Month: October 2006

Dragging My Ass

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If the team at CSI had a department of forensic metaphysics or metaphors, they might be able to declocktect, though the sprinkling of some special metaphysical dust, a long yellow and continuous streak running along the ground behind me wherever I go. This is a complicated and excessively clever way of trying to say that most days, wherever I go and whatever I am doing, I feel as if I am dragging my ass.  The causes for this condition I may or may not further detail, but for now I can say the conditioned has worsened as I have grown older.

Perhaps because of this general condition, these two back to back classes that I am teaching on Tuesday and Thursday this quarter loom on my psychic horizon like a twisted time warp from which I may or may not escape completely in tact.  Maybe I could it at one time, but damn it’s four hours straight of continuous teaching.

I don’t know how the hell or what known criteria was employed that a writing class should be an hour and fifty minutes long.  I remember indeed, at one time, a long ways back, the Tuesday, Thursday classes were an hour and 20 minutes.  And then for some reason, we stopped teaching writing classes on Friday and for whatever reason that increased the class time to an hour and 40 minutes; and then out of nowhere at the command of the people who book the rooms we were ordered to go an hour and 50.

None of this as far as I am able to ascertain has any relation to or was the product of “educational” or “pedagogical” thinking.  No.  It’s all bureaucracy from top to bottom.  For a university class to be a university class, students and teachers are required to have a certain amount of face time or we don’t get paid for the teaching.

Or to take another example, we require students to write approximately 20 pages per quarter in our classes.  Why?  Why not 2 well polished pages or 100 pages?  Make them write like mad fools for a quarter.  The answer to this really unimportant question is that one of the schools in the system is on semester and would not accept our classes for purposes of transfer unless we guaranteed our students write 20 pages a quarter.

How is that for sound pedagogical or education reason?  Not that I know or have any idea how long a writing class should be for ideal educational purposes.  I am inclined to think that most of the learning of a skill like writing occurs outside of the classroom.  Giving some sort of lecture on the comma splice and then having students do exercises on the comma splice for an hour and 50 does nothing at all.

But maybe, at two in the morning, some students looks at what they have written and sees that they have constructed a paragraph that is a page long and that I the teacher have suggested that such paragraphs usually can be broken into smaller parts.  And they look and, what do you know, it can be broken into smaller parts, except for this part which is two small and thus has either to be dropped completely or elaborated upon.

In any case, I have reached the conclusion that a writing class that’s an hour and fifty minutes long is very far from ideal.

PT and Ice

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(RECAP:  I have made it to the classroom, hooked up every thing and am reminded of the heft of my new laptop that I bought exclusively for educational purposes.  I don’t like carrying it in my over the shoulder bag because it hurts my weakened left rotator cuff.)

propermanAt present my left rotator cuff is worse than my right rotator cuff.  That doesn’t make sense because I am right handed and my right rotator cuff has had much more wear and tear.  But it hurts too though not as bad as the left.  The left was waking me up at night.  I would have to roll over onto the left shoulder to make the pain go away.  That doesn’t make sense either.  But I didn’t care.  If it disturbs my sleep, I tend to it.  That’s all there is to it.  I fancy my sleep and will brook no loss of it. 

The doctor, after I got the x-ray, said I had a calcium deposit and probably something more, but of course x-rays don’t show soft tissue.  He recommended PT and ice.  That was cool with me.  So far I have never spent a day in a hospital and I have never had any part of my body “under the knife” (excepting that cancer in my lip that had to come out).  It’s not that I don’t trust doctors; I just don’t believe they know what they are doing. 

I prefer to treat the problem; at least I know what I am doing to myself.  For example, I decided to skip PT and went on line and found the exercises I should do, and I iced and the pain has subsided significantly.  Such injuries—the general result of wear and tear and skeletal instability that comes with old age and creaking joints—I have found can be very easily re-aggravated. 

In light of the tonnage of my new laptop, I decided therefore that I had to abandon my trusty over the shoulder book bag.  I use a book bag for about 6 or 7 years and then I have to throw it away because I have spilled too much coffee into it or some candy melted and everything got all sticky or the cap came off the sunscreen.  This bag has at least a year more in it, but I go to Staples and I buy one of those bags on little wheels that people pull around behind them usually at airports.  But where I work many of my female colleagues use these to lug stuff to and from classes, especially laptops and the like.  So I got a pretty sturdy one for 99 dollars with a space in it for a laptop and all sorts of pockets for this and that.

