Plus ca change...

I can't put the little goomflage under the "c" there to make it a soft one, but you know it's there. I kept thinking that this morning, thinking about how my plan for yesterday changed between when I blogged and when I got home--and how that seems to happen more often than not. I ended up not marking anything, didn't nap, instead got to bed early-ish and got up a little earlier than I originally intended this morning. But the main thing is, I got everything marked for today's 102--and without having to bail on my committee meeting. Hooray.

The students for 229 come next on the list of priorities--and I'll have time tomorrow to chip through their assignments. I'm meeting a student in the office at 9:30, don't have class until 12:30, and then will hang around until Conviviality at 5:30. There's a Women's Studies meeting I would like to go to, but it's a study session and I haven't done--and won't do--the homework. I don't want to go and feel like one of my own unprepared students, so instead, I'll hole up here and crank through what I have to mark.

Classes today went fine. There are two students in Native American Lit who probably shouldn't be there, but they're trying, hanging on by their fingernails, and I don't have the heart to shake their hold loose--not just yet anyway. The 102s are starting to show the initial attrition, too: students who have simply stopped attending (or who, if they come back, will be faced with the professor saying "I'm sorry; you've missed too much and cannot continue: you need to withdraw or take the F"). First papers usually shake the numbers down even a little further, as students panic and realize they don't know how to write the kind of paper I want (or when they get their grades back and realize how badly they did).

I will say, however, that I see a couple of high-quality students in each section. That's a mercy. Sometimes one will have a section that is filled with students like Mr. Smart: fucking deadly, that is. Or even simply with students who are filled with energy but who won't do the work, or can't be brought to focus. But all my sections seem pretty equal in terms of the capable to struggling ratios--at least so far. The balance can tip very quickly and easily, either for ill or for good, depending on who stops coming. But fingers crossed that the sections lose any dead wood, keep the lively minds.

Anyway.

My evening office hour is officially over, and I am pretty tired (not to mention hungry), so I'll wrap this up and look forward to an interesting day tomorrow. Students in the 102s are going to be doing peer review of first versions of their papers over the next two days: heavy lifting for them, not for me--until I start the grading. Then, yikes and likewise zoiks. But that's yet to come. Tonight, I can breathe easy and do the sea-cucumber act. Bliss.