Stick a fork in me...

...I'm done. As I walked away from my last class today, I truly thought I was going to drop all my class crapola in my office, stagger to my car, and head home, leaving the mess for tomorrow. But (mercifully) Paul was here, and talking to him energized me. I was able to sort things into stacks (enormous, steaming piles, ready to spontaneously combust) and stared at my triage list for a while. Not that it made any sense to me, but I did see one thing I could do without a great deal of mental exertion, and then it would be out of my hair. I was bitching to Paul about when I'd find the time to do it, and the answer turned out to be, well, now.

The task was to finish up a five-page summary of my Chancellor's Award application. The process is a bit bizarre: nominees drive themselves into a frenzy putting together an enormous application--which is read only by our campus committee. That huge folder does not get sent to the SUNY committee in Albany; instead, Albany gets a five-page summary. If we were a smaller school with fewer applicants (and less in the way of overall committee responsibility), members of the campus committee would probably write the summaries, as well as the cover letters of endorsement, but that would be madly unwieldy here, so the nominees write their own summaries (all in third person), and a designated committee member writes the letter, which in effect summarizes the summary. Byzantine as hell, but there you go. In any event, now that I've done my job as a member of the committee by writing the letter for William's application and done my job as a nominee by writing my summary of my own application, I think (touch wood) that I am free of any responsibilities for the committee until spring. (And the crowd goes wild.)

The first 102 class today was pretty painful: the bitching about too much work that is too hard has gotten loud--and put a damper on the discussion of the poems, so I spent the discussion period trying to get the comatose elephant off the floor. In the second class, one young woman probably wanted to bitch, but she's too shy and sweet--and because of the lack of bitching (and in fact, a great deal of positive feedback on the process), the discussion was much better. The elephant may have been staggering around, but at least she was up and moving. Interesting how much the discussion of the literature is hampered or enhanced by students' attitudes about the work in general. (And thinking back to yesterday's Short Story class, note to self: if you plan to discuss literature, don't return graded papers until the end of class.)

I also suddenly realizes that not only are the students being cattle-prodded through a very narrow chute at the moment, I am, too: the 102s submit first versions of their next papers next Thursday--and I just collected final versions of their first papers today. Another note to self: yes, it's good to give the students time to work through revision (and reports were that they took advantage of that time--or at least the second class did), but I also have to give myself time to not only to grade but also to breathe. In the fall semester, we don't have week-long breaks (as we do in spring), so everything is crowded and hurried--and that crunch bites me as much as it does the students. I've been poring over the schedule to see if I could shift this second paper back a week, but doing so would A) collide with their reading of Left Hand of Darkness, which we all know is problematic enough and B) collide with my birthday weekend. I refuse to evaluate first versions of student papers over my birthday weekend. (More cheering and applause from the crowd.) But because I have so little time between papers, all I can think is that this will be yet another lesson for me in reducing the amount of marking and commenting I do. I simply won't have time.

Oh, yes, and I'm collecting first big papers from the Short Story class tomorrow, too. And this is the week we have to review sabbatical applications for P&B (which, as a reminder, stands for Personnel and Budget, not, as my friend Stacy suggested, Plagiarism and Bullshit--though I rather like that).

Gawdamighty.

I will say, however, that the attrition is starting to happen in spades. (Interesting expression. Spades as in playing cards, I assume, not gardening instruments.) I'm hoping I manage to hang on to a few of them, but most of them I don't have strong feelings about either way; losing a student simply means less marking to do. Still, it is nice to have a semester in which there are no students that I actively want to lose.

No dance class for me tonight. I was running too late for it in any event, but honestly, I'm not in the right frame of mind. Better to go home and try to remember who I am other than Prof. TLP. E-mails to loved ones want to be written; movies want to be watched--and I'm the one to do it.