The Ancient Art of Whi-Ning

I'm getting a little sick of my own kvetching, but I swear, it feels like someone is adding papers to the bottom of the stack. I just met with my last student for today, thought I had gotten a few of the remaining papers done, counted--and of the papers I need to have finished by tomorrow at 10 a.m. I have completed (drum roll, please) ... one. True, I have started on another, and it's enough of a train-wreck that it shouldn't take terribly long, but again, most of the papers I'm still facing fall into that in-between place that makes it feel worth while to comment ("this is a student who has a chance of learning something") and yet makes commenting difficult ("but this student needs to learn just about everything, from scratch").

I'm trying to figure out what will lead to the greatest productivity for the longest amount of time. As I get increasingly tired--and tired of--it becomes more difficult for me to make intelligent, sensible choices about, well, almost anything. What to do first. What to eat. Whether to nap or keep grinding.

The truly pathetic part is that even as much as I'm whining in this blog, I'm not carrying on publicly as much as I am in my own head. A toddler who has missed her nap and is hungry would make less fuss.

The thing I need to hold onto, the spar in this flood of self-pity, is that by this time tomorrow I'll be finished with these particular essays. I'll still be facing stuff to grade for the short-story class, but I'll have completed this part. And I get to enjoy myself this weekend: riding lesson on Friday for the first time in weeks, private dance lesson on Saturday--maybe even group dance class on Sunday (for the first time in forever). Sleep in there, somewhere. Ah, that will be bliss. I just have to get through one more ferocious night, one more painfully early morning, one more day of back-to-back students.

And I still have kept my temper, and I hope have been actively helpful, made something approaching sense, with every student walking in that door. And most of them are sweet souls, they truly are. I just wish they hadn't been so under-prepared by their previous educational experiences. Ah well.

I gird my loins (grid my lions), and soldier on.