The only problem with the bag is that, up to the present moment, while I have seen many women pulling these things behind them, I have yet to see a single male with one.  I knew this when I bought the damn thing.  But thought I was secure enough in my masculinity to non-conform in that particular way.  I should have known I would have a problem when I told the clerk or assistant (or whatever they call the person who takes your money these days) that I was buying it for my wife.

I feel like a wimp pulling that little cart behind me.  I should be a proper man and lug my stuff up off the ground.  So when I see somebody I know, I grab my shoulder and groan as they walk by so they will know I am physically injured and am using this cart device only as a temporary measure while I regain my appropriate masculine strength.  And sometimes for good measure, I throw a limp into it so they will think I am nearly physically incapacitated.  That’s easy to do since my left knee always has a slight ache going.

How long I can keep up this pretext, I don’t know.  In my heart of hearts I fear this little cart thing is permanent and I will never regain my proper masculine strength.

Laptop

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(RECAP:  I have managed to get everything hooked up but realize that the data projector may not have any sound.  I have decided to pretend, when no sound comes out, that the people over in AV are all screwed up.  I am able to see my “desktop” projected onto the screen behind me by the data projector, but it has disappeared from my laptop.  It is, thus, very difficult to get the little arrow to go where I want it to go so that I might open the media player to play the CDrom and produce no sound.)

 As I attempt to manipulate the little arrow by looking at the screen behind me because I can’t see it on the blank screen of my laptop, the students titter at my discomfiture.  I complain that this is a new laptop and I am not yet used to it.  Also I am old.

Both are true.  I am feeling quite old at that moment and the laptop is new.  Indeed, I bought it with my own money for the express purpose of having it for classroom use.  I had grown sick and tired of the one I had been checking out from the writing program.  It was at least five years old, and I don’t know what it is but something goes haywire with a computer that’s five years old.

It’s like it has lint in its system or something.  Stuff would start popping up on the screen from out of nowhere.  Little signals saying it wanted to download something or I was supposed to do something, or in the middle of things it would start checking its disk.  Also I was not trusted by the program’s computer person, so I had been blocked from any ability to add something to the computer if I wanted to or to try to repair something if I wanted to do that.

 The students used the laptop for oral reports and they would want to show something but couldn’t because the laptop didn’t have something on it, and the screen would say download this but they couldn’t and I couldn’t either.  Also I had grown sick and tired of going to the computer person and asking her to help me.   That was her job, I thought, but everything I walked in, she would give me this look and say, “Oh, Nick, what have you done now.”

After about 8 years of this treatment, the computer person began to get under my skin, and I was rude to her on a couple of occasions.  Well, rude for me, anyway.  Which isn’t all that rude.  But I apologized anyway.  And we made up, I guess you would call it, and did the hugging thing.  I guess people just don’t see how terribly sensitive I really am.  And then, just when we had gotten comfortable enough with each other to be rude and then make up (sort of like family), she up and went and got a better job.

Anyhow I didn’t want to do that anymore or not be able to download stuff to the computer if I wanted to, so I went out and bought a laptop so I could be in charge of it.

I went to a PC Club not far away and said all I was interested in was the ratio of money to power or, in other words, what was their most powerful laptop for the least money.  I was not interested in features, add-ons, extras, or any of that crap.  I wanted raw power.  So that’s what I got from a computer manufacturer that I had never heard of and a type that they were going no longer going to carry.  In short, the last one of its kind on their shelf.

I got lots of power for about a thousand of my own dollars to be used in the education of my ungrateful and unappreciative students.  Unfortunately—I had not paid much attention to it at the time—but the thing weighs a ton.  It’s portable, but in a limited sense of that word.  I have bad rotator cuffs on both shoulders and walking with it to class in my over the shoulder bag just killed me.

But at that moment, I am not so much concerned with tonnage as I am with the fact that I cannot open the “media player” to play the Cdrom for which I have no sound.

Hooking Up

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(RECAP:  I am finally in my classroom and have just attached the data projector to the wall outlet when I realize that the data projector which I have gotten to play the CDrom of a documentary (that will not work in the room’s DVD player) does not appear to have any sound.  I decide when I turn on the CDrom and no sound comes on that I will pretend I am outraged by the failure of the AV people to do their job.  I will curse them roundly.)

 While understanding the ultimate futility of my efforts (i.e. no sound will be produced) for my plan filmprojuectorto work, I must complete hooking up all the apparatus.  Also I have the faint hope that when I play the CDrom magically sound will come out of the data projector.  I remove my laptop from my bag and screw the data projector cable into the back of the laptop. 

