Better

Physically better. Got about 7 1/2 hours sleep, thank God, and the body has calmed down. Classes went OK (102 a little bit like pulling impacted wisdom teeth again), churning through stuff, turning the crank, as Dad used to say. The poetry students did some very good work on a couple of very difficult poems, and at the end (forgetting how much I'd assigned), I asked them to move on to one more. They hadn't read it before, but it was pretty much just for fun anyway: Susan Griffin's "Answer to a Man's Question, 'What Can I Do About Women's Liberation?'" A fine and funny rant. I let them go early (wow, there's a shock)--but three of the young women stayed to talk to me about their final paper proposals. I love doing that kind of one-on-one work, and I look forward to getting the results. Smart and hard-working young women, all three of them. Nice.

However, I did just type in three (THREE!) papers to check for plagiarism. I have a sneaking suspicion that none of them includes the kind of plagiarism that will turn up with an internet check, though, dammit. Sometimes work in the E-Cheat type sites won't turn up (as one has to buy/download the entire paper to get at the bits that students have used)--and sometimes, the students have shuffled things just enough that whatever formulae/logorithms the computer program uses can't catch the raided source. There is also always the help from boyfriend/girlfriend/cousin/Mom/whoever kind of plagiarism, and that really is pretty much impossible to catch. I'm not going to drive myself insane over this (as I sometimes do--especially earlier in the semester, when I have more energy for righteous indignation). If the computer software doesn't find anything, I'll let them get away with it. None of the papers is good enough to get a great grade anyway: plenty of other problems. And I have a Pollyanna-esque sense that somehow the students will get their come-uppance somewhere, if not from me then somewhere down the road.

But I do feel rather defeated, or deflated, or some such thing, when I encounter papers that raise the red flags. "Oh, Honey, if you'd just try to THINK, you'd probably do OK..."

There is, of course, a lot of other stuff that needs to be graded/marked, sitting there on the radiator, looking at me with a blank stare: "Yeah? And what are you going to do about me?" Ignore you, for the time being. I will have a reasonable chunk of time tomorrow to chip away at that pile of student work, possibly even the mental energy to write up the observation I conducted, oh, a while ago. The law of diminishing returns is making itself manifest at the moment, however. My intention is to find something relatively innocuous to do to whittle away the time until Paul is done with his evening class, after which we will go out for a celebratory carnivorous blow-out dinner. Very happy to be feeling up for that tonight. Geez, it's nice to feel better after feeling poorly. And the sun is shining, God's in His heaven and all's right with the world. For now.