Once again, I'm on hold with my health insurance company. Fortunately, it's not about this. I've heard a prerecorded message twice now telling me that if I didn't get a letter from them, my identity wasn't compromised. And I didn't get a letter, so hopefully some thief doesn't have my social security number right now.
The reason I'm calling now is that I just received a $1900 bill in the mail for services that my insurance company last month said I only had to pay $136 of. And I did. Okay, someone just came on the line.
*time passes*
Okay, first they couldn't find the claim in their computer. They insisted that I saw some doctor named Rodriguez that day when I hadn't, and the amount billed was wrong. Finally, they checked something else and found it. After confirming everything that I already knew, I asked about the $1900 and why I was being billed for it. They told me that the $1900 exceeds the maximum amount allowed within a time period for this service. I asked then why would they say on the form that I don't have to pay any of it. And now I'm on hold again.
*time passes*
Whew. Unlike the unhelpfulness of last Monday, I just got told that there was no reason for them to have denied paying the $1900, and they were going to adjust it.
In other news, my refund from Amazon showed up in my credit card account. Glad that's over with.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008
Why I'm confused today
Currently on hold with my health insurance company. More on that later.
Spent most of my day grading student essays. I can understand why my school's implemented a program where every student has to write one essay per class per marking period. Some of these kids don't know how to write a formal essay.
For one thing, it can't just be any old type of essay. It has to be a response to an article they've read. I didn't know I actually would have to circle the sentence "this author sucks" and comment that you couldn't write that in a formal paper. Also, spell check is not your friend when you want to write "et cetera" and end up with "excreta." But I'm happy that many of my students have a grasp on the english language. Then again, I haven't looked at all of them yet.
With my colleague insisting that I should leave school and deal with the rest of the essays tomorrow, I decided I'd read one more before I left for the day. (Actually, that's not true, I'm leaving in an hour to go back there for a rehearsal.) When I realized that I was reading the word "giraffe" instead of "girlfriend" on that last paper, I grabbed my coat and walked out the door.
I got home to find my sample ballot for super Tuesday in the mail. I'm happy that we're a super Tuesday state now; for the 2004 NJ primary, I went and saw that the only people on the ballot were Kerry and Kucinich. So while I feel that my vote is more important now, I noticed some mistakes were on the sample ballot I just received. Namely, that the names of Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Fred Thompson were on it. These people have all dropped out already. I can understand if they dropped out recently (like Kucinich), after they'd printed the ballots, but come on, Biden's been out for almost a month now.
Which brings me to my final confusion. I finally got in touch with a health insurance rep a few paragraphs up. I was calling because I'd filed an appeal on a claim. I'd accidentally gone out of network for some bloodwork (long story), and I was trying to see if they'd let the mistake slide (and I wouldn't have to pay $300). Three weeks ago, I got a redone claim with my responsibility changed to $0. I rejoiced. A week after that, I got a letter saying the appeal was rejected. I...pondered. I was busy for another week. And then finally called the company this afternoon.
Here was the customer service representative's profound answer: "I don't know."
According to his computer, my appeal hadn't been processed yet, and I need to wait another week and call back to see if anything had happened by then. Great. Thanks for the help.
On the plus side, I got an email from Amazon today saying that they were granting me a refund. Hooray!
Spent most of my day grading student essays. I can understand why my school's implemented a program where every student has to write one essay per class per marking period. Some of these kids don't know how to write a formal essay.
For one thing, it can't just be any old type of essay. It has to be a response to an article they've read. I didn't know I actually would have to circle the sentence "this author sucks" and comment that you couldn't write that in a formal paper. Also, spell check is not your friend when you want to write "et cetera" and end up with "excreta." But I'm happy that many of my students have a grasp on the english language. Then again, I haven't looked at all of them yet.
With my colleague insisting that I should leave school and deal with the rest of the essays tomorrow, I decided I'd read one more before I left for the day. (Actually, that's not true, I'm leaving in an hour to go back there for a rehearsal.) When I realized that I was reading the word "giraffe" instead of "girlfriend" on that last paper, I grabbed my coat and walked out the door.
I got home to find my sample ballot for super Tuesday in the mail. I'm happy that we're a super Tuesday state now; for the 2004 NJ primary, I went and saw that the only people on the ballot were Kerry and Kucinich. So while I feel that my vote is more important now, I noticed some mistakes were on the sample ballot I just received. Namely, that the names of Joe Biden, Dennis Kucinich, Bill Richardson, and Fred Thompson were on it. These people have all dropped out already. I can understand if they dropped out recently (like Kucinich), after they'd printed the ballots, but come on, Biden's been out for almost a month now.
