Systemically cranky

Poor Paul! He asked me how the college-wide assessment meeting had gone, and I very nearly snapped his head off. It actually was fine, but at that particular moment, I felt (as my sister put it) as if the myelin sheath has been removed from all my nerves; in this case, the result is that every nerve fiber is so sensitive to stimulus that things are short-circuiting all over hell and gone. Or, as another friend put it, "That's my very last nerve, and you're standing on it." I needed to not have my head in that space for a few minutes, to just eat my lunch and read my book in peace.

I think some of my crankiness about Assessment in particular is that between the two committees (departmental and college-wide), there is a massive hairball that needs to be sorted out, and like a complete idiot, I said I'd help untangle it. I'm regretting like hell the offer for all kinds of reasons, not just because of the work load. A colleague and I met with the Empress of Assessment for the campus, and after the meeting, he articulated the problem. The entire process of assessment--quantifying the unquantifiable, hair-splitting of data--is dehumanizing, not only in terms of how it views students but in what it makes of us. Further, the entire mindset behind this kind of assessment is not merely antithetical to how we operate as a discipline, it's actively counterproductive. It makes us behave in ways that destroy the very basis of what we do. So, yeah, it makes a person cranky.

On the up-side, however, I just got a visit from Wonder Student. He's going to take an incomplete rather than withdrawing. I feel enormous relief about that; it's truly wonderful news. Whew.

And the two students who came to Native American Lit today had me review their papers right there in class, giving feedback (and each got something out of listening to the feedback I gave to the other student). I'm a bit worried that the third student, the Bright Light, wasn't there, and I haven't heard from her via e-mail about her paper. Hmmmm. I hope she's not going to implode at this point. I'd be devastated.

I've gotten just barely enough of the papers graded for 102 that I feel I can stop for tonight and finish up tomorrow. I keep feeling I must be forgetting something important on the schedule tomorrow, but I've checked my calendar several times and really, nothing. So if I'm in bright and early, I should be able to finish the remaining few papers with time to spare. Well, time to do other stuff with. As usual, the triage list is ever-changing (and ever-growing), but I think I can stand to knock at least a few items off tomorrow. I hope. We'll see.

And now, it's time to have my little brown-bag dinner and then off to dance class. I do like being the student from time to time.