Asleep at the calendar

Whoever is in charge of the calendar lately is really screwing things up. The proper way to plan things is to announce "Let's look at our schedules." Then everyone grabs a pen and their day planner/calendar/notepad/printouts and we gather around the dining table at my parent's house to hash out plans for the next three months. Obviously, who ever has taken over Calendar management, hasn't bothered to do anything close to that. In previous years, you could count on the following: Krystal Square Off Championships in late October, therefore Krystal Square Off Qualifying Tour from August - October Georgia National Fair in Perry, the first two weeks of October The Middle Georgia Regional Square Off Qualifier the opening weekend of the fair Big Pig Jig in Vienna, GA, the first weekend of October, and thus My fraternity's annual alumni gathering in Vienna in conjunction with the Pig Jig Since apparently no one is paying any attention, here's where it's all gone wrong: The Square Off Finals are now Sept. 28th, a full month earlier than it usually is. Since this is a week before the GA National Fair (and regular Middle GA qualifying round), how does this impact the Middle GA Qualifying round? Easy! There's isn't a Perry Qualifier this year. (I'm resisting the temptation to point out that not only has Krystal closed a long standing store, they've also pulled out one of their original Qualifying tour stops.) OK, so no Square off for me this year, there's still the rest, right? Well, no. Apparently the Pig Jig has changed their date to the end of October in an effort to stop competing with the GA National Fair. So now it's Halloween weekend for the Pig Jig and ATO reunion, right? Not so fast, my friend. Apparently there wasn't much support for moving the reunion to that weekend, so now it's been moved to October 11th, the last weekend of the Fair in Perry. (Thankfully I found out about that last schedule change before I dropped a lot of cash on lodging reservations.) Every semester, I take the time to plan out all my classes. I have a dry erase 120 day calendar on the wall of my home/office. This becomes my official schedule upon which all decisions will be made.You can clearly see two things: I have messy handwriting My calendar is packed, baby! Part of what is clogging this up so bad is that this semester I have to teach on Fridays for the first time. The reason for this is simple: student enrollment is going through the roof. There was a 9% increase in registration this semester. They're predicting a 31% in the next few years. Problem is we're already out of class space. As the 5th largest Community College in the state, we have 40% less classroom space than the average. The only way to squeeze in more classes until they can build more buildings is to start teaching at times that have been overlooked in the past: Fridays, Saturdays, and nights. Thankfully I have avoided any Saturday classes, but I got tagged on Friday and nights. The curse of the new guys, I suppose.As you can see, my schedule is packed to the gills and quite messy. While using a dry erase board might imply that it's easy to change my schedule it isn't. (Hard to get the eraser into those tight spaces!) So whoever keeps screwing with the schedule, knock it off! There are proper procedures for scheduling changes: You loudly announce we need to meet to review our calendars We gather at the dining table at my folk's house Nobody leaves until everyone agrees Then we have snacks