Which brings me to my final confusion. I finally got in touch with a health insurance rep a few paragraphs up. I was calling because I'd filed an appeal on a claim. I'd accidentally gone out of network for some bloodwork (long story), and I was trying to see if they'd let the mistake slide (and I wouldn't have to pay $300). Three weeks ago, I got a redone claim with my responsibility changed to $0. I rejoiced. A week after that, I got a letter saying the appeal was rejected. I...pondered. I was busy for another week. And then finally called the company this afternoon.
Here was the customer service representative's profound answer: "I don't know."
According to his computer, my appeal hadn't been processed yet, and I need to wait another week and call back to see if anything had happened by then. Great. Thanks for the help.
On the plus side, I got an email from Amazon today saying that they were granting me a refund. Hooray!
Monday, January 21, 2008
My rant at part of the school's system ,and how I'd change it for the better.
A few things you need to know to understand this:
1) My school just finished a five year long construction project. To have less kids in the building during construction, they instituted "senior privilege:" All seniors have the option of not having a class first or last period, therefore coming in late or leaving early, and having a couple hundred kids gone from the building. When the construction ended this year, they considered getting rid of senior privilege entirely, but the entire student population almost rioted, since they "worked hard" to have the credits available to be able to take off for one period a day their senior year. (I never had this program in high school, and in fact I lament that there were classes I wanted to take but never had the time, such as theatre arts and tv production. So behind the back of my students that think this way, I call them lazy brats. But that's another story.) In the end, they kept senior privilege, but only for first period. Parents complained because some kids used senior privilege to get to their after-school jobs early, but I'm sorry, most of the kids don't consider this program as a jump start on getting into the work force.
2) Because part of the student population doesn't get here until second period, that's when official school attendance is taken. Attendance is taken by filling in a bubble next to a name on a scantron sheet. The folder with the scantron sheet is left outside the classroom door. A woman walks around the entire school collecting these folders to be brought to the attendance office.
3) Here's how second period works in my school, attendance-wise, in the music department. All of the upperclassman groups meet second period. Everyone who enrolled in more than one ensemble (say, band and choir) is not in one room every day. We switch off. Yes, it's quite a bitch to lose 30% of your ensemble for half the week, every week. But the kids don't have room in their schedule for a second elective. But the attendance lists are not the same lists as the class lists for second period. That would be too easy. Official attendance for people enrolled in just band are assigned to the band director. Ditto for orchestra. But I co-teach choir, so everyone who's just in choir is split up between my list and my colleague's. Everyone in band and choir is listed under the band director. Almost all the orchestra/choir people are under the orchestra director. Except for two or three people who are under the choir lists. I don't know why. So how does the one teacher take attendace when some people on the lists are supposed to be in a different room that day? Have kids take attendance and have them duck into the other rooms to check if they're here.
4) The kids don't have homeroom on a regular basis. When they do, it's a 20 minute period between second and third period. They get these 20 minutes by making first, second and third periods seven minutes shorter. None of the other classes are affected. As someone whose major classes are first, second and third period, it pisses me off sometimes.
All of these amount to major problems. Here's another list why.
1) The seniors in my second period class do not arrive on time. They'll arrive anywhere from five to forty minutes late.
2) The kids that have been taking my attendance have been marking them present, in anticipation that they'll show up. I told them to mark them absent until they show up. They did the first part, and not the second. The attendance office calls these girls' houses and their parents freak beacuse they think they're not in school. The attendance office has been yelling at me for weeks over this. The last straw was telling me that they've never had any problems with the band and orchestra attendance. The kids who take attendace there are either a) not stupid, and actually do things correctly, or b)marking kids present when they're actually absent.
Now I have to waste class time grabbing the attendance folders out of my kids' hands to do them myself, and most likely call security to take the kids who show up late to the attendance office. We can't let the kids in late if the attendance folders have been taken away, and most of them refuse to go to the office for an admit slip. I don't want to call security - they don't have an extention, so I have no idea who I'm even supposed to call.
Here's what I would do to revamp the entire attendance system. Actually, what I'd want is to be able to enter in into a computer, but since the school's too poor to put a computer in every classroom, let alone have a fast enough network connection to have everyone enter attendance at the same time, I don't think it will happen any time soon.
1) Get rid of senior privilege. Lazy bastards. That way everyone will have to be here when school starts.
2) Get the attendance office to actually understand how the music department runs. At the beginning of the year, they'd assigned my attendance folder and my colleague's to separate classrooms (for the same class) and spent a week calling an empty room to ask me where my attendance folder was.
