The Lord Giveth and the Lord Taketh Away

I was so excited last week because I was given a teaching assistant to help me with my grading. He did all my grading last week and it was heaven. I was able to focus on other things, including relaxing and enjoying the extra down time. I received an email from my teaching assistant this morning stating that he is just too busy to do all my grading and would I be willing to have him grade only one of the three sections. Of course his timing absoluting stank. This week students turned in their first paper, so now I have all of the usual weekly assignments to grade in addition to the paper. If I had known I was going to be doing almost all of the grading I would have gotten started on Monday. So, now I have to grade almost everything and I'm already behind. The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.

I was also approached by the chair of the personnel committee and informed that as part of the review process they will now be conducting interviews. What???!!! I am now required every year to meet for 2 hours, yes 2 hours, and answer questions posed to me by the personnel committee. He assured me that the interview is nothing to feel threatened about, but I can't help feeling like it will be a bit of an inquisition.