Mania

I was awake at 4:47 this morning and between cat shenanigans and the hamster wheel inside my brains, I quickly realized I had no chance of getting back to sleep. I got up shortly after 5, and got to campus by 8:30. I've been on a mad tear ever since--and I'm still not completely caught up, but I don't feel like I'm drowning just yet, either. Surfing the tsunami, as it were.

Two students withdrew from 102 today. A bunch were not there--and I had prepared a miniature rant targeted partly to students who didn't show up. I had intended to put on a show of anger about their apparent disregard of my comments on their papers, but they looked so scared when I started to talk to them about their revisions that I didn't have the heart to do the act. I delivered pretty much the same lines, but the tone was more severe and cautionary than enraged. I did remind them again--as I will continue to all semester long--that they really do have to change, and that means changing how they write, too. Several seemed to think that if they simply did more of the same thing--or didn't do anything at all--they'd be fine, and they're now facing the reality. One student even got a pretty harsh comment on her paper: I told her that if she is not willing to actually change her work, her skills will never improve--but meanwhile, what is expected of her will increase, so her skills will fall further and further short of what is required. She's one of those pretty and relatively smart young women who has never been challenged before, so I expect she'll either be wounded or offended (or both). I don't know if she'll change: I've seen students who "present" as she does go both ways. Some get their knickers in a knot and huff about what a blind bitch I am not to be able to see their obvious and glowing merit. Others actually hear the wake up call and come to me in a panic (and sometimes in tears), willing to do the work to change. It will be interesting to see what she does. If anything. There's always the minority who have zero response, as if I've said nothing.

This young woman is one of a group of three friends who registered for the class together. One of them was among today's withdrawals. And the third is one of the better students in the class. Not only is her work pretty good to start with, she is hard working and willing to actually learn, grow, change. One could write the movie of how their lives will turn out....

Oh, and apropos of nothing, does it strike any other educators as somewhat idiotic when a student misses class and apologizes for the "inconvenience"? I'm not inconvenienced when they don't show up. No skin off my nose one way or the other, in fact. On the other hand, they might find that they're facing something a bit more significant than a mere "inconvenience" when it comes to their grades, but somehow they don't seem to consider that little fact.

Shifting gears, a student from tomorrow's 102 came to my office today. He's been in before to meet with me, and he breaks my heart. He is smart; he has fine ideas--and his sentence-level skills are flat out terrible. He knows it, too. I was as gentle as I could be today, but I told him if he doesn't get those skills improved, he won't be able to pass. And in fact, despite the obvious work that went into his revision, it doesn't pass--just because of the sentence-level stuff. He admitted that he doesn't proofread, so I encouraged him to A) get specific help on sentence-level errors from the Writing Center and B) ask them to help him develop his skills as a proofreader. (Notice that I didn't suggest he have them proofread for him: no, no.) He is sweet and lovely and cares deeply and wants to learn and grow--and I want him to pass, I truly do. But really, it does him no favors if I pass him before he can write a real sentence. I hate, truly and deeply hate, hurting the ones who care and who try. He knows he's struggling, but he's not giving up. And that's even harder for me to take. All my urges to rescue come flying to the surface, and I have to remind myself that rescue is not my job.

But oh, it hurts; it makes me want to weep to see that tender and earnest young man take his bitter, painful medicine with such quiet patience.

Well.

I got through all but two of the sabbatical applications after Advisement today; I have more papers to mark for tomorrow, but I knew I'd hit the point of diminishing returns on that (despite a double-size package of peanut M&Ms to give me strength). I'll be up early again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. I realize I have to bail on the committee I'm supposed to attend tomorrow--not just the one meeting but the committee as a whole. It makes sense for me to be on it (it's the committee that selects texts to stock for the adjuncts, and as I am involved in scheduling the adjuncts, providing their desk copies of texts, and observing them, well, it seems like it ought to be a good fit), but I have two boxes of potential texts that I've received over the past month and I will have zero time in the next month to even crack the covers. One of the boxes isn't even open, in fact. I have friends on the committee, so I'll miss the chance to see them, but I know they'll understand when I say I just can't.

Adding to the enormous wave of work that's chasing me, over the weekend there was also a sudden flurry of tasks for me to attend to in my position as the Professional Liaison Coordinator (PLC) for ASLE. I've only taken care of the most immediately pressing things (which only required a few e-mails), but at some point I will need to sit down and educate myself, prioritize tasks, and dig more deeply into what needs to be done--and start doing it. At some point. I'm grateful that I'm not getting any (or much) external pressure from the rest of the Executive Council about my work in this position--and I know help (and patience) are readily available. But I do want to do well with this. I took it on partly with an eye toward my next promotion but also because I love ASLE: it's an amazing organization, a nurturing, friendly, fascinating home for ecocritics (and jeez, wouldn't I love to actually be one, if I could ever be a scholar of any kind again); I've been a member since I was in grad school, and I very much want to give something back to the organization. But right now? Oh, God. It's just one ... more ... thing.

So I'm in a manic state now, from all the work I've been doing and all that I know I still need to do, but I also know if I don't start to pry my grip loose from today and let go of it all, just for over night, I will never sleep and then I'll be ragged as all hell tomorrow. I'm not quite sure how to affect the shift into relaxation and drowsiness (anyone got a good heavy skillet to hit me with?) but staying here in the office blogging is probably not the solution. So, I'm going to grab just what I need to take home (not a single thing even vaguely resembling work) and get in the car. It's that time of year when I wake up in darkness and go home from work in darkness: thank god for the trips across campus during the daylight hours or I'd start to feel like something from Revenge of the Mole People.