3) Have a 20 minute homeroom at the start of each and every day. If you show up to school late and homeroom's over, you're going to the attendance office. That's it. No gambling on going to second period and hoping that the lady hasn't taken away the folder yet. Our classes are already 48 minutes long, I think it'll be okay to take a few minutes out of each one.
4) This way, I can just mark down who's here and who's not, and have the attendance office change some of my absences to tardies if need be.
I know this is a long rant, but it's been making me really mad at work lately. I'm sick of having people in the attendance office blame me for stuff when it's really their faulty system to blame.
1) My school just finished a five year long construction project. To have less kids in the building during construction, they instituted "senior privilege:" All seniors have the option of not having a class first or last period, therefore coming in late or leaving early, and having a couple hundred kids gone from the building. When the construction ended this year, they considered getting rid of senior privilege entirely, but the entire student population almost rioted, since they "worked hard" to have the credits available to be able to take off for one period a day their senior year. (I never had this program in high school, and in fact I lament that there were classes I wanted to take but never had the time, such as theatre arts and tv production. So behind the back of my students that think this way, I call them lazy brats. But that's another story.) In the end, they kept senior privilege, but only for first period. Parents complained because some kids used senior privilege to get to their after-school jobs early, but I'm sorry, most of the kids don't consider this program as a jump start on getting into the work force.
2) Because part of the student population doesn't get here until second period, that's when official school attendance is taken. Attendance is taken by filling in a bubble next to a name on a scantron sheet. The folder with the scantron sheet is left outside the classroom door. A woman walks around the entire school collecting these folders to be brought to the attendance office.
3) Here's how second period works in my school, attendance-wise, in the music department. All of the upperclassman groups meet second period. Everyone who enrolled in more than one ensemble (say, band and choir) is not in one room every day. We switch off. Yes, it's quite a bitch to lose 30% of your ensemble for half the week, every week. But the kids don't have room in their schedule for a second elective. But the attendance lists are not the same lists as the class lists for second period. That would be too easy. Official attendance for people enrolled in just band are assigned to the band director. Ditto for orchestra. But I co-teach choir, so everyone who's just in choir is split up between my list and my colleague's. Everyone in band and choir is listed under the band director. Almost all the orchestra/choir people are under the orchestra director. Except for two or three people who are under the choir lists. I don't know why. So how does the one teacher take attendace when some people on the lists are supposed to be in a different room that day? Have kids take attendance and have them duck into the other rooms to check if they're here.
4) The kids don't have homeroom on a regular basis. When they do, it's a 20 minute period between second and third period. They get these 20 minutes by making first, second and third periods seven minutes shorter. None of the other classes are affected. As someone whose major classes are first, second and third period, it pisses me off sometimes.
All of these amount to major problems. Here's another list why.
1) The seniors in my second period class do not arrive on time. They'll arrive anywhere from five to forty minutes late.
2) The kids that have been taking my attendance have been marking them present, in anticipation that they'll show up. I told them to mark them absent until they show up. They did the first part, and not the second. The attendance office calls these girls' houses and their parents freak beacuse they think they're not in school. The attendance office has been yelling at me for weeks over this. The last straw was telling me that they've never had any problems with the band and orchestra attendance. The kids who take attendace there are either a) not stupid, and actually do things correctly, or b)marking kids present when they're actually absent.
Now I have to waste class time grabbing the attendance folders out of my kids' hands to do them myself, and most likely call security to take the kids who show up late to the attendance office. We can't let the kids in late if the attendance folders have been taken away, and most of them refuse to go to the office for an admit slip. I don't want to call security - they don't have an extention, so I have no idea who I'm even supposed to call.
Here's what I would do to revamp the entire attendance system. Actually, what I'd want is to be able to enter in into a computer, but since the school's too poor to put a computer in every classroom, let alone have a fast enough network connection to have everyone enter attendance at the same time, I don't think it will happen any time soon.
1) Get rid of senior privilege. Lazy bastards. That way everyone will have to be here when school starts.
2) Get the attendance office to actually understand how the music department runs. At the beginning of the year, they'd assigned my attendance folder and my colleague's to separate classrooms (for the same class) and spent a week calling an empty room to ask me where my attendance folder was.
3) Have a 20 minute homeroom at the start of each and every day. If you show up to school late and homeroom's over, you're going to the attendance office. That's it. No gambling on going to second period and hoping that the lady hasn't taken away the folder yet. Our classes are already 48 minutes long, I think it'll be okay to take a few minutes out of each one.
