Proposal agonistes

I've been evaluating students' proposals for their final papers, and I confess to a certain amount of existential despair. Let me put it this way: 99.9% of them don't get the fucking book. At all.

And it really isn't that difficult a book. Really. William teaches his students Paradise Lost, for god's sake: I wonder what the hell is wrong with me as a teacher.

Yesterday I ran across one--one!--thesis that would sort of fly, and I was so ecstatic I almost threw a party.

So I went to campus today, cranky as hell, frustrated and angry--and felt a miraculous lift in my spirits when I was actually in the classroom, watching the students working madly to come up with theses that would work. It was a "let's all work on a thesis together" day, and they seemed to be making progress. It did make me think that I can structure the assignment differently to help them next time around, but at least today most of them seemed to be getting closer. And a couple of students who had really been struggling with the novel before are beginning to get a glimmer of a clue. Mostly, though, I just liked watching them work: I always love seeing them when their brains are actively engaged.

I recognize that a lot of my cranky mood today had nothing to do with the general weakness of the proposals, too. As spring break drew to a close (and, apart from picking up proposals and marking one batch of them yesterday, I extended my break by canceling two days of classes), I realized that the long, long stretch from Presidents' Week to spring break made it feel like we should be done now: it is always difficult to head back after spring break, but to know I essentially have only two weeks left somehow makes those two weeks even harder to face. I want to be done. I feel like I should be done.

I resent the student who did not believe me when I said that I would not accept proposals late for any reason whatsoever. I sent her a pretty terse e-mail today, when she told me that she'd be handing in her proposal late because she didn't get it done before the second half of Passover. I'm not at all sure if she'll show up for class tomorrow (or if she did drop off her proposal late: I didn't check my mailbox before blasting away from campus this afternoon), but if she does, I have to explain to her exactly what her responsibility was and why she is now going to fail my class.

And generally I resent the hell out of still having to face more work--not just student assignments, either, but write ups of observations and evaluations of applications from potential adjuncts and a year-end report on my professional development (as well as collecting and evaluating reports from other faculty, wearing my P&B hat) and gearing up for summer adjunct scheduling with Bruce and scheduling committee work. If I think about all that, I realize my semester won't be done until the end of May--and then I have to pull together the short version of my paper for the conference in Portugal in June.... It feels endless. And I feel done, cooked, burnt to a crisp, despite just having had a break.

Well, whatever.

The first priority is the proposals for one more section of 102, plus the five proposals for the Native American Lit class, but I'll do all that tomorrow. Shouldn't take long. I finally took a page from Paul's playbook and have typed up comments (as I found myself saying the same thing over and over on the first batch I marked). That way I can just pull out the boilerplate, add or subtract as needed to customize, and the commenting is done. It's saving me a lot of time (and wear on my wrist). So, since I'm already home, all I have to do is feed the cats and myself and begin the evening wind-down in 5, 4, 3...