I take out the telephone cable that runs from the laptop to the phone jack in the wall by which I can access the internet and my online syllabus.  I see that the cable will not reach the outlet in the wall, so I push the whole table with a screeching sound towards the outlet.  I squint looking at the four outlets.  Why, I don’t know, but only one of them is “active.”  Unfortunately, unless I get down on my knees, I cannot see which one is designated as active.  I ask the student nearest the outlet if she can see which is active and plug the cord in.  This she does with apparently reluctance.  Or perhaps she is just depressed.

I return to my bag to locate the power cord for the laptop.  I cannot find it.  I rummage for a bit.  And give up.  After all I won’t really need it since the sound won’t come on anyway.  I then plug the internet cord into the laptop and turn the laptop on.  The laptop goes on and my “desktop” appears but no light is coming out of the data projector.  I stare directly into its green eye but see nothing coming out.  I ask a student to locate the power button because apparently I have failed to turn it on.  The student does so and I am immediately blind by light from the projector.

Improvising, I pretend to be blinded and stagger about the front of the room for a bit.  But nothing, not even a titter.  Apparently they have no interest in my labors or my antics.  Or maybe they are a really tough crowd.  I will perhaps have to fall flat on my ass or maybe have a heart attack before I get a laugh out of them.  That would be great.  I have a heart attack, they laugh hysterically at my apparent discomfiture.  I die and some of them at least feel guilty.

I return to the desk with the laptop almost tripping twice on the various cords running this way and that.  Clearly now the data projector is working, so is my laptop.  But the image on my laptop is not appearing on the screen.  Instead there is just this big blue square up there with nothing on it.  I remember this having happened before and that to fix it involves the function and the F8 key on the laptop.  I give it a try.  And to my delight my desktop appears on the screen.  But my delight is dampened when I see now that my laptop screen is completely black. 

 My ability to control what appears on the screen is now reduced to zero since I am sitting with my back to the screen and staring at a blank laptop.

Data Projector

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(RECAB: After having gone to the bathroom and picked up the data projector and having forgotten the number of my room and having numerous flashbacks that I have to write about, I have finally manged to write myself into the room that is full of annoying sophomores.  I am after all my anxiety approximately 3 minutes late.)

I enter the room pushing the  damn data projection cart ahead of me.  It is not a grand entrance.  I say I am sorry I am late, but nobody says anything back.  Not:  Oh, that’s ok; or glad you are here; or go fuck yourself. Zip.

I manage to turn the cart and angle it towards the seats.  I say that I will have to push it back more towards the middle of the room.  I aim towards a gap between the row of seats and push in that direction.  But nobody moves.  Scoot over, I say, Come on. They move slowly and with apparent resentment at having to expend the energy to do so.  I unravel the power cord for the data projector and hand it towards a student seated by the projector, but he looks at it like he doesn’t know what a power cord is for.  I am saved by the student behind him who takes it and plug it into the wall socket.  My heart goes out to this helpful student. 

I then take out the cord that runs from the data projector to the laptop.  I screw it into the data projector…and it comes to me in a sudden and horrifying flash that, while I am that day going to show part of a documentary on the consumer society, I am not sure that I have any sound. 

I bought the documentary for 35 dollars off Amazon.  But when I got it I saw it wasn’t a regular DVD as I had thought ibut a CD rom.  Always anticipating technological difficulties, I had gone to my rooms  two weeks before class started and put one of the rom disks into the DVD player that is built into the wall and attached to a TV monitor hanging up there in the air. But the DVD player would not play the CD rom.  

Up to that point I had decided I would just bite the bullet and do without the data projector.  But since the CD rom would not play in the DVD player, I decided I had to use the data projector because I knew that the CD rom would play in my laptop, and if I could connect my laptop to a data projector, I could use that to project the CD rom onto the screen upfront.  The rooms that come with built in data projectors also have speakers in the ceiling.  Until that moment I had not stopped to consider that a data projector that was not built into the room might not have sound attached to it.

terminatorSo far I have managed to enter the room, plug in the data projector power cord, attach the data cord to the data projector, and now I am paralyzed at the thought that, while I have a documentary to show the class, I may not have sound for them to hear the documentary.  I begin to sweat.  All around me is silence.  Frantically, I examine the data projector but can find nothing among all its little buttons indicating the presence of sound.  I feel like just giving up and going home.

