Out of control

Stress is most often caused by a person's feeling that they are not in control of the events in their life.

I am currently struggling mightily to re-gain control of my life from people who have taken it, while simultaneously letting go of the things that I can so that I don't feel like I'm out of control.

It's not easy.

I've been having troubles with a particular company that holds one of my student loans (okay, actually two - that's where the problem lies). They have in general been uncommunicative, and have lost at least two key forms over the last couple of years. This has created problems. I have had to solve these problems.

Their latest communication with me was to indicate they had sent one of my loans to collections. This was a big surprise to me, since I had been paying the loan regularly over the last year. I suspect this might surprise any other person in my position.

I made many phone calls to many different departments. I even went to my local office. Near as I can figure out, they sent the 2 payments I was making on 2 accounts to only 1 account. So even though I have receipts saying I've paid into both accounts, they think I've only been paying one account. The other account of course became delinquent.

Now, a reasonable person would think "Oh, that was a mistake. This customer was making double payments on one account and no payments on the other. That makes no sense. And this customer says she was paying both accounts. So we made a mistake. We'll fix it".

Nope.

No one who I have talked to has been willing to take responsibility for making this mistake. No one. So I have had to request a formal investigation be launched. Meanwhile, a credit agency is calling trying to collect on the account it has been forwarded.

Right now, I've done all that I can. All I can do is hope the "investigation" department isn't just a whitewash department. But I'm not holding my breath. At this point, I've received nothing but belligerance from the responsible department, which doesn't inspire confidence that their "investigation" people will be, what shall we call it,... human?

I'm experiencing a tenuous peace about the whole process. After all, I've now done all I can, and the results lie in someone else's hands. But it is tenuous at best.

But just after I launched the claim, I ran into another autonomy-stripping event.

The school I teach at uses an LMS for course management, as do most post-secondary (and even some secondary) schools. [LMS stands for "learning management system" and in its most simple form is a web portal that allows teachers and students to exchange files, post content, and manage grades] This term I'm switching from teaching full semesters to condensed ones, which means the courses are also switching from fully face to face to hybrid - half online/half classroom.

I like the idea of hybrid classes. I've always enjoyed teaching them, and one of the things that I find difficult in the online work that I do is that there is no face to face interaction to supplement it. So I've actually been looking forward to delivering these hybrid courses.

With the changeover, there's no break between terms though. I proctor my last exam Friday morning and distribute the syllabus for a new class on Monday morning. So being human, I worked hard to clear the exam week of any additional duties other than exams. In other words, for the new courses, I translated all the course content to hybrid format, created a coursepak, and wrote the syllabi and schedules all last week.

Foolish me.

I created all this material and uploaded it into the generic "inventory" shell for the course. We keep inventory shells so that you don't have to roll over the course in the next term, instead you just reload the inventory shell for a new class.

Unbeknownst to me, the powers that be decided I needed the content for the online version of the course (not the hybrid one I'm set to teach) and replaced my inventory shell with the online one.

Poof! There goes all my advanced preparation.

My first thought was "WTF!?!" Followed by "?Am I supposed to use this stuff instead?" Followed by "Is there anything useful here I can pilfer use as I erase all this content I don't want and RE-upload my stuff?" (btw: the answer is pretty much "no")

So now I'm erasing all that stuff that isn't useful but is in my course on the LMS, while having to re-load all the stuff I do want there.

To top it off, I have no control over access to the site, so 2 students have already sent confused emails saying they can't find the textbook listed on the site (you know, the online one, not the one I selected AND ordered) in the bookstore.

It's gonna be a long semester...