Grim

OK, so one confirmed plagiarist in 102--and he was warned in his proposal that I suspected he was plagiarizing. He did more of the same in his final paper. I just finished writing him a letter and am having an anxiety attack, imagining him harassing me about it, even though I told him I would not discuss it with him and that he needed to refer any "defense" to Bruce. (Sorry, Bruce.) Also just realized that I really did set myself up for an ungodly crunch in terms of the poetry class by allowing people to submit so much stuff so late (OK, file that under "never again"--but I was so scattered with them all semester, I didn't feel I could be too draconian at the end). The student who wanted to turn in his paper tomorrow e-mailed me to say that he has to work all day so can't meet with me. I replied that clearly work was his priority, which was fine, but it did mean that he is out of options in terms of my class. I'm tremendously unhappy about it, as he was a delight when he was in class, and was capable of terrific work. Hell and blast and hell and shit.

I will be very glad when this is all a distant memory.

I did get all the papers graded and numbers crunched for today's 102. I'll wait and post all the grades at the same time, which will also give me time to think about whether to make a student take the C he actually earned (because of missing homework and reading journals) or whether to give him the gift of the B his papers could have gotten him. (I'm inclined to make him face the music about that missing work.) I also need to consider whether to give a mercy D to a student: if he needs to transfer, he'll have to take the class again anyway--but really, his work shouldn't pass (and again, I'm not terribly inclined to be merciful at the moment, even though I know he'll be crushed). I don't want to make those decisions in haste--or when I'm still pissed off by the plagiarist. So I'll sit on it for a while and see how I feel come Thursday.

And now I'm going to grind through as much as I can for the poetry class until I hit the wall. I won't be in as good shape as I'd hoped for Thursday, but c'est la vie. Up until the other day I'd been assuming I'd be on campus on Thursday, finishing up; I just got caught up in this wild hope that I might not need to do that. But we're back to the original plan--which isn't so awful, really. Not really (she says, hoping to persuade herself and to mitigate the moping).

No more for now. I want to hit those papers hard tonight, quick, before I fade.