But I decide to plunge on.  I will hook everything up, I will take roll, I will tell them that we are going to watch a documentary on the consumer society as part of the material for their first paper, and when no sound comes out of the data projector, I will act as if I am completely shocked and start cursing the people over in the AV department for not giving me the right projector.

I have a plan.  But no sound.

A Raving Pedant

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(RECAP:  I have finally made it to my classroom.  I enter and immediately have an angry flashback about the first time I entered those rooms, found them crammed to the gills with seats, and myself completely immobilized by all the seats up against the blackboard,  Suddenly I think, EARTHQUAKE.)

I have this vision of an earthquake.  I see the students coming at me, a frantic horde, climbing strangeloveover their seats (since there is no room to walk between them) and the doorway of that tiny, jam-packed room completely blocked with a confluence of student bodies all atop each other arms and legs akimbo as that wretched building comes down around our ears.  Since my vision has some basis in reality, so as soon as that class is over, I go to the office and say that the brand new room I just held class in is an earthquake hazard.  Oh, Nick, they go.  Since we writing teachers are not real Professors, but Lecturers, some members of the staff adopt towards us a condescending attitude.  Well, you go over, I say, You look at that room and tell me it is not an earthquake hazard.

When I return to that room a day later, I find that 10 seats have been removed.  I learn that the campus fire marshal has visited these rooms and declared them a fire hazard.  Where the fire marshal was when they put all those seats in there I don’t know.  I feel vindicated.  The room is still too small with no data projector and no cross ventilation.  But I feel vindicated.  Indeed, when I look back, I rank my part in the removal of those chairs one of the high points of my career as a writing instructor.

This is pathetic, admittedly.  But the teaching of writing is a very frustrating business because I never know if I have, after ten weeks with a class, accomplished anything.  Sure, maybe their writing has improved somewhat.  I say maybe because sometimes it’s really hard to tell.  How the hell in any case is one to find a standard by which to judge what improvement might or might not occur over a mere ten week period.

 And unlike a tenured Professor, say, of literature, I see a group of students once and then they disappear.  They do not take a class from me two or three times as they might from their favorite professor.  So I don’t have students coming back to me, bringing me candy, or offering me sexual favors because I was such an earthshakingly wonderful professor and profound guy.  In ten weeks, it’s just not possible to build up that narcissistically informed rapport.  And besides I am teaching writing, not Shakespeare, or James Joyce, or one of those authors that allows me to play the explication guru and act as if I know what I am talking about so that students who don’t have the faintest idea what these authors might be saying come away thinking they have been informed.

I don’t get to talk about tragedy or comedy and love or the nuances of all three.  I don’t get to emote or to display the depths of my compassion or my complex understanding of the nature of human experience or indoctrinate them into the most hip and cutting edge current theoretical fad.  It’s hard to emote over the use of the comma.  I have tried and failed.  Rather than display the depth of my understanding of human nature, I come off sounding like a raving pedant. 

But with those seats and their removal I could see and feel that I had played a role in causing something to happen.

Late for Class!!!!

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I do not think a writing instructor should be late for class.  On top of that, I am never late.  Usually, I am early.  I am incredibly punctual.  Once I began to wonder if my punctuality was obsessive and so forced myself to be late a couple of times going to class.  That was years ago.  But lately I find eucalyptusmyself being late.  Not by much, mind you.  Also I forget things more than ever.  So being late to class has worked me up into complete fiddle-faddle.  Not only am I late, but being late is a sign of my weakening mental condition and insipient senility. For god’s sake, I don’t know how I live with myself.

So rather than roll the data projector along a route that is all sidewalk, I decide to take a short cut.  I take some sidewalk, cut across a parking lot, and reach an embankment.  I was going to go around the embankment but miscalculated.  Going around will go a long way in the wrong direction.

The data projector is strapped down to the top the cart with one of those elastic cords I used to use when I strapped things to the back rack of my bicycle when I rode my bicycle before my neck gave out.  My bag full of stuff is sitting there too on top perched precariously next to the data projector because it is so full of stuff I could not jam it into one of the shelves on the cart.

I would call it a semi-sharp, slightly sloping embankment.  I have walked up it and down it before as part of my short cut, but I have not tried to roll a cart with a data projector down it.  Those damn eucalyptus trees grow along the embankment, and they have dropped their berries or nuts—or whatever the damn useless things are called—all along the embankment.  So going down the embankment will be somewhat like walking over ball bearings.  I am buffaloed.  I have an image of myself lying flat on my back at the base of the embankment with the data project cart lying on top of me and the contents of my bag scattered from here to eternity.

