A bedtime story…

The university where many in the protein wisdom crew teach prides itself on it’s newfangled techiness — its cutting edge “laptop communities” and online classroom “experiences” — not to mention its insistence that all teachers maintain (workable) websites and develop technology-laden lesson plans and “teaching tools” (which usually translates to clumsily constructed PowerPoint presentations of age-old lectures, or wriggling GIF email icons). In fact, our university’s marketing brochures trumpet the school’s technology-rich classrooms moreso even than its faculty’s achievements (or education itself, come to think of it…). Smart classrooms are all the rage; computer labs are ubiquitous and, more importantly, are open late…!

But for all this talk of tech prowess, what the university won’t do is spring for enough phone lines to accomodate its teachers (and upperclassmen) living off campus (that would be roughly all of the teachers, by the way). This is a big deal, of course, because faculty living off campus need to dial into the server in order to post onto web pages, or to set up online projects, or link to outside readings, etc. And so instead of planning fabulously innovative interactive internet hypertext lessons, we teachers spend our nights listening to a woman’s recorded voice (provided by the local phone company) informing us that that the line is busy — presumably as a failsafe in case the buzz of the busy signal fails to tip us off. Then, we curse aloud, often with an animated gusto that’s perceived as threatening by our family pets (who duck beneath tables and under beds for fear of being struck by, for instance, flying soda cans).

All of which we report in lieu of an apology for not being able to post more today. Next week (we’re told) our DSL line will be back up and running (it’s only taken Qwest 2 months to “process the order” — which, from what we can gather, consists of putting a modem in the mail…). Then, we can flip the bird to our university’s woefully inadequate dial-up system and begin posting at our own speed.

Until then… you pays your money and you takes your chances…