Quick post: Can she do it?

I have about ten minutes to blog, then I race off to dance class. I'm only doing one, as I need to get home, hit myself over the head with a frying pan so I'll fall asleep, and get up early tomorrow because...

I have ten papers to grade tomorrow. I know I'll get 'em done, but I am going to have to churn through them--and bail on my Advisement time. I have no clue what happened to today, why I got so little done. Well, yes, I sort of do: I graded stuff for Native American Lit, and had to review some other people's promotion-folder letters for P&B, and visit the Human Resources office to review the personnel files for my mentees (only to find that I didn't check everything I need to check, so I have to go back, dammit all to hell). It really did need to be done, but, well, this is what happens. I also had to do ridiculous things like eat, and pee (so time consuming!)

I'm also still getting things prepped for the ASLE meeting this coming weekend. I just printed out a bunch of preparatory stuff (and yes, I'm aware of the irony of using all that paper for an environmentalist organization). But I can't absorb things as well when I read from a computer screen. I think there's been real research done on that, and that there is evidence that our brains really do process pixels on a screen differently (and less attentively) than print on paper. Ask your neuro-scientist friends if this is true.

Had the first class in the little conference room, and I'm happy with the arrangement. I think the students do feel more relaxed, more willing to talk. Three or four of the eight clearly hadn't done the reading--and although Mr. Irrepressible is doing a great job of keeping himself repressed (no burlap bags required), his homework is significantly lacking. He keeps saying he can't find any quotations to talk about--but then he said he wrote an analysis. OK, I said, where did the analysis come from? What quotations led to your conclusions? Gosh, what a concept! He now thinks he'll write his analysis first, then look for the quotations. Fine, I said, but I don't want to see the analysis without the quotations: I want him to follow the journal/log format I have set up. It astonishes me how much students resist that structure, which is intended to help them. (They like things concrete, but then I make them concrete and they rebel. Weird.)

I also had a lovely conversation with Shining Star after class. She is obviously bucking for an A (and perfectly capable of getting it), but we also got into just a general conversation. Among other things, when she lived in Santa Fe, she met the actor Wes Studi on a number of occasions. Cool. I'm also interested to note that although her demeanor in class is very reserved, even shy, and she looks very mild and gentle, her writing reveals a fierce and angry streak. Repressed fires in that woman, and I'll be very curious to see how they develop through the semester, whether she puts them to use in her work or whether they get in her way.

I'd say more but I'm out of time. This is another that gets flung on the wall with no editing, no proofing, not a second glance. Time to put on my dancing shoes.