I hate those damn eucalyptus tress; they are a non indigenous import from Australia.  They do not belong in California, but they arrived in the 19th century.  They have stayed and they have proliferated.  They are always dropping shit—their little berries and they shed their skin too.  They make a mess and nothing can live below them because of the toxins they emit.  I consider them a large noxious overgrown weed.

In any case, I decide I must go around the embankment because I don’t want to do myself bodily harm.  I mean, I tell myself, what the hell is the big deal?  Why should you rush and do yourself bodily injury just to avoid being a few minutes late.  What could possibly be the big deal, you idiot, I harangue myself. 

Having managed to subdue, if not calm, myself, I walk around the embankment pulling that loathsome cart and finally get to the side of the building where my class is.  These classes have doors that open out into the air.  There’s a whole row of these classrooms, they all look alike, and I realize I don’t remember the number of my classroom.  To find out what the number is will require that I dig into my bag, plow though its contents—aspirin, batteries, antacids, paper of all kind, pencils, pens, bits of chalk, my coffee container, my laptop, the cords to my laptop and locate the damn piece of paper with the number on it.

I am overcome by thought.  If I was not a stoic and I were in touch with my true feelings, I would go off somewhere and just cry my eyes out.

Sardines

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I know that I am in the general area of my classrooms.  They are right there in front of me.  I say “they” because I have one for my 1-250 class and another for my 3-450 class.  As you can see homer'sbrainthese classes are back to back with a ten minute break between them.  One might think that it would make sense to assign me the same room for the whole period and not give me two different rooms.  But the university does not know how to make sense of anything.

Instead of one room, I have 2 rooms and they are RIGHT NEXT DOOR TO EACH OTHER.  For God’s sake.  And neither of these rooms has a data projector.  So in the ten minutes between the classes, I must urinate, smoke a cigarette, unplug all the stuff I have had to plug in for my data projector to work.  Put all the stuff on the damn cart, and PUSH IT RIGHT NEXT DOOR (for god’s sake) where I have then to plug all that crap back in again to various sockets and outlets.

Just standing there looking at the two rooms—and I am pretty sure I am looking at the two rooms; I just don’t know which one I has my first class—I get pissed off all over again.  A person, clearly a student, comes and stands next to me.  I assume he is in my class since he seems to be standing there aimlessly.  I say, “I don’t know which room it is.”  “Oh,” he says.  Then he spies a woman going in one of the doors and says he thinks she is in the class.  So we go in that door.

Sure enough it appears to be my class.  A room full of annoying sophomores.  Moreover, not a seat is empty.  They are all mashed in there like sardines.  About 10 years ago I walked into one of the classrooms in this building on the very first day it was opened for use.  I almost exploded.  This is supposed to be a university and part of the purpose although apparently a very insignificant part is to educate.

I walk into a place where such education is supposed to occur and find myself in a tiny box.  I have 25 students but there are 35 seats in the room.  The teacher’s table at the front of the room actually touches the desks in the front row.  Between the desk and the blackboard, I find about 2 feet of space into which I squeeze myself.  If I speak too vigorously, I am likely to spit on students who sit in the front row.  

I have to restrain my fury.  Brand spanking new classrooms with no data projectors built into them and so crammed with seats that I can scarcely move.  The students can’t move either.  And this is very troubling since I frequently break them into groups to discuss readings with each other.  Such groups will be impossible in this room because THERE IS NO ROOM TO MOVE.

I am about to have a hernia.  Millions of dollars have been spent building this building mostly for offices for professors and nobody bothered to speak to a teacher about how the classrooms should be set up.  I am freaking dumbfounded.  Not just by the stupidity of it, but by the clear and present indifference of the powers that be—whoever they might be—to the so-called educational mission of the university.

Then I think.  What the FUCK if we have an EARTHQUAKE?

Data Projector

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Having managed a successful visit to that hellhole of a restroom and having gathered up my stuff, I head out to the classroom at a comfortable amble, only to remember when I am half way there that I have forgotten to pick up my digital data projector.  Now I have to go back nearly to where I started, and I must hurry.

I am very unhappy about that.  I have for perhaps 8 years now been attempting to integrate intodataprojector
the classroom the use of digital equipment, a laptop in particular and a data projector.With these two devices I am able to access my on line syllabus, my blog where students make entries about what they have read, special readings I may have assigned, and the web which I use both as a source of information and a subject of analysis. Consequently, I have repeatedly asked the front office to insure that I have a room with a data projector built into it.

