With the wedding nearly here (one part this afternoon and the other tomorrow), let's just say that hectic has taken on a whole new meaning around my house. As a result, I haven't had time to check my email as often as I normally do. So yesterday afternoon, in a brief moment of respite from the whirlwind while Ali went to pick up his suits, Magdy went to fetch his tux, and Iman went to get her wedding gown, I took a moment to check my personal email.Like most people who use the internet far more than they probably should, I have email addresses for different things: one for work related matters, a personal one for family chats, one for groups, etc. To coordinate these various email accounts, I rely on Gmail to pull all of the messages into one single account which makes it much easier to manage them all. And while Gmail does a great job of sorting and filtering all the messages, the majority of them end up in a folder called ALL MAIL. I don't always remember to check this folder because most of the mail that ends up there is junk anyway, but for some reason I decided to check it yesterday and much to my surprise, I found a message from my department chair asking if I could take Tuesday/Thursday afternoon class.
Excuse me?! Can I take the second class that I was begging, and I do mean literally
b-e-g-g-i-n-g,
for so that I don't lose my health care coverage? The one class for one semester that I begged for just so that I can retire at the end of the semester with my benefits and never have to worry about being able to afford medical treatment and medication ever again? You're kidding, right?
I responded with a single word: "Gladly."
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Hurray!
While I am thrilled about this sudden change of plans on the part of my chair, he had to go and spoil the joy with a response that burst my bubble. He now says that we have to "wait and see" what the enrollment is like before he decides to keep the class or not. Oh, the joys of academia and pissy state budgets!
Ugh!
Fingers crossed that enrollment will be good. Can you ask all your friends and family to enroll in this class? Hey, can I enroll from NY? ;)
The friend who intervened on my behalf was at our daughter's wedding yesterday. He asked if the VP of the university had called me because he needed to know which classes I teach and our friend didn't know. If the VP called me, I missed it; however, it was the same day that our friend spoke to him on my behalf that the class in my department magically materialized. . .
I have a sneaking suspicion that the class became available because the VP pulled rank on the department chair. Our friend also indicated that I would have the necessary classes to keep my health care and to retire with my benefits, so I've decided to stop worrying about it. Finally!