Faculty Senate President

I did I tell you they made me the Faculty Senate President. I actually get paid for the extra work but not until Fall Semester so I have all these meetings to go to from Now until August and I do not get paid for them!!!Isn't That special? I think they are stupid making me President because I really do not care that much about any job. I am always trying to get out of the office and to the house. I never go to work when the kids are off and I never do anything unless my family wants to do it. I am not exactly dive on the grenade material. I would and will not kill myself at the job. Well no one else wanted the job so I got it.

Sometimes my sense of morals and obligations get me in trouble. I used to yell at the kids. I am being better about it. I feel sometimes I am too annoying to the kids especially Andrew because he is older. I try to balance it all but feel I fault on the side of responsibility; often. I had a rough childhood with no real parent involvement. Not that it was possible; there were 6 kids, like me, in the family so only Super Man/ Woman could have handled it! I know it drove my mom crazy trying to do it all. I have no regrets about how my parents raised me because I know they gave all they could. And that is where I get all of this from. I know my parent would have done anything I asked them to do , with in reason. So I feel morally obliged to raise my children the same way. Also I figure Andrew and Ashley's children should have a nice balance between parents who are too strict (like me) and parents who are to lenient. I figure I do a good enough job. But yes it is my moral obligation to raise my children better than my parents did. Oddly I do not see that from all of my siblings. Not placing blame but I see some very different parenting styles in my family.

You can have a gift for something and still hate doing it. I have a gift at being a logical person in meetings. I have the gift of getting people to open their eyes and be balanced during these meetings. I also am funny about it so people have a good laugh at it as well. BUT I hate meetings. I can last about 45 minutes then I am literally squirming in my seat. I am dying to get out. I absolutely hate meetings. Most of them have little to no point and I try to make them fun and logical. But I see that meetings have no outcomes. So many times I go to ,meetings and wonderful (or useless) things are said but then nothing gets done. You see in a meeting no one feels obliged to take personal responsibility. It is a group not an individual so nothing ends but getting done. Sure things are said but nothing results. So we find out a year latter that no one followed through on the recommendations because no one thought it was THEIR job. So Meetings should be replaced with personal action plans. Sure we should have meetings then after the meeting we should have a workload budget. If you do not do your assigned task then people would know. But that would make people accountable and we do not want that.

Did I mention I have a meeting at 10 am?!?

I hate to say your workload is normal It takes a few years to figure out what you really want to do. Even after you have a clue it takes a few years of eating shit before you can do what you really want to do. Even after all that it usually involves a sacrifice to get the job you want . After I graduated from Columbia I had several shitty jobs doing things just to build up my resume. Even after I had moved to Detroit things sucked. I had to move to the Marshall Islands just to break into the field I want to be in and that took serious looking. It was a shitty job in that it did not pay but it got me to where I am now. So all I can say is expect to have a shitty time for a few more years. But if you are willing to relocate on a regular basis you can end up in a great time in a few years. If you do not relocate expect it to take 5 years to get the job you really want.

Ashley is fine and doing well. Andre is doing well but hew did kick a kid in school the other day! Tita we hope will pass the Praxis test (teacher test) with a score high enough to get her a job in the Mainland. Sad to say that many states have their own test they make you take even if you have the Praxis. I had to take 3 in New York and 2 in Michigan.

I got to go play my video game and then get ready for my meeting talk to you later.

Did I mention that the kittens are great!!!

Final research papers. YUCK!

05-08-06
Andrew is just like me that is why I want to prevent him from making the same mistakes I made. I see that he is doing better than me so I am not worrying as much. But I care deeply about him and do not want to see him get hurt from the stupid mistakes I made as a child. I KNOW I need to tell him as much.

As far as work for Tita it is fine she likes her work and is meeting new people and doing well. I am so proud of her. she can be a total recluse if you let her. But she is getting out and making friends and
having a good time at work. I am happy for her. I am really excited about the opportunity for her. pluss the extra cash is VERY nice as well. it really makes a huge difference to us. We almost doubled our income when she started working! It really makes life a lot easier having money. We were doing fine on my salary but now we can plan a lot better for the future e.g. retirement and college education for the kids. It is a huge concern of mine as my dad paid for my BS I am morally obliged to do the same for my children (and they are too). I also know as a teacher I will never be rich but I hope to find a place with a good retirement program. Granted this place in theory has a great retirement program but you can never count on this place being financially stable.

So we are hoping for two things this summer. First we are hoping Tita passes the Praxis test (we find out in 3 weeks) and second we are hoping my summer classes go (we find out in 2 weeks on my classes). If my classes do not run it is no big deal. Sure i would like the extra money but who knows. If Tita does not pass the Praxis she will need to get some serious tutoring on the test (mostly the math section). If i do not have class this summer i plan to be a total bum until the everyone gets out of school.

I am almost done with school I have one more week. I do not have any classes I have to grade final papers. This is a huge undertaking because students will pass or fail my class based on their final research paper. I stress this from the beginning of the course but students put off this until the last minute. I know I did when I was in school but none of my instructors stressed it like I do. No Worries it is their choice.

My back is killing me which leads me to taking IB's (Advil etc) this then leads to GI bleeding. It does not hurt but I was concerned enough to go to the Dr. and ask for a prescription for stronger meds. Lucky
the Dr. I went to see (this time) was sympathetic; he has had back pains as well. So it was no big deal. I saw this really rude Dr. at the govt. hospital. He was really rude and did not care he even did not prescribe enough medicine to cure my infected ear. And he was Canadian I thought they were cooler than that, it totally surprised me.

Computerwise I have hit Nirvana! I had a Debian Linux system set up on my home network. it was able to get files and print through Tita's Window XP machine. Now i have decided to make it a Web and Mail server as well. I plan to spend the greater part of the next six weeks teaching my self how to set up the web and mail server functions. So expect news on the official www.rumptz.com site in the next few months.

We are going to the Philippines this summer and I plan to take as many computer classes as possible. Well I won't let it interfere with our travel plans but I do want to learn more on computer servers. I am hoping to take classes on Apache, PHP, Java and Mailserve. I hope. I plan to be learning this at home on my own as well before i go as I had said above. But taking classes I hope will broaden my knowledge.

Anyway the more I write this the less I work grading my final research papers. YUCK!