Thank you, Russel Stover

The key to the last, exhausted push of paper grading? Chocolate. This past week has been hell on my Weight Watchers program, as I've eaten comfort food (i.e. fatty starchy sugary) by the truckload, but the chocolate was the key. I didn't get all 10 papers done before 10 a.m., but I got enough graded Wednesday evening that I was that crucial tiny step ahead of the conferences. And I got through the papers Wednesday by following this sequence: grade a paper, eat a few chocolates, grade a paper, eat a few chocolates....

I was going to try to grade a few papers for 265 today (without the chocolates), just to get a jump start, but I also needed to let myself sleep in, so no jump start, as I now won't have time before I have to leave the house. But I do feel much more relaxed heading into the coming week. The papers for 265 and the backlog of other detritus from the comp classes simply is not as onerous as those first papers.

I'm back to thinking that--despite the lack of visible improvement in the theses I got in papers--the draft thesis assignment is a good idea. But it needs to be reconfigured. I need to put more emphasis on the information and idea gathering aspects of it. I'll be mulling that over for next semester: I don't think I'll do it for next papers, as one of the things I said in conferences, over and over, was that this first version of their papers was what I meant about having to write one's way into a thesis. I'll try to re-emphasize that point for their next assignments....

The both happy and sad news is that, of course, I will have fewer papers to grade in the next round. Between the students who officially withdrew (two), those who have now exceeded absences (haven't counted, but I'd guess close to ten across the three sections of comp), and those who did not submit papers and missed conferences (therefore, I assume, gone), the first big wave of attrition has happened.

On the other hand, a student showed up yesterday whom I have not seen since before the February break. He's been sick: he hasn't been to a doctor, but from the symptoms he described and his obvious pallid and exhausted condition when he met with me, I'm guessing he has mono. He came to tell me he wants to return to class and get caught up. Against my better judgment, I'm giving him the chance, largely since (before he disappeared), he was one of the better students in terms of reading, responding, and intelligent reading journals. I'm allowing him to submit the paper that just passed, just so he has something other than a zero for it. We'll see if he pulls it together.

But I'm not very pulled together. Despite the late morning in bed, I'm still utterly pooped and not entirely functional. I am going to ride today (I very nearly canceled but felt too sad at the thought--and sometimes I ride better when I'm in this state, as I tend to overthink; when I can't think, my body can take over and do what it knows to do). Then I expect to collapse relatively early this evening. It sure is nice to feel I can stop pushing so hard for a while. Whew!