Fog and more fog

That's the weather outside. It was profoundly foggy this morning as I drove to campus (an hour later than I'd intended, but I found I simply could not bear the idea of a 5 a.m. alarm), and when I came out of Advisement a while ago, the fog had set in again. I was going to make some comparison between external and internal fog, but in fact I don't feel foggy. I feel groggy (even a 6:00 alarm hurts), and somewhat scratchy moodwise (nowhere near as cranky as I can get, however), but my head is still surprisingly clear. Overwhelmed, but clear.

Today was very easy in terms of teaching. The students in the short story class listened to a few announcements from me, handed in their proposals, and split. I sat there grading papers (the ones I would have finished before class if I had gotten up at 5), and two straggler students showed up with proposals. (One didn't: no surprise. He's been hanging on by a thread all semester and the thread snapped.)

Since no one else was there, and I had time, I had good conversations with each of the stragglers about previous papers, especially with the student who was guilty of plagiarism. I'm giving her the benefit of the doubt: she may have been deliberately trying to cheat, but somehow I don't get that feeling from her (either she's a much better actress than anyone I've ever seen, or my radar is in need of calibrating, or she is, in fact, honest). The plagiarism was not as glaring or wholesale as it sometimes is, and it was one of those instances where she'd looked up a story to get help and the line between help and use got blurry. I still gave her the whole "plagiarism is a failing offense" line, and she's getting The Letter, but I told her I'd give her a chance to revise: the grade will be the average of whatever her new grade is and the zero she'd have gotten for the plagiarized paper. She feels better about that--and I know that the grade will be so low that it might as well be a zero.

I'm honestly not angry or upset with her--but I was wildly frustrated yesterday when I had to spend ages finding the evidence of the plagiarism so I could show her what she'd done. It just takes so fucking much time to catch, dammit, and I don't have the time to spare right now. I actually had to check two papers of hers: I won't go into the details, but I didn't get the printout of her first paper until very late, so I was grading it yesterday, too--only to realize it was about two stories we'd not read. Huge red flags went flying all over the place, but I ran the paper through the plagiarism detector mill and nothing turned up. Either she was plagiarizing herself--a paper she'd written for some other class perhaps--or a friend gave her a paper, or she legitimately was simply confused. Again, the paper she "wrote" gets a zero, but that one I'll just let her write all over again, from scratch, and instead of averaging the two, I'll simply give her whatever grade she gets.

But oh, the time, dammit, the time it took to determine the amount and kind of "cheating"!

That was last night, however. Today, time was less pinched. The 102 was pretty easy, too. A couple of the students had gotten their proposals approved via e-mail, so I just had to collect the revisions so I can evaluate for a grade. The rest brought revised proposals to class for me to evaluate on the spot. Most I could approve right then and there (though again, the grades are yet to be determined--all but one, which is a solid A). Only one young man had to keep working on his thesis in class, and it didn't take him long. And again, I was deeply touched by how frightened they were as I came to each one of them to read over their new proposals. One young woman chatting with her friend until I came over, and then she said, "Oh, my heart just started racing! I was fine, but now I can hardly breathe." My poor sweethearts. I'm proud of them for getting so far, concerned about the fact that they're still struggling on so many levels, hopeful that they'll finally take off and fly with this final paper.

But getting back to the shortage of time (which is close to the title of a Le Guin story, "Some Approaches to the Problem of the Shortage of Time"--makes me want to reread it to see if there are any good suggestions): I think I'm going to bail on tomorrow's Assessment meeting. I feel so woefully unprepared for our P&B meeting, never mind the papers I have to grade, that I need the time. I'll try to get up at 6 again (oy!) and get in to the office ASAP and crank through whatever I can accomplish before P&B at 1. But I don't feature myself going to dance class tomorrow night: I'll either be working, or I'll be heading home to collapse.

Which is the plan for right now. I'll putter until I figure out what I want to do about dinner; then off I go. But I leave you with this profound statement, penned by one of my students, to consider: "Death is something that can cause serious changes in life and everyday society." I'd say yes, death certainly changes life pretty radically.