Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

Being in a bit of a rush for the last two days of the week the times that I was typing out my posts has left me with one important bit of news: I was chosen as one of the faculty association representatives to the hiring board during our meeting last Thursday.

Of course the dean and the executive vice president were not present during this meeting. At the same time I think he was out of town during that time, and someone else was the officer in charge of the campus, who was also not there.

I was one of the six “veteran” faculty members eligible for nomination, not counting the three new hired teachers who were also eligible. Maila was not eligible since she’s leaving in the second term, and two of the directors were also not eligible because of perceived conflict of interests that may arise somewhere along the line.

In the end we were ALL nominated, and each faculty was asked to list three names on a pieces of paper that were passed around. The motion for open “show of hands” voting was also nixed before that.

I was in third place, after Cielo, a faculty originally from Los Baños and Student Affairs Head Ronnie from Leon Guinto, who also tried to beg off (like Maila and the directors) because of his proclaimed workload, not counting the two subjects he’s also teaching this term.

So in that sense it’s a good mix of people with backgrounds in different policies to see which one will work best for our school.

Duties already lined up include being part of the hiring, promotions and reclassifications boards and defending to the administration the proposed changes to the faculty manual.

Besides that another part of the agenda that Miss Lissa brought up was the availability times for teaching in the second term. As of now, just like I’ve been doing for the past few years, I will just write down, “Any.”

With her laptop connected to the projector she was already able to show us the subjects to be offered for the next term. She addressed me personally and told me that since there was no mechanics or electricity offered next term and Maila was leaving, that my load next term would be mostly math.

That probably means the same subject I’m teaching this term, plus Math 1 (both for the anticipated repeaters, according to Information Technology Center Director Sir Randy) and Differential and Integral Calculus, and maybe Analytical Geometry.

My cousin will be taking the fourth one, since their request for a special class with four students (or was it three?) was turned down, despite Maila already being willing to accommodate them and schedule make up sessions for the first three weeks of classes that they missed.

Another thing Sir Randy reminded us was to wear our ID’s around the campus, so that we could call the students’ attention when they aren’t wearing theirs. It was then that Maila noticed that the three people voted as faculty reps were all wearing their ID’s, including the fourth placer. Does that fact reflect on how they voted then? I don’t know. But it was a weird fact that she brought up.