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THINGS HAVE CHANGED:

Since I am no longer a professor in the classroom, this blog is changing focus. (I may at some future date change platforms, too, but not yet). I am now (as of May 2019) playing around with the idea of using this blog as a place to talk about the struggles of writing creatively. Those of you who have been following (or dipping in periodically) know that I've already been doing a little of that, but now the change is official. I don't write every day--yet--so I won't post to the blog every day--yet. But please do check in from time to time, if you're interested in this new phase in my life.


Hi! And you are...?

I am interested to see the fluctuation in my readers--but I don't know who is reading the blog, how you found it, and why you find it interesting. I'd love to hear from you! Please feel free to use the "comment" box at the end of any particular post to let me know what brought you to this page--and what keeps you coming back for more (if you do).





Thursday, March 24, 2011

Minor miracle

I'm astonished. Last night, after I wrote that optimistic blog entry about all the work I was going to accomplish, I hit the wall long before I anticipated--hit it so hard that, as Paul said, I recoiled from my desk and was out the door in a matter of minutes. Consequently, even with a 5:30 alarm this morning, I was completely certain that I'd not be able to get everything marked for today's classes and was feeling somewhat dismal about still having stuff tripping me up as I head into serious paper grading.

But, Lo! Not only did I get everything marked for 229 (a miracle in itself), I also was able to return assignments to this afternoon's 102. Ta-daaa!

And here's the irony: two students showed up for 229 today. Yep, two. So I'd knocked myself out to mark assignments and grade papers for students who didn't appear. And there were a number of students in 102 who also have fallen by the wayside, apparently, so again, I drove myself to mark assignments that are still sitting in the class folder.

Ah well.

In the continuing miracle, however, I also just wrote up the observation I conducted last week, so I'm caught up on observations--until I observe another person next week, and another the following week.

Getting that observation write-up done is a blessing, because P&B business is starting to pile up. I'm also "mentoring" a number of people who have to submit year-end evaluations (don't get me started on that)--not to mention that I have to do my own, which Paul is mentoring--and I have to evaluate a bunch of applications from people who are looking for adjunct positions (and set up interviews with any who seem suitable). Things just keep rolling down the pike, and I have to deal with each one as it becomes the new priority.

Oh, yes, and last night when I got home, I worked to fix the shabby documentation in my article for the Portuguese publication--only to get an e-mail today from my friend, asking me to do it a different way. Doing so won't be onerous, but it does need to be done tonight, as soon as I get home. Then I can start to relax.

Picking up on another thread from an earlier post (yesterday's? don't remember): I mentioned the student I thought I might have chased away, one who may haunt me. She showed up with her withdrawal slip today. I told her I didn't want her to withdraw, but she insisted she had to.

Again, ah well.

In any event, my little bag is packed with all the essays from the 102s, and the first thing I have to do is to be sure I got everything I was expecting: so many have been trickling in, I'm not sure that all the students who e-mailed me about papers actually came through on printing them out and getting them to me. If not, I want to find out what happened. At this point, I want to try to keep most of the students who are left to the bitter end, even if that means bending the rules a bit.

A bunch of the remaining students are truly sinking, though. Some already got "Early Warning" notices; others didn't and should--but one idiocy of the system is that in order to issue a warning to a student who has gotten into trouble since the start of the process, one must delete the entire section's worth of warnings and re-enter them. I've already done that once; I don't want to do it again. I'll just give my own, informal individual warnings to the students who didn't get them but need them. As is typical, with the advent of the second (poetry) paper, the classes have contracted sharply, from about 18 to about 12 in each section. The losses may not stop there, either. I hate for the classes to get too small (and teaching two students was truly ridiculous, though we made the best use we could of the time), but on the other hand, fewer students means fewer papers to mark.

And the count-down to end of semester begins. I will meet with all my classes twelve more times this semester. Technically, the classes that meet on Monday will meet thirteen more times, but it's unlikely that final day will include much if anything in the way of contact with students. So I'm calling it twelve. As usual, that seems like a lot, until I think of everything we still need to cover; then it is alarmingly few. But pretty soon, we'll be at the "hold on and scream" part of the roller-coaster.

I wonder when I'll feel like I can breathe again? After Portugal, probably. As Churchy La Femme (of Pogo fame) would say, "Wee-hawken!"

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