Home, sick day

I could probably have forced myself to be at work today, go to meetings, hold classes, but that sore throat from yesterday (from Sunday evening, actually) is still hanging on, and since there was nothing utterly crucial going on--not to mention that I have gotten a very tender request to take care of myself--I decided to go in long enough to pick up some work and then came right back home. Of course, I haven't done any of that work, but the day isn't over yet. Now that days are getting longer, I'm hoping the fact that there is still plenty of daylight left will help me get at least enough done so I'm ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow I'm supposed to go to a 9:30 a.m. meeting of departmental assessment: we'll see how much sleep I get tonight, but I may bail on that. I do have to finish photocopying for 265, and I'm wondering if I'll have time between classes to get that done. I'm subbing for a colleague tomorrow after my class, too, but I'm just showing a film, so that's not a problem. But that will make for a long enough day, so not only am I staying home from work, I'm staying home from dance. Second week in a row that I'll miss swing class, but I find I don't mind and don't feel deprived. The nice thing about dance is that it will be there; I can go or miss and it's all the same.

Which cannot be said about the classes I teach. I'm about to get the first version of paper two from all my comps, and I feel completely sick about it. The thought of having to read and mark the papers is literally nauseating, despite the fact that (thanks to attrition), I'll be marking many fewer this round. My dread is heightened because I have a horrible sense that I missed a bunch of plagiarized papers in the first round (I kept finding things online that sounded suspiciously familiar--beyond the two plagiarists I caught), so I'm afraid they'll try it again. Not to mention that I am in a pretty bad place right now, in terms of my emotional stamina. I'm hoping that what I feel at the moment is just a passing mood brought on by the physical malaise, that I'm tired, and cranky, and sapped, and thus feel emotionally hammered. But in terms of the comp classes at least, it's very hard to rouse myself to give the tiniest shit about whether they learn anything at all. Their work is depressing the hell out of me. Even my current 102 student from last fall's 101 is deeply disappointing at the moment. Her work has been sloppy and inadequate and seems to be getting worse. I'm not sure what's up with her, but I need to talk to her....

and writing that, of course, I see that I do, in fact, give rather more than a tiny shit. I'm just monumentally discouraged by the glacially slow progress that is the nature of the composition beast. This time of semester is always tough, as it becomes increasingly clear how little the students have managed to incorporate of what they've ostensibly learned; it's just especially tough this semester because I want to pole-vault over the remaining weeks and have it done and over with. And yet there is no way out but through. Head down and slog, Tonia, head down and slog.

However, in my ongoing determination to find silver linings and all that, I need to remind myself that I do reach students, more often than I am sometimes aware. Sara told me yesterday that one of her 101 students is in my 102 (a very bright and earnest student); the student showed Sara her first paper, on which she got a C, and said that although I was tough, she liked it because she felt she was learning. Nice.

Last night I also had a longish conversation with a student from several years ago: he was in another dream section of Nature in Lit, very bright and interesting young man, wonderful writer, and we've kept in touch over the years. He's gotten accepted to a couple of master's programs and wanted my advice about how to proceed. Talking to him, I can feel the calling that will make him a brilliant teacher, and I was truly honored that he sought out my feedback. That in itself was lovely enough, but one of the best things for me in our conversation was that he said I was one of the few professors he had at Nassau who took it seriously, which made him want to take it seriously as well--and that my class was like what he experienced once he went on to Stony Brook. I'm half tempted to have students like him write up testimonials along those lines for me to use in "advertising" future sections of 281. So many students--like Smirky Bitch from last semester's 229--think I'm insanely difficult and demanding, whereas I think I'm being a college professor....

Sigh.

Just glanced over at the work I brought home. It really isn't much, and won't be difficult to get done once I start doing it. And yet I resist, and find myself wondering what else I can do to procrastinate. Lying on the sofa staring off into space and daydreaming sounds good but wouldn't work, as it would leave the volume turned up on the "should" voice. If I'm going to procrastinate, I need something that will drown out that voice. Or I need to put on some good music and just get to it.

****Sigh*****