I just cannot cannot cannot get these idiotic, maddening papers done. I had to run another (unsuccessful) plagiarism check: I just know that the paper is plagiarized from somewhere, as the ideas are more unique (and some of the phrasing possibly too sophisticated) for this particular student to come up with, but nothing turned up, and honestly, it took so long just to do the checks I did, at this point, if the student is getting away with something, oh well. And I may try to adopt that attitude for the entire T/Th section of 102 (whose papers are as yet not even glanced at). But I am fucking HATING this process, far more than usual. I have two more papers (well, one and a half) to finish for tomorrow's class, then a huge dollop for Tuesday--and I don't know if I'll be able to force myself through the hours needed to get those done. If I don't, well, the due date for revision just keeps getting pushed back and back and back. Eventually, I'm going to run out of semester.

I did go to dance class today, despite the fact that I accomplished so little with the rest of the weekend (and yes, I'm blogging now instead of finishing those last two papers). It actually helped to go to dance: I was in such a funk this morning that I don't think I'd have gotten any more done, possibly less, if I'd bailed on dance and stayed home to work. I keep telling myself that the only way to do this is just to do it, to do it and get it done: this is really the last horrible push of the semester. I never mark as much on revisions, and I don't mark final papers at all (took me a long time to learn that lesson). So if I can just get them done, the relief will be huge. I know that, I know it and it does not act as sufficient spur to get me to just nail myself to the work.

So Scarlett again rears her ugly head.

And again, I may find myself canceling class to get the work done for class. Poetry may get the fuzzy end of this particular lollipop (or, as Miss Mamzelle Hepzibah, of Pogo fame, would say, this loolipoop). (OK, yes, I'm trying to amuse myself out of this entrenched resistance.)

I suppose it's a silver lining of sorts that I've not been sleeping past six a.m. for the past week anyway, alarm or no, so getting up at 5:30 the next two mornings won't be anything new or unusual. (I don't expect I'll do much better with sleep until, oh, June, maybe. Ah well.)

But now that I've taken a petite break, I feel refreshed enough to finish up those last two papers, then hit myself upside the head with a frying-pan so I will fall into bed and sleep, then to fling myself at the rest of the papers with renewed resolve tomorrow (hah!).

May 20 (the end of the semester for me) is thirty-one days away--which is thirty-two too many. Groan. No way out but through.