4) This way, I can just mark down who's here and who's not, and have the attendance office change some of my absences to tardies if need be.
I know this is a long rant, but it's been making me really mad at work lately. I'm sick of having people in the attendance office blame me for stuff when it's really their faulty system to blame.
Monday, January 14, 2008
Happy New Year
I didn't even need to watch the Giants/Cowboys gane last night. I was able to tell what was happening by the way my neighbors were shouting. If I heard "WOOOOOOOOOOOO!" the Giants had scored. If I heard "Ahhhh, motherfucker!" the Cowboys had scored. And in the end, there were more woooos then motherfuckers. Go Giants.
Spent most of yesterday procrastinating from writing my music theory midterm, as I was so sure that there would be several inches of snow on the ground today and a day off from school. But my brother Bryan kept saying that it was too warm outside to get much snow, and for once, he was actually right about something. It's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer correctly predicts that the comet heading towards Springfield will burn up in the atmosphere. "I know, kids. I'm scared too."
I don't have my usual Monday night rehearsal tonight, because most of the kids in my madrigal group are in band, and the dress rehearsal for their concert is tonight. There was no point in having a rehearsal with more than half the group gone. MLK day is next Monday, meaning no school, and no rehearsal for two weeks. Add on the fact that most of the kids in the group are also involved with the musical, and are in choreography rehearsals every afternoon, some of them cutting into my rehearsal start time - at 7:00 pm. What kind of high school decides to put on Cats anyway? The one I work at, that's what kind.
My colleague and I were supposed to spend today writing our choir midterm, so of course this has to be the day she gets sick and takes off work. (I think she wanted that snow day too.) So I spent two hours by myself in the choir room writing out what will hopefully be most of the midterm. Left alone to my own devices, I ended up with questions like this:
If you see the term accelerando in your music, you should sing
a) harder
b) better
c) faster
d) stronger
If my colleague comes back and complains about anything I worked on, I might have to smack her. I haven't taken a day off all year.
As to my ongoing battle over the incorrectly shipped Christmas present...no, I still don't have the CD set, and I got a form from my credit card company to file a dispute and get the charge removed. For some reason, they wanted a letter from another reputable merchant to support my claim, so I emailed Amazon to see what they could get me. They basically sent me an email that said "Um...you know that we can take care of that refund stuff for you, right? We filed a claim on your behalf, so this should be resolved in a week or too. And here is a step by step guide on how to track your claim status online!" Awesome. If that goes through, Amazon is totally forgiven with all the grief it gave me over obtaining the last Harry Potter book.
Spent most of yesterday procrastinating from writing my music theory midterm, as I was so sure that there would be several inches of snow on the ground today and a day off from school. But my brother Bryan kept saying that it was too warm outside to get much snow, and for once, he was actually right about something. It's like that episode of The Simpsons where Homer correctly predicts that the comet heading towards Springfield will burn up in the atmosphere. "I know, kids. I'm scared too."
I don't have my usual Monday night rehearsal tonight, because most of the kids in my madrigal group are in band, and the dress rehearsal for their concert is tonight. There was no point in having a rehearsal with more than half the group gone. MLK day is next Monday, meaning no school, and no rehearsal for two weeks. Add on the fact that most of the kids in the group are also involved with the musical, and are in choreography rehearsals every afternoon, some of them cutting into my rehearsal start time - at 7:00 pm. What kind of high school decides to put on Cats anyway? The one I work at, that's what kind.
My colleague and I were supposed to spend today writing our choir midterm, so of course this has to be the day she gets sick and takes off work. (I think she wanted that snow day too.) So I spent two hours by myself in the choir room writing out what will hopefully be most of the midterm. Left alone to my own devices, I ended up with questions like this:
If you see the term accelerando in your music, you should sing
a) harder
b) better
c) faster
d) stronger
If my colleague comes back and complains about anything I worked on, I might have to smack her. I haven't taken a day off all year.
As to my ongoing battle over the incorrectly shipped Christmas present...no, I still don't have the CD set, and I got a form from my credit card company to file a dispute and get the charge removed. For some reason, they wanted a letter from another reputable merchant to support my claim, so I emailed Amazon to see what they could get me. They basically sent me an email that said "Um...you know that we can take care of that refund stuff for you, right? We filed a claim on your behalf, so this should be resolved in a week or too. And here is a step by step guide on how to track your claim status online!" Awesome. If that goes through, Amazon is totally forgiven with all the grief it gave me over obtaining the last Harry Potter book.
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