.  Since I'm retired and shop at these off hours during the rest of the year, I can say with authority that the stores were no busier than they are on a weekday in, say, midsummer.

It's rather obvious that consumers are holding back because the economy is not good.  Many just don't have the cash to spend and are being much more conservative with credit purchases.  On the Black Friday launch, the lower-end stores (Wal-Mart and the like) were reported to have done a fairly brisk business, thanks to bargains and come-ons, and only the more upscale retailers appeared to be hurting.  However, today even the lower-end stores were relatively empty; there were lots of parking spaces.

I think we're headed for a recession early in 2008.  The economists aren't sure, but I feel that it's inevitable and that it could be a very deep and long one.  Since I'm a stock-owner, that doesn't cheer me, and I hope I'm wrong.  However, the mess that the banks started with their irresponsible (and sometimes downright dishonest) lending practices has been exacerbated by other economic trends that nobody can rurn around.  The government seems intent on protecting the bankers (who least deserve a break), but the public will suffer the most.

The only bright spot (if you can call it that) in this picture is that a prolonged economic downswing will make the economy the overriding issue in next year's elections, and that will favor the Democrats more than the Republicans, who are already behind the eight ball for other reasons.  From where I sit, however, there's plenty of blame to go around – from the banks to greedy corporate executives to the doofuses in government (of both parties) – but the people who are going to feel the pain most had little to do with causing the situation.