Egg, faces, and bathrooms

This past Friday I had the perfect blog topic, or so I thought. And, believe me, it was perfect. About an hour before my first class of the semester was about to start, I decided it was time to locate this mysterious "Room 240" that had appeared on my schedule for the very first time. In my department, we tend to teach our classes in the same wing (with all the fancypants equipment), and as those room numbers run from 150 to 190, I knew room 240 had to be somewhere on the second floor. But where? So off I went. And very quickly found rooms 240A and 240B.

Room 240A and 240B are the faculty bathrooms.
Yes, I said bathrooms.
Those exact same bathrooms I waxed lyrical about a few years ago, as places of silence, warmth, and with a complete lack of student interruptions. Now although I love those bathrooms, and my opinion of our current administration has been through its ups and downs, I refused to accept that someone, somewhere decided that the best place to meet for our senior capstone course was in the bathroom. Besides, didn't the "A" and "B" clearly indicate that there had to be a non-lettered "Room 240" somewhere in the building?

So I kept looking. And looking. And looking. But no room 240. So I enlisted the help of the dean's secretary, who happened to see me wandering the halls, and we wandered around together for a while, without any luck.
"Yeah, Dr. D.", she eventually sighed, "I hate to say this, but it seems to me like you really are scheduled to teach in the bathroom."

Now don't you agree that that would have made for a great blog post? Can you imagine the sarcasm dripping off this page as I pondered whether to teach both male and female students in the girls' bathroom or whether to separate the class by gender? Or the wrath I would have bestowed upon the new, improved, totally awesome scheduling program so proudly introduced by our administration last year?

Alas, it was not to be. For after I had asked the secretary if she would mind posting a note on both bathroom doors that obviously (and I insisted she include that word), Dr. D.'s class would not be meeting in the bathroom today, and made my way back to my office to email all of my students to meet in my office, I ran into Carrie. Carrie is a very quiet, but incredibly bright student. And right in the middle of my mumbled rant about incompetent schedulers and southern ways to indicate you needed to just quit, she quietly asked, "Uhm, Dr. D? I'm in your three o'clock class, and I was wondering if we were meeting in the Health building."
"No, we're not meeting in the bath...." Wait. Did she just say the health building? That big square monstrosity across the street? I stopped in my tracks, "I'm sorry, Carrie, what did you say?"
"Well, on my schedule, the building code says we're in the health building, but I just wanted to check with you."

The building code, you should know, is a wonderful little three-number code that is added before each room assignment, designated the building said room is in. It's something English professors will dread, as their classes tend to be scheduled all over campus, while lucky faculty members like myself never consider, since we always teach in the same wing of the same building. Always. Except this semester.

So, with the blush creeping on to my neck and cheeks, I checked my schedule, and indeed. Instead of the familiar "228" building code, the code next to the infamous room 240 was "229", a.k.a the health building. So it appeared as though my class wasn't meeting in the bathroom after all.

Do you remember that post I wrote a few months back, about my students not reading their assignments, their books, their notes? Yes, well, it appears that their professor is not much better at it herself.

So much for a cool, ranting blog post.
I'm sorry.