"All over but the shouting"

William loves that expression. I have no idea when or where I first heard it, but it's particularly apt at this time of semester. Papers are submitted--a couple electronically, by students who hit a personal hardship (in the hospital, mother-in-law in the hospital--not bullshit excuses either, but legit). One paper is on its way as I sit here: the student lost the flash drive and is having to rewrite the paper from scratch (again, not BS: I believe him). One student is taking an incomplete, so I'll be getting missing assignments from her over the next few weeks--and I confidently expect she'll get an A at the end of it all.

I've also offered an incomplete to the student whose mother-in-law is in the hospital: she's extremely hard-working and capable (not all adult students are), but this has been an ongoing problem for her--so much so that she didn't turn in the revision of her second paper, hence the offer of the incomplete. She may not take me up on it, figuring she'd rather just be done with the class, which I'd understand, but I hope she does. If she'd had more time to work with me, she'd have been certain to get a B+ if not better. I'm not sure where her grade is ending up right now, but it's not that high--may not even be a B, and anything less would be criminal for her.

But we'll see on all that.

I had a great wrap-up with the students in Native American lit, talking first about the class but then just about life choices in general. Fun. Then today's 102, pthttttt. The guy who is rewriting his paper met me outside and said he didn't think it was fair to take advantage of peer review when he had a chance to revise and no one else would, so he went off to finish the paper. Four students were in the room when I walked in the door; one immediately presented a withdrawal slip. None of the other three wanted to do peer review--and indeed, one had plagiarized his proposal and sent an e-mail yesterday asking if he could withdraw: no, I said, do your best on the paper and take whatever comes. I think he knows he's going to fail, so I'm not surprised he didn't want peer review. Among the missing, the woman whose mother-in-law is ill. One student showed up about half an hour late, another 45 minutes late.

Based on that level of enthusiasm, I decided I won't do an end-of-semester wrap-up with them on Thursday. I'll just have them come to my office with their final self-evaluations: I'll add that last assignment to their grade sheets on the spot, do a quick number crunch, and give them the final grade sheets to take home, along with their knowledge of their final grade. Easy enough to do, since I don't have to mark anything.

In fact, only one student--in Native American Lit--asked for comments, so that's a total of four. Fine by me. I've already read three of the Native American Lit final papers: I'm running a quick plagiarism check on one, but I'm pretty sure it's legit; it's just all over the map, and sometimes a pastiche like that is an indication of plagiarism. But I can easily get everything read and graded tomorrow, grade sheets ready to go, and possibly even get a start on the papers for the Monday classes.

I'm so on top of all this it's almost frightening: what am I forgetting? It must be something huge.

I'm actually looking forward to tomorrow's semester wrap-up with that section of 102. They're a lot of fun, a larger and more lively group, so it will be interesting to hear what they have to say. More scheduling fun with Bruce in the morning, some assessment committee work, class, and grading. And I keep marching along.