I got assignments marked for all but four of my students in Modern Poetry (going to dance class yesterday made the difference: those two hours would have done it and then some--but I just plain old wanted to dance, and I did, and it was great, and I don't regret it). I felt somewhat embarrassed about it, as I'd assured them I'd have the assignments marked and back to them, but they seemed a lot less concerned about it than I was. Bless them. I was so tired today I have no idea if I made any kind of sense talking about the poetry--which is too bad, as we were discussing two of my favorite poems (Robinson Jeffers's "Credo" and "Rock and Hawk"). Because I was tired, I didn't work as well as I might have normally to elicit the responses from them and instead rather handed them some interpretation, but even so, I think it was a decent class.

Today's 102 was, once again, pretty awful. They won't even talk in groups, for heaven's sake, never mind in whole class discussion. I got a little pissy with them today and told them that they should be asking the questions I was asking them, that remaining silent is no way to learn. Again, if I hadn't been so tired, I'd have been more fierce about making them do the heavy lifting. I hope that on Wednesday I have the energy to sit out their silence--and to send them away if they won't grapple with the material.

I'm only here in the office to officially fulfill my office hour, but I'm going to end things a bit early and head home. Getting up at 5 has back-fired: I did grind away this morning, but now I'm unable to do anything else productively. I'd nap and try to work some more, but I'm afraid I'd just have trouble sleeping again and be equally useless tomorrow. I will leave the alarm set for 5--I probably need all those hours plus several this evening, but I'll just hope that getting some sleep tonight will let me work more productively in the morning. I'll have a good long block of time--no club-hour meeting, hooray, and since I went to P&B last week (even though I said I wouldn't), I will let myself bail on that tomorrow if need be.

I suspect that part of what is going on is that I am deeply reluctant to look at the revisions. I have to, but I truly don't want to. However, I have told them all that I will mark exceedingly minimally, so that helps a little.

Nice student moment today. A student from the M/W 102 decided to withdraw, but he felt he needed to apologize to me for missing so much class and to explain why. He said he wouldn't want there to be any bad feelings between us, should he end up in one of my classes again. I could tell that he wanted to do well--always very attentive when he was in class--but he is one of the unfortunates who has to work, and whose job interferes with school, especially in a class as demanding as mine. But he was very sweet about requesting the withdrawal, and clearly concerned to demonstrate responsibility and maturity. Sad to lose him from class, but the whole encounter felt good.

And now I can leave: I'm only missing three minutes of my office hour. Whew.