PowerPoint is The Devil's Plaything (or, How I Spent My Weekend)

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I believe I've broken a record. After struggling all weekend with the demonic force that is Microsoft Office's PowerPoint, and failing to successfully record a sound track to my lectures -- the damn program keeps cutting off my narration abruptly on several slides --  I've taken a personal day.

Two weeks in and taking a personal day! That's gotta be a record, right? But it's necessary. My face to face classes can survive having their schedule bumped a day, particularly because it's so early in the semester, and that will give me approximately six no-kids-or-husband-in-the-house hours to concentrate wholly and fully on fixing the technical problems and then, perhaps, getting some grading done. I spent so much time fooling around with PowerPoint this weekend that I neglected to grade the quizzes and small assignments that have already begun to accumulate.

And I'm bone-tired, the result of staying up until 2 a.m. fiddling with my f*&*^%g files and then waking up at 6:30 a.m., when Little Miss Talkalot came downstairs, awake and full of conversation. I would have been incredibly underwhelming in my face to face classes, and that's like the kiss of death when you're teaching developmental students. If you don't want to lose them, you have to stay dynamic and energetic. I am neither of those things today.

But I am persistent. I WILL figure out this stupid PowerPoint/audio thing. I hate PowerPoint, too. If I wasn't teaching class online, and if it didn't seem like the best way to "lecture" to my class, I wouldn't have even opened the application on my laptop.

Anyway. Grumble, grumble, grumble -- just needed to vent and "out" myself. Sharing my technical and time-management failures, even in this weird kind-of anonymous blog form, is oddly comforting. It's my Catholic "we-like-to-confess-things" childhood floating to the surface, I guess.

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