Grinding

Didn't blog yesterday: I was here grinding away at grading papers until after 8. Just as I was about to finish up, I got a call from a colleague and friend from the Writing Center, Rob Baranello--who informed me that he is dying. He didn't want me to find out through the grapevine but to tell me himself, and he was mostly calling to make sure I am still as happy as I was when he saw me after my summer trip last year. That was the last time I'd seen him: we usually see each other at placement readings, but I haven't been doing those lately, so I wasn't aware of Rob's absence. He's been very ill and is declining rapidly, but he maintains his humor, his generosity of spirit, his gentle grace and his profound innate kindness. Needless to say, after that call, I was in no condition to work any further: I went home in tears.

And I couldn't sleep well or long last night--perhaps because of the ways Rob's impending death sets up emotional reverberations of all sorts for me, perhaps because of the manic energy I've had to summon to crank through papers, probably bits of both. I still have a bunch more papers to grade, and will have to get a few more done tonight in order to have any chance at all of finishing up before that last class tomorrow. So far, across the sections/papers I've graded, I have firmly identified two instances of plagiarism and am about to go home to check another two. One may be legit: the student is smart, so it's within the realm of possibility that the paper (which is not perfect) is indeed his, but the writing shows just enough of an up-tick in linguistic and intellectual sophistication from his first paper that the red flags were raised. I'll be very happy if the report comes up clean: then he'll have earned a solid A-, which would be a pleasure for us both. If he did plagiarize, I'll be deeply disappointed in him--but I know, if he did, it was out of pure panic. The same is true of the other instance I'm checking tonight: I am 99% certain that one is indeed largely stolen from other sources, and simply hope Plagiarism Detector turns up the sources. The poor kid has been drowning since day one--but he also hasn't (to my knowledge) reached out for any assistance that might have kept his head above water--other than this attempt at cheating. He won't pass in any event, but if he plagiarized, it simply gives him the bad news earlier.

And there are nine more papers I have yet to mark beyond those two (which I had to type into the computer, which takes time, dammit, and slows the whole process down drastically). From a cursory glance, most of the nine remaining are in that painful in-between place that is most draining and time-consuming to mark. I've said this before (and will no doubt keep saying it) but the extreme ends are easy: papers that are too egregiously awful require very little work, and papers that are quite good require even less. That middle ground is where the grind happens.

Well, the current plan (subject to revision at a moment's notice) is that I will take myself out for dinner (too tired to try to think of anything to eat at home), and either work on a second (or third, or twenty-eighth) wind or nap briefly to try to find one. I don't want to make any predictions about how many of the papers I'll manage to get done tonight: not as many as I want, surely, which will mean having to be up significantly pre-dawn tomorrow--but somehow or another, by end of day tomorrow, they'll all be done. And then I'll have a tiny bit of breathing room.

And about a zillion things to fill it. My life as I know it.

I keep thinking there was something else I wanted to say (and no, though I like Steve Martin's bit, it isn't that I'm radioactive--thank god). Well, whatever it might have been, if it was interesting enough, I'll remember it and say it later. If not, probably just as well I've forgotten: this blog is filled with enough random detritus as is.