Slowly feeling a little better, which makes me happy, but diaphragm is still really sore from all the coughing. Hope I just pulled a muscle and did not tear anything.
AM behind grading papers, and then discovered that someone had changed the assignment instructions and grading rubric (specifications for writing paper on which you base grade) in my online class when I was not looking. Apparently, the communication department is working with the management department, and they all want to make some changes for next semester, but you can't assign something and then after students are almost finished or have submitted papers, change everything!! Plus, the system would not allow me to grade based on the things I had beat into student's heads that they had to do for this paper. So I had to stop what I was doing and get into multiple email conversations, which means I wasted at least 4 hours on all of this. Finally got word from chair to just go back to what I had been doing for now, but this meant going back into the grading function and changing everything back, which is not as simple as it might seem. And this took another hour this morning.
So now that everything is "fixed" I can go back to doing what I was doing before I wasted all this time!!
It would have been nice if someone talked to me before they did all this!!! That does not happen very often at this college, which is good. There are several of us teaching the same required course, so we try to be consistent in approach and grading. As a department of about 8 people, we had all decided on assignment requirements 18 months ago, which is what I was following. I hope not too many students noticed the changes, but it is now back to normal, at least. They will think we are nuts. Whew.
OK, I am going to get back to work and try to calm down and rest for the rest of the day.
Oh, and yesterday, I had a student who gave a presentation online to me and her classmates through a Skype-type program, point out an experience she had dealing with her older boss, and how it was hard to work for someone older because "older" workers were too set in their ways and not able to adjust to technology or changes! Duh! She has seen my photo online, so does she not know she has an older instructor??? Several years ago, I had a student tell me and her classmates in another presentation that there was no use in training older workers because they could not learn anything new! And this was while she was standing in front of me.