Honestly I'm coming here because I don't know where else to go right now and I just need to vent and for some reason I suddenly remembered "oh wait, remember that old blog you used a lot in the past for these sorts of things?" I probably should get a new therapist but I've been saying that for two years now and womp womp.

Anyway.

This semester has already gotten off on a terrible foot, because I apparently now have a terrible reputation and reviews due to last semester's classes.  I spent like...10 years in political science and got a decent rep for my classes only for one semester with fucking business students to trash that completely.  And why? Because they cannot be fucked to read the simplest directions, got upset that I dared to hold them to some honesty measure, and then blamed me for them not doing well even though I gave them all the tools necessary to do so.

I don't even want to be in management, really. I want to be in political science. I'm here because I'm too much of a fuck up with research that the only way I'm getting any jobs is because I can teach statistics, which the management school desperately needs. That's literally it. And so having one semester where MBA students trash me because I caught them cheating and made them redo things with the administration's blessing is a huge blow to motivation and my morale like. My students this semester don't even know me and I have an awful reputation because some people got angry I held them to a certain standard. 

It hurts. It sucks. And I know I shouldn't care, because the students who are likely to leave reviews are ones who get upset about things like this. But it creates this ripple effect and it also just hurts on a personal level. 

I just asked them to do your own work. I just asked for them to review the materials I gave and pay attention when I explained things. I just asked for them to come to me if they needed help. But instead I get nothing and then suddenly I'm basically the worst person ever because my students were lazy and then upset when that laziness did not result in them getting an A.

I had several of them try to complain at the end of the semester about grades to the administration. Luckily I have everything heavily documented everywhere, so even the dean was like "yeah this is one of the clearest cases I have" because I covered so many of my bases. But hearing even what they wrote in those emails upset me. One person claimed they had gotten a 90 on a test they only got like...I think an 80ish on, and were trying to mess with the percentages that I had set out at the beginning of the semester to inflate things.

Oh, and some of them complained about my getting covid and having to miss classes, which was fun also.

For all the accommodations and shit we are expected as professors to give, I've found that over the years, the students' don't even bother to pretend to give an iota of that in return. Like, I have a gd pharmacy I take still to manage depression, anxiety, ADHD and honestly I probably could go for more diagnostic tests because my brain is fucked and I have sensory issues and I wish I was just a normal damn person but nope. But I'm not really a person to them, I've realized. I'm just some...thing that is meant to deliver them an A they paid the university for. 

This isn't fair to the students who I've had a wonderful time teaching. One of my last political science students said that he would never forget all I did for him and how much he enjoyed learning from me and all that. But that was a political science student and a political science class. And he was genuinely interested in learning and working hard. He earned the high scores he got in the classes he took with me.  

The management school claimed their students were better than the others in the university. And while my sample is small, I'm so far not convinced.

And this semester has already gotten off to a shit start. I'm teaching a class which is going through a 'transition period' which means that I am scrambling still to figure it out, even though stuff has started already. I've realized that shifting schools within the university comes with a whole like...culture change (if that is the right word). There are programs that management uses that I never even knew existed because they weren't necessary for where I was previously.

All of my friends have left the area, too. I like being by myself a lot but things have become weirdly lonely lately. Maybe because I feel like all I'm doing is fucking up and everyone actually hates everything I do and all that I am. 

I thought I would get better with these types of thoughts after I finished the doctorate. But nope. They just shifted. I still can't even get a fucking publication, and my one thing I thought maybe I was okay at has been tarnished. 

It is bad that I fantasized before about being in front of a huge lecture and just stabbing my own hand in front of them with something. It shifted from a knife to a pen to a pair of scissors and then back to a knife. But it was strangely cathartic to just imagine it, which probably isn't a great sign in terms of my mental health. Like...what if I just blankly stared at nothing while plunging a knife through my own hand in front of 100+ people? Will I get anyone actually caring, or would it turn into a "that crazy bitch can't even handle her own shit how dare she give me this B-" or something, I wonder? 

I mean, the me in that fantasy doesn't react when stabbing myself. In reality, I know I'm too chickenshit and afraid of things to do something like that. Is it weird I'd consider myself braver if I did that? Probably. But I already know I wouldn't be as stoic as I am in my fantasy. The pain alone would be too much.

Still though, it is nice to imagine.

Which again, is a bit fucked up. Probably more than a bit.