crabby

I don't know whether I'm crabby because I don't feel well, or if I don't feel well because I'm crabby, or if both are because I'm tired, or if I'm tired because I just want this semester to be over, or what. Murmph murmph murmph, as Pogo would say, expressing general disgruntlement. Classes went OK today (KC won in terms of having the most interesting, productive conversation), but enh, I just can't get into it. I'm sure the poor beleaguered students feel the same way. And we're so close to being done. I will see my T/Th classes a grand total of three more times--ye gods! It's a little frightening to look at it that way: I'm being dragged helter-skelter toward that end-of-semester mad crunch of paper grading and final grade calculating, which will happen while I'm flying to Montana and my first day or so there--yikes yikes yikes! And I am having to fight a desire to cancel classes (what would be the point? I'm barely doing anything with them anyway, so it's not like there's heavy lifting going on).

I'm so all over the place physically, emotionally and psychologically that I am also half tempted to skip dance class--even though I love it and know I'll have a terrific time once I'm there. I just want to (metaphorically) crawl under the sofa and hide out with the dust bunnies (ok, in my house, dust rhinos) until January. Even getting ready to travel seems more effort than I can summon up--and I don't have to do anything extravagant (apart from a little bit of Christmas shopping, which sounds like a byzantine and excruciating form of torture.)

See? Crabby. But since I don't have anything productive to say about pedagogy, classes, student relationships, anything along those lines, I'll take my crabby little self out of here and trust that dancing, followed by (I hope) a largely vegetative state until the morrow, will turn my mood into something less porcupinesque.

A bit of good news: I got all but two of the 229 proposals marked, and the last two are the best and will be a pleasure to finish up tomorrow. In fact, I think I'm going to ask James if I can use his as a model for future classes. I already asked if I could use his first 101 essay (both versions) as a model; I have model final papers for lit classes but little else, and I want to start pulling together more models. I do think it helps the students if they can see what makes a paper good.

But now it's time to slip into those high heels and triplestep triplestep back step, triplestep triplestep back step (East-Coast swing...).