I'm blind...

I churned through a bunch of the organizational stuff I had to do for classes, such as coming up with revised assignment schedules for my 101 classes, updating essay assignments for them and for 229, making sure I have needed homework handouts for 101.... (Oh, yes, and I made my reservations to fly to Montana for Christmas. I started to do that a month ago--and wish I had done it then, as of course the options are limited and prices skyrocketing. That took a lot more time than I expected--of course--but it's done, the ticket is purchased, I'm going. Whew.)

I still have to create study questions for a critical reading in 229, but I don't need to give it to them until Wednesday--and if I don't get it done, I'll just cancel the assignment. They won't mind I'm sure. They were confused when I canceled the last one, but once they understood what I was doing, they seemed relieved. I still need to recheck everything to try to catch any howling blunders (like leaving off a required reading, which I already did with the original syllabus for my T/Th 101s). I'll try to do that tomorrow. If not, I'll get up super early Monday to get it done and get everything copied so I can distribute it all to the students in a timely fashion.

Since I got my feet clear of that stuff, I've been churning through the ass promo (as office mate William has decided to call it)--and as I've periodically gone online to track down something for myself, I keep finding e-mails from one of my mentees, asking very good questions that I'm not sure I can answer. My own folder is filled with questions like "Does this go here?" and "I have a letter for this but is it worth mentioning?" and "How can I use only one document, as required, when I am also required to document each individual year of X?" There is a place in the application that asks us to say something intelligent about our professional development as scholars, and how our work as scholars is beneficial to our teaching. Right at the moment, mine says, "Oh, God, I'll come up with something about this later." Part of why I can't write something at this juncture is simple brain fade: I don't think I could write anything very smart about anything at the moment (witness this blather). But also, there is a quotient of BS that goes into the attempt to connect scholarship with teaching when my work as a scholar is hardly about comma splices and thesis statements--and one needs to be in a certain frame of mind and state of alertness to BS effectively. There is a connection, of course: what I teach and what I study both arise from my interests, my personality, my particular bizarre brain. And the environmentalist motif runs all through all of that. But making the direct connection does require a bit of a stretch.

I will say, one nice thing about doing this idiotic exercise is it puts everything I've done since fall 2006 in one place--and makes it look relatively impressive. I don't want to look at the folder for anyone else who's going up for associate, as I'm sure I would then feel totally inadequate--but I think those of us on P&B who are going up for associate have to recuse ourselves from looking at other folders for the same rank. Conflict of interests and all that.

But I've been staring at the computer screen so long that I really do feel like I can't see very well. (When I get tired I have a harder time literally being able to focus: everything gets blurry.) On the other hand, it's pretty early, so I have a good long time to wind down tonight--and to rest my weary oculars. Not sure what I'm going to do as I collapse into sloth mode (watch something on DVD? Try to read--making sure to wear my glasses? Play mindless puzzle games on the computer? A combination thereof?) but I'm delighted I can collapse and still feel I've done something productive. Papers to grade, did you say? What? I can't hear you: la-la-la, fingers in my ears, la-la-la...