In spite of my best efforts however every other quarter it seems I must return to the office and tell them the rooms assigned me do not have a data projector.  I don’t like doing this since doing it might imply that the staff is incompetent or that perhaps I am senile and forgot somehow to tell them once again that I wanted a data projector for my rooms.  This problem is exacerbated by the ungodly turnover in the front office.  So that just when I have managed fully to indoctrinate the responsible party into my peculiar needs they leave for a better job.

 This time, I must say, perhaps I did not get on the problem early enough.  But I didn’t think there would be a problem soon enough.  In any case, the responsible party tried repeatedly but could not get me a room with a data projector.  No sooner had she told me that, than she moved on to a better job.  Now I have to train a new person about my particular needs.  But perhaps since I was one of the persons who interviewed her for her job, she will think I am important and pay attention to my requests.

So I rush back to the AV place to get the data projector I have reserved for my class.  When I get there, the door is closed because it’s the lunch hour, and for a second I think, oh god Jesus no, but then remember if I knock they will let me in.  So I knock and then knock again and finally somebody opens up and I tell them I am there for the data projector I have reserved for my class.  I expect they will lead me to the data projectors and say, here take this one.

But, no.  Everything is written down and you can only take the one assigned to you as if there was some huge difference between the damn things.  I find myself standing there as a rather oafish looking student worker begins to thumb through some pages to find my particular data projector.  I can’t believe it.  You would think the thing would be in alphabetical order and the guy would just go to the page with the first letter of my name on it.  But, no.  Maybe it’s not in alphabetical order or maybe the guy doesn’t know the alphabet.  Because he starts with the first page, looks at it, turns to the next for ten damn pages before he glumly says, “D-15.”  The code apparently for the projector they have assigned to me.

It’s pretty clear I am going to be late to my second day of class.

Environmentally Responsible Urinal

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RECAP:  I am in my office preparing to go to class.  So far I have read my student-evaluations and was bummed by them.  I felt resentful feelings towards those who get high student evaluations and called them ass kissers. I have concluded that I am not cute because I am old. I have decided I have time to urinate before I head out to class. But rather than go to the urinal, I describe my new environmentally responsible trash can. Having completed the description I return to the idea of going to the bathroom.

 

With 15 minutes till the hour, I have time for a pre-class precautionary leak and so head for the previously mentioned male restroom.  I open the door and plunge into pitch black darkness for in wate3rlessaddition to the new state of the art environmentally responsible urinal the restroom no longer has a light switch.  It has a motion detector.  One plunges into the darkness hoping to be detected.  To make sure that I am I make wild gestures in the general direction of the motion detector.

Maybe I am wrong; perhaps it’s not a motion detector because I fail to see how it could detect any motion in that pitch black.  For the restroom is like a closet with no windows.  Perhaps it is a noise detector.  If so waving my arms around in the air is not doing one whit of good.

In any case, the light comes on and I angle around the stall up to the new environmentally responsible urinal.  Unlike any other urinal I have ever known, it does not make use of water.  This does not seem like a particularly stunning environmental break through to me.  The urinal seems to be coated with a super slick surface designed not to retard the flow of urine as drawn downward by the power of gravity towards the outlet hole.  

Unfortunately, the surface does not work. Especially on warmer days and what with no way to get air in the place, the urine adheres to the surface and stinks.  Some of us must have particularly adhesive or thick urine.  In addition, to the frequently fetid odor emanating from the urinal, it appears to have a significant design flaw.  A stream of any significance produces, when striking the super slick surface of the urinal, a ricochet spray effect.

If one leans back a bit, one’s clothes are not in danger of being sprayed.  Unfortunately, the floor is with the consequence that the area immediately adjacent to the urinal is somewhat slick and I worry about slipping and wrenching my wretched right knee. 

I don’t know why I have not contacted the authorities yet about this problem.  I expect I will since I am usually the person who notifies the main office if something is amiss in the mechanics of our environmentally responsible building. For example the big door at the end of the corridor sometimes gets out of alignment and emits a horrible sound like the final squawk of a strangling sea gull. Three of us had to call before somebody came to fix that problem a couple of days later.

I also call when someone has jammed up the toilet.  Usually, they come to fix this more quickly since a jammed up toilet in that little hellhole of a restroom can produce a rather stifling atmosphere.  We are lucky, though, as I said, in that few students use our restroom.  Once, when I was officed in another building, I frequented a restroom that was regularly used by students to throw up before going to class.  Or perhaps upon leaving it.

To be continued