Wait, you mean I have to come in tomorrow, too?

As hard as I had to push to get everything graded for classes today, it feels like the week should be over and the break beginning as of an hour ago. But no: one more day. I'm hoping it will be relatively easy. I canceled class yesterday; I'd only gotten 1-1/2 hours of sleep and knew I needed to be able to keel over whenever the urge hit. So I took papers home and ground my way through the grading (barely napping: too wired)--but the upshot of that is that I did not collect the first mini-papers from the Native American Lit students. If I had, I'd have felt impelled to try to get the papers marked and returned to the students for tomorrow's class, but as it is, I have a few bitty bits in terms of student assignments and some other, larger business (letter for the one promotion folder I'm still mentoring, minutes of the Chancellor's Award committee)--but nothing threatening to consume me. Thank god.

Class sessions went pretty well today. Mr. Aren't I Cute almost got throttled on several occasions: he keeps trying to argue me out of things, trying to prove that crap is actually OK--even is beneficial. At the end of class, I told him that my job is to help him do well, but not by making things easier: by helping him do the kind of work he actually needs to do. If all this comes up again, I've already been planning the lecture about how each level requires something new--and a challenge--or one isn't actually learning. At one point I shut him down pretty harshly (because he wouldn't get off it), but I think I made it up to him OK. I may still want to strangle him (just a little), but I don't think he's really an asshole. He's just been trained to be unbelievably lazy, and somehow has learned to believe he can cajole his way out of doing anything that requires effort. Um, no.

Another student who has been conspicuously absent and not turning in work spent some time pleading with me to accept his idea logs--for the paper that he (theoretically) just finished writing. I will be honest and admit that if I thought it would do him any good to accept them, I might have, but I have a strong hunch that if I did, he'd just continue to fall further and further behind--and he's ill-prepared for the rigors of the class anyway. After I had already said no at least twice, I finally said, "You already have the answer. You asked and I answered." Case closed. Move on.

In the second session, five students showed up who had not done the first step of their papers. I will give them credit and say that they all were quite willing to follow the procedures I laid out for them--and because they were so willing to work, I adjusted the procedure slightly so they can get at least a little feedback from me on their papers before the final versions are due. Once they've done the first "in-class" step on their own, I'm allowing them to e-mail me with specific questions and concerns, which I'll answer--and they can do the second "in-class" step using that feedback the way the rest of the students use my comments. One of the ones who had missed Monday's session had been AWOL for a long time: he told me he'd been on vacation but had kept up with the work. OK, I said, but there is still a lot that's been going on in class that you missed. His pretty confident about his abilities, doesn't seem to think he'll need my feedback on his paper to do well. He may, in fact, be good, but I have no evidence one way or the other yet. Another reminds me a bit of last semesters Bright Young Thing wannabe. He's sabotaging his own best efforts through absences and missed work.

The early warning system has gone live--at a reasonable time in the semester for a change--and I hope it serves as a wake-up call for a number of the students. In semesters past, I've seen very mixed results--but I'm happy to have it to use.

I'm sure there is other stuff I could record about today, but I'm tired, dammit, and I'm going home.