Getting there

Today, as students did their final paper peer review/fix sessions, I was creating final grade sheets and recording what I've got and crunching numbers, using my laptop. Of course, I couldn't e-mail anything to myself, as ours is not a wireless campus (only in the library and one or two other buildings), but that's OK. I'll try to remember to send myself the forms tomorrow when I get home, assuming I'll be doing more of the same in my class sessions tomorrow.

It was interesting to see who was willing to really dig into the opportunity to continue working on their papers. As I said to one student, in my experience, the ones who take advantage of the full time period are generally either the worst students (in a panic, knowing they've got one last shot to pass) or the best students (who are striving still to learn and improve). I did notice, today, that two of the students who should have been in a flat-out panic were not. Ah well.

Out of 22 papers, three students asked for comments. That's a relief (I'm always afraid that suddenly more will take me up on the offer). Tomorrow I'll get another thirteen papers: we'll see how many of those want comments. I suspect a few more--especially from the Native American Lit class--but I don't think it will be a lot, in any event.

My "break" today I spent in part looking at year-end evaluations from my mentees: I have a few questions to ask P&B tomorrow, but I will need to write the P&B evaluation statements for those at some point soon, too. Yuck. It's one of those niggly little chores that makes the end of semester bumpier and more prolonged than I would like. I'd be ecstatic if I can get all my work done for all my classes early enough that I can get the P&B work done on Monday, at the closing bell of the semester. Then my post-semester duties will be reduced to a day of interviews with P&B, adjunct contract signing, and scheduling (full time faculty schedules for spring 2012), all next week, including Friday, right up to time for my ride. But if I can get everything done and out of my hair next week, I'll have a week and a half to decompress, go through the typical post-semester blues)--and work on turning the Portuguese publication paper into a talk--before I head off to Lisboa.

So, push, push, push is the name of the game.

But it doesn't feel like a big, bad push. Right at the moment, it feels much more under control than in semesters past. Partly because I'm not marking things but largely--as Paul and I were discussing the other day--simply because so many students have disappeared that I'm down to low numbers across the board. That makes things much more civilized.

By the way, I was grumpy about it, but I did go to the Assessment colloquium on Friday (I let myself sleep in, so got there late, but I don't seem to have missed a lot). I'm glad I went: I got some ideas for approaches I might try next semester, especially in terms of methods for students to evaluate their writing--and their overall progress in the course. (The colloquium leader made a distinction between "evaluate" and "assess," but it feels like an artificial distinction to me. In "assessment-speak," that wonderful, artificial language that I'm learning with great resistance, "evaluate" implies a judgment and termination of process, whereas "assess" implies a continual building on strengths with no terminal point. I make note of the important differentiation in attitude without necessarily adjusting my use of language.) The event reinforced for me--again--that it is beneficial to all if I can turn more responsibility for learning over to the students. So, now the question is, will I actually be able to find a way to make the adjustments I want to make within the limited amount of time I have in a semester? Stay tuned for more exciting developments.

But first, let's get out of this semester....