Again from home

I left Advisement early today to get the all-clear from the surgeon (yep; all clear) and after took myself out for somewhat celebratory late lunch/early dinner; then I came back here to crank through some more papers. I got a bunch marked in general during today's brief stint in Advisement; at home, I typed up the comments for those papers (five of them, I think). I still have more to do tomorrow than I'd like--and I haven't finished all the final versions of first papers yet (fuck). The main goal is to be ready with the first versions of second papers for tomorrow's classes--which probably means an extra early alarm tomorrow. (This is not a particular problem: I can't go dancing yet anyway, so it won't much matter if I'm whipped at the end of the day.) Several students were to have left papers for me on my office door today (and dammit, I forgot to put up a notice that I had to cancel my office hour; shit). I think I'll get three; that means I'll have seven papers to do tomorrow. I still have a bunch of big papers from the Short Story class to get through as well. We do have a department meeting, but I think I'll blow that off--anything to get through this work as expeditiously as possible.

I wish I could continue to blow off P&B business, too, but that's going to bite me in the ass pretty soon here. (Again, fuck.)

But today's class went well. A snippy student came in to withdraw; I said, "I can't persuade you to stay?" and she said, "Not with C's." I signed the withdrawal form--and then saw that her last idea log got a B. I considered rubbing her nose in that: "If you'd only had the guts to stick it out, you'd have seen that you were learning and your grades improving...." Nah. She ain't worth it. Seems like we're down to about 16-17 students in the class--possibly more, but that's all that were there today--and they're a good group. Lively discussions, positive outlook, learning well.

Funny, when I logged in to write this post tonight, I thought I had a lot to say. Turns out I don't, it's all just going through the meat-grinder that is the middle of the semester. I am trying very hard to stay out of the grinder myself (I wonder how long I can milk the "I had my appendix removed" excuse?), but my students are in it big time. Now we begin to separate the strong from the weak, the mature from the babies. I'll tell them that; it might be a challenge to the ones who are wavering, make them want to stay.

Ech. More tomorrow.