Down to the wire

OK, so status as of Monday evening. P&B business is, I think, done--assuming nothing boomerangs. The work didn't really take all that long, but long enough that I did think how nice it would be not to be re-elected (and the Grand Cosmic sense of humor being what it is, that almost guarantees I will be). I have given a couple of students in the poetry class a little extra time to get me revisions of old assignments or to finish typing up their final papers. One student e-mailed earlier to tell me--not ask, tell--that he would be submitting his final paper on Wednesday. Um, no. I wrote back and told him that was not an option but that we need to talk. Haven't heard back from him regarding when he might be able to see me tomorrow, but he is missing a lot of work--and, I realized yesterday, was absent ten (yes, ten) times. That's ten out of thirty. That's a third of the semester. I don't think he has any options left, but he certainly doesn't get extra time on his final paper.

In any event, I don't think it will make any difference in the long run for some stuff to trickle in tomorrow, as God knows I've got enough to read already. In today's 102, only one student asked for comments on her paper: I'm happy to provide them--and happy it's only one student wanting them. And the only papers I still have to collect are from tomorrow's 102, plus the in-class final for my five 101 students.

I don't know how much more grinding away I can do today. I may do some of the noodly work: filling in forms, crunching the numbers I have so far, that sort of thing, which requires a lot less brain than reading papers (even without marking, reading them requires a certain amount of alert brain). I'm also mulling over what to take home: I probably have to hang out a bit in the morning until the cleaners show up (so nice to have someone else clean the house! I can't really afford it, and certainly can't afford to do it often, but right now, it's entirely worth the expense). I won't know for sure when to expect them until I get home tonight and get the confirmation phone call from the cleaning service, but no matter what, I need to get working relatively early...

And writing that I felt a huge wave of anxiety. Intellectually I know it won't be bad once I start whacking through the underbrush as it were, but the anticipation is killer. I just don't have a good sense of how much I'll be able to get done tomorrow, and I want it to be a lot. I want to go into Wednesday almost completely finished. If I can get to the point that all I have to do on Thursday is submit the grades on Banner, I'll be ecstatic. But I won't know how fast I can churn through it all until I start churning--and I know I will churn faster, better, when I start fresh.

Oh, and one more thing I crossed off the "to do" list today: I ordered my books for fall. I pretty much made a snap decision, rather than digging into the various options, but I simply did not want the decision hanging over me any more. I decided to go with a new handbook in the fall. That means a lot of lesson prep (I have to read it so I know what I want to assign, and then I have to come up with new review assignments--though I have a thought about that: I think I'll prep one assignment that students use with each reading, in which they have to pick out ten important points from the reading and explain them ... or something like that. Sort of like the reading journals: have them generate what they think matters). And of course, since I'll be teaching a whole new class in the fall--I've not taught the short story class before--lots of prep for that. Guess what I'll be doing in August?

But I have to get through May first. So, a little prep of forms and so on now, while I figure out what to do for dinner. That's a decision I might be able to make--perhaps not wisely, but there is a reason why certain meals are referred to as "comfort food."

Oh, yes, and breathing. I need to remember to breathe. This is the time of semester when Paul, William and I often find ourselves sighing heavily in unison. Pretty funny, but it's an indication of the energy demands on our brains....

Sigh. ***Sigh****