The importance of sleep

I had a hard time letting go of the day yesterday, so wasn't in bed and lights out until well after midnight: it's almost as if knowing that I have to get up early makes it even harder than usual to go to bed. The alarm was set for 5:30, but I woke up at 4:38 and couldn't get back to sleep--so I gave up at 5 and got up. Yet somehow, even with the extra half-hour in which to get ready, I got to work at the usual time. Most of that time I cannot account for--what did I do with the time?--but a few minutes were taken up by my attempt to help a woman who had hit a goose with her car: I gave her the Wildlife Hotline number (which I have programmed into my cell, after seeing another goose get hit), but unfortunately the poor thing died while the woman was waiting for the call to go through. And the woman was very upset, deeply shaken, as I would have been, was when I saw the other goose get bashed. I can't say I much liked the experience either: the bird's death throes were dramatic and awful to watch. I'm haunted by those poor animal lives sacrificed to our need to go fast in huge metal weapons, the deaths I've witnessed, a few I've caused. I fucking hate the carnage we are responsible for....

But I need to set that aside: this is a teaching blog, after all.

I find I'm getting annoyed by the students' refusal to ask for clarifications about the novel in all the sections of 102. I keep reminding them that it's their job to ask questions and to be sure they understand, yet when I ask them to bring up questions or comments, they still sit there, mute. One or two braver souls will raise their hands: the rest seem perfectly content to remain in abject bewilderment. I guess that's a familiar state for them. They're so used to being confused, they seem unable to try to work their way through it to understanding.

I hate that, too.

But I'm chipping along with the revised papers. Of course, I also just collected reading journals and glossaries: we'll see how much I can get marked and returned by Wednesday/Thursday. I came back to the office determined to grade papers before the end of my office hour, at which time I will toddle off to have a beverage with a former student. I got one paper graded, started another, and hit the wall. I had a brief moment of thinking I'd take work home with me to grind through tonight, but I thought better of it. Makes more sense to sleep tonight and face the stack of grading with increased brain energy and stamina on the morrow.

Speaking of the morrow, I'm on the fence about how to handle the papers for Native American Lit. Students were supposed to attach the sources they found on their own (I ask them to do a little research, as a warm-up for the final paper), and only one student did. Should I require that they get the sources to me before I grade the papers? Probably, but then there is a delay in getting those out of my hair. But I need to see what they used to be sure they understood the points. Plus there is the fact that one student used an essay about Mary Oliver's poetry to talk about Native American poetry. (The title had the words "Native American" in it, so I guess he figured that was close enough. Wrong on numerous counts.) I'll have to use that error as a teaching moment for the whole class--but this student has driven me bats repeatedly all semester. He's the one who wanted to come to class and participate in discussion not having done the reading. He also wrote a mini-paper about how Puebloan mythology lies behind poems by Mary TallMountain--who is Athabaskan (different part of the world, completely different culture). Argh. And again, argh. And no, I'm not speaking in Pirate.

But the end of the semester is fast approaching. The more work I get off my desk before spring break, the happier I'll be, but even if I don't get the decks as clear as I hope, this is still the time in semester when I pretty much am able to turn everything over to the students: it's their turn to take all I've tried to help them acquire over the past months and pull it all together in one last hurrah. My function is essentially that of a tugboat, providing a little push here and there to keep the big liner on course as it churns through the last stretch to port. But all the motive power comes from them, and it's their destination we're heading toward, not mine.

Funny how I mentioned speaking Pirate and my final metaphor took such a nautical turn. Perhaps the apparent liquefaction of my brains has something to do with it.