From home

Even though I'm home all this week, recovering from an appendectomy, I'm still grading papers--and of course still fretting about classes and my students. It was amazingly hard to decide not to go in at all this week; I've had to pry my little bulldog teeth out of my schedules and let go of the arrogance that says I'm the only one who can get the students through the byzantine process of revision I've set up. In fact, I've got a perfectly lovely sub set up for the comp classes tomorrow, and the Short Story students are no doubt enjoying a holiday from reading for my class. I decided to have the Short Story students pause where they are until I'm back next week; I'll rework the schedule, cutting some stories out (thinking carefully about what to ditch--but that can be sort of fun). When I return, we'll discuss the stories they've already read and then move on. I'm also going to have to push all the paper due dates back a bit--we'll see how much I can juggle without running into problems with the final papers.

My schedules are always pretty tight, so the concern about time between papers is always somewhat problematic--but I'm also realizing that all the due dates, even the adjusted ones, are right on top of me. The semester seems interminable, until I have to juggle dates, or take a good look at how much work there is to do before it's all over; then it seems like there is no time at all.

I decided to jump onto the blog tonight because I've just been reading a paper that I'm damned sure is plagiarized in some way, but I can't prove it. In a weird way I'm glad I can't: the kid is an ex-Marine, and I'd hate to have due cause to nail him for cheating. My guess is that he has a girlfriend who is good at English, but since I can't prove it, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. If he really did cheat, I choose to believe (Pollyanna that I am) that his cheating ways will eventually bite him in the ass. If he didn't, well, as the Aussies would say, good on him. I'm not going to drive myself crazy about it; let him have the grade, deserved or not.

But hitting the potential plagiarism meant hitting that wall: I can't face any more grading tonight. As it is, I'm going to have a hell of a weekend ahead of me: the 102 students are turning in first versions of their second essays to the sub tomorrow, and providing comments on those is the part of the process that requires most time from me. So the more grading of other bits I can get out of my hair tomorrow, the better. Mostly, the plan is to have the decks largely clear so I can enjoy my birthday weekend next week and not have steaming piles of student work hanging over my head. Bad enough that I'll still be recovering from the surgery (though I expect to be largely back to normal by then). No way in hell am I giving up my birthday weekend to students. As I think I've said in posts past.

And now, back to my scheduled loafing about in sloppy clothes.