Brain fade

I still have some feet clearing to do before I dive into the new essays, and I'd hoped to get a little more done today, as I won't have much time tomorrow: I'll be conducting an observation during my (rescheduled to next week) office hour, and since I've missed several department meetings in a row, I really do have to go to tomorrow's. I'm hoping it's one of those meetings that either dissolves early or in which the discussion is not something for which I feel I have anything to contribute so I can sign in and split. I still won't get everything done--especially as I'm here so late (the seductive pleasure of chatting with Paul), which means I'm unlikely to get here very early tomorrow--but anything will help. And the students will pretty much have to lump it.

Took the poetry students out on the lawn today (one--wearing a very short, tight skirt, was less than happy about it, but ah well). It was an incredibly quick and easy class; I let them go after about half the class period. We'd discussed the poetry well enough; we'd done what we could in terms of getting them set to use critical material in their next papers (though I shudder to think what I'm going to get).... I just don't see any purpose in torturing them or me by making us stay through the entire 75 minutes, especially on a spectacularly gorgeous day, as today was.

I'm also happy to report that the stack of 102 papers from today's class is pretty teensy. I know I'm going to get at least one more, but I feel less dread facing them than I did. I know I'll get frustrated and miserable when I start reading--and now my plagiarism antennae are on full alert--but the frustration and misery will be of significantly less duration than was the case for first papers.

Attrition is a god-send at this point. Two withdrawals from the poetry class today, and they keep slowly vanishing from 102. I hope I don't lose many more from 101, just because it's going to be hard to maintain a critical mass of minds to make anything work. But considering who's left in all my classes, I can't think of anyone else I actively want to lose, which is a nice position to be in.

But truly, right now my brains are all over the place. I'm going to pack it in. Don't want that sore throat to come back after all.