Plan B

I was up at 5:30 a.m., and I still didn't get those papers marked. Dammit. The students who were there today were, of course, disappointed and anxious, and I felt bad to keep them hanging--but actually (I remind myself, to assuage my guilt), if I'd gone on my trip they wouldn't have gotten papers back until Thursday anyway, so they're not actually suffering.

I expect a few of the students may check in on the blog: I told them about it today, told them I've stated publicly that they're my favorite group, so they may be checking in to see if I was telling the truth about that. I was. They are. Case in point:

Today, after going over some sample introductory/thesis paragraphs culled from papers last semester, I put them in pairs to evaluate their own initial paragraphs. As they were working on moving from version two of their papers toward their final versions, I sat grading papers--and spontaneously, two pairs decided to form a group of four and to cross-read first paragraphs in variations of the initial pairings, so they got more feedback, from more different sources. (I teased them about how long it would be before the four of them are hanging out together, drinking beer.... It was a tease, but they do seem to be very comfortable with each other, forming at least an in-class camaraderie that I find lovely to observe, even if they don't end up friends outside of class. Though that would be great, too. It does happen sometimes, and I feel strangely flattered when it does.) Other pairs worked together, then--again spontaneously--swapped partners, further multiplying the feedback they received. And when one student left (um, OK... I guess she figured it was an optional class so she could come and, more to the point, go, as she pleased), a group of three formed. Even at the end of class, as the students were leaving the room, they were talking about the stories, their papers, how to improve.

Hot damn, I love that. I love it when they take the reins, when they do what is best for them--and not once did I have to ride herd, reminding them to get back on task, policing them to be sure they were being productive. When students are firing on all cylinders like that, the energy and work palpable in the room, I love this job. I truly love it. And this group tends to do that, regularly. It's one of those gifts of class chemistry, in which there are just enough of the bright and hard-working students--and they get along personally well enough--to lift the energy across the board. There are still the requisite lunks, but I'm pretty sure they will drop by the wayside pretty rapidly here.

On that front, Paul asked me how many students I have in my various sections, and I realized I don't know. Clearly, the students who showed up today are the core group in that particular class: they all care enough about what they are doing, their grades, to come to an "optional" class meeting, and they are dedicated and hard working enough to dig into the process fully. Of the ones who didn't come to class today, I honestly don't know how many will make it. The stuttering start to the semester, caused by the canceled classes, means it's difficult to tell which students are truly racking up absences and which are perhaps behind the curve but still potentially in the race. That's even more the case for the Monday-Wednesday classes. A fair number of students were in the short story class's "optional" meeting, but how many of the remainder intend to return is a mystery to me. Very few indeed showed up for yesterday's 102. Hard to tell what that portends.

It is, however, time for me to issue my own early warnings. NCC does an official early warning, but--as I've remarked in semesters past--the college's sense of "early" is already too late for many of my students. We're one third of the way through the semester, and several students have yet to submit anything--or have turned in only one or two of the assignments to date. That's not entirely promising.

Ah well.

Paul and I had a good talk today about our need to find a way to care as much as we do without letting the job bleed us dry. We both have a tendency to invest way too much, to pour too much of ourselves into the work and get too little return. Days like today are wonderful, classes like today's are terrific, but I could all too easily allow the time I spend on it to fill every moment I've gained by getting the reassigned time to work in the Advisement Center. Today's grading difficulty is evidence of the problem: getting up as early as I did, I should have had enough time to get many more graded than I did, but as I sat on my couch this morning, I realized I was drifting--no, veering sharply--back into the old habit of marking, which is insanely time-consuming. Stop it, Payne, stop, just stop. I cannot keep sane if I perpetuate that methodology. And I am sucked into it by my desire to give my students everything they could ever possibly need. The feast, instead of the invitation into the kitchen (to pick up on the analogy I trotted out a few posts ago).

The one good thing about not having gotten those last papers marked for today's class is that now I can finish them up tomorrow after (I hope) having gotten a reasonable night's sleep. I have four more to grade, and if I keep my red pen in check, it shouldn't take me much more than an hour, if that (instead of the two or more hours the old method would have required). If I'm careful, and relatively compos mentis, from being sufficiently rested, I can give intelligent and focused feedback, keeping the commentary succinct. It will serve them better, in addition to being easier on me.

Or that's the theory anyway.

Shifting gears a bit, I met with a student from the short story class today to provide help with his mini-paper and his reading journals. Bless him, he's the one I mentioned in yesterday's post, who sent me the cute message about my not breaking his heart. I know he read the blog: long story, but the salient information is, he was feeling I had chastised him about his e-mail, and I assured him that I'd loved it: "You made the blog!" He promptly trotted off and read it. He sent me an e-mail after (really about further meetings) and said that the blog was "almost too honest." I've asked him for clarification about that, but I have a hunch I know what he means--especially as he suggested I not make the blog's existence public knowledge among my students.

I go back and forth about this. Some semesters I'm more vocal about the fact that I have the blog than others--and sometimes doing so does come back to bite me in the ass. I did warn today's students that I can be pretty, um, direct, shall we say, so the thin-skinned might want to steer clear. I do recall a post some time back, in which I stated that I was certain a number of students in one particular section would fail: not only did a student respond as if he/she were a professor (anonymously, I might add), ranting about what an unprofessional, rotten shit I was to even suggest such a thing, but I also had a student from that class--one who was, in fact, a faint breath away from failing--show up in my office in tears over that post. (As it happened, she managed to squeak out a D, and I've never seen anyone so thrilled with a marginal pass in all my days.) I issued an apology in the blog, but in truth, I simply called it as I saw it, and wish now I'd had the courage to let the fallout be what it may, no apologies.

Still, I'm considering a slight redesign of the blog, so that right at the top, front and center, there is a warning to students that if they read what I post, they have to be prepared for bare-knuckles honesty, which may sting, even bruise.

I actually don't mind if students read the blunt truth here. Nor do I mind if they see me with my metaphoric hair down, profanities and obscenities in full bloom. (I don't swear with abandon in the classroom, but the blog is not something I claim professionally: it's more personal than that.) Students may find it refreshing, or revealing, to see what a professor, this professor, truly feels. But ultimately students are not my intended audience. In truth, I'm not sure how I would characterize the audience I have in mind when I write. Other educators, I suppose, and those who know me personally. I'd love it if bureaucrats, legislators, tax-payers--the whole hoi polloi--would read it, though I seriously doubt my voice will ever reach so far. (I have been tempted to write to Time magazine and say, "Listen, you pay Joel Stein a shitload of money to be snarky and modestly amusing about nothing of importance: wouldn't you like to pay to get a column about education--something that actually matters--from someone who genuinely knows whereof she speaks?") But truly, my main audience is myself. Blogging has become part of my decompression at the end of the day, a way to reframe and remind myself why it's worth it to keep on fighting this rear-guard action against the hordes of marginal thinkers and slipshod users of this brilliant language, and the forces of our society that would have us believe that thinking is overrated and that cogent expression doesn't matter for shit. I'm just whistling past the graveyard, singing to the void....

Lordy dordy: this is a post of some considerable length--and I find I could keep going. Once I get on my hobby horse, it's hard to dismount. But I reckon I've galloped around enough for one night. Time to pause and reflect: dinner in the office and dance class? Or home and mental fluff until my eyes slam shut for the night? Decisions, decisions.