Here's hoping

I got all the papers marked for the 102s, and I started on the enormous stacks of logs and other homework I've been collecting since last week--and I hit the wall. I'm hoping madly that I can get it all done tomorrow in Advisement, because the students truly do need to have it back before the weekend. Many of them probably won't take advantage of the homework for their papers, but I want them to at least be able to use it; I don't want it to be my fault if they can't (or don't).

I realize that tomorrow I'm going to have to have a serious talk with them about how crappy their papers were, especially in terms of revision. It may be time to trot out the "pushing the car" analogy. I also want to talk to them about acquired helplessness: so many of them are not really trying--because they're so sure that their efforts won't produce results (or that's my analysis of their mindset anyway). I have to confess that part of me would dearly love to cancel tomorrow altogether--but, well, see above about the need to get that work back to them.

I'm also already having conniptions about next Wednesday: I have to take my kitten to the vet in the morning to have her spayed, then I have a departmental assessment meeting, then Advisement, then classes--and then I'm picking up a very important guest at the airport at about midnight. Thank God next Thursday will be easy, and even more thanks that what follows will be spring break. That week will not be anywhere near long enough; I'm already looking at the assignment schedules to see when I can declare my own personal snow days (as William calls them).

But that's projecting into the future, and of all people, I should know the sheer, blazing futility of attempting to know what will happen next. Suffice it for me to get through the rest of today. I know I'd feel better if I could get even one or two more students' worth of work marked, but brain no worky.

As an attempt to salve my conscience and make myself feel less like a whining waster, I just went into ShitStorm--I beg your pardon, I mean TaskStream--and made a few changes that we discussed at our last meeting. In the process, I uncovered a potential problem that we'll need to discuss (dammit). We're having the world's worst time getting all the language in place and all the pieces put where we want them--and we're being forced to have a meeting with the assistant in the Office of Assessment and Program Review to "walk through" our work space and make sure it's "complete." I argued like hell about whether the meeting was remotely necessary; my confident expectation is that it will be annoying as hell and a fucking huge waste of time, with the assistant telling us that stuff is easy while we try, unsuccessfully, to explain why it's not so cut and dried. I've suggested we meet after spring break but before the April departmental meeting; that way A) those of us on the subcommittee can try to get some more stuff up and working before we have to justify ourselves to OAPR and B) we can report back to the departmental committee what the meeting was actually about. A lot of my snarling reluctance about the meeting stems from the fact that the VP in charge of OAPR was completely non-specific about what we're actually going to DO in said meeting. She kept saying other departments have found it "helpful," but other departments have very different concerns than we do--and even if they've found it helpful, that doesn't mean we will. Just leave us alone to do our work, and if you don't like the way we're doing it, tell us why--and we'll either fix it or tell you why you have to adjust what you want to the way we're doing it. (If that makes sense.)

Obviously I can get very wound up over this. I rather do hope I'm asked to do a presentation at the college-wide symposium on the problems with the corporate-style insistence that we "quantify the unquantifiable"--and that we do so in a way that fits a fucking computer program (designed by those with a corporate mindset) instead of doing it in a way that makes sense to us.

OK, I'll dismount from that hobby horse for the nonce.

Class today was rather flat. In fact, at one point--faced with a protracted silence in response to my request for reactions to the poem we'd read--I said, "I guess you guys are done with this one." The best student in the class said, "It's just the poem is heavy...." and I said, "And you're not up for heavy lifting today." Yep. Well, I understand that. They did perk up a bit when I distributed two poems I teach in the 102 classes: even working those on the fly seemed easier to them than the one they'd had a chance to read and log about. (The latter is admittedly a very allusive and elusive poem: I freely confess that there are bits of it that I have yet to find a reasonable interpretation for: Peter Blue Cloud's poem "Turtle." It's gorgeous, but....) I see, too, that it will take a while for the class to settle and for me to know for sure who is staying and who's out. One young woman has desperately wanted to make it--I've mentioned her in previous posts, I think--but today was her sixth absence, so she's now in withdraw or fail time. The plagiarist apparently got scared off by the fact that I wanted to talk to him about his mini-paper, as I haven't seen him since. Another young woman who was struggling along making C's apparently has bailed. And my former student was absent again today. I think I'm going to have to tell him to cut his losses. I hate to lose him, but he's just tied his own hands; I simply don't think there is any way he can recover, he's fallen so far behind. If I'm right about who is actually going to stick--at least for a while longer--I think there will be six students plus the senior observer. I hope I can keep all six....

Speaking of six: the bells are ringing for the hour, and even though I should stay for my evening office hour (I'm supposed to be here 5-7), I'm going to split. If anyone says anything, I'll make up the time--I'll probably be here a lot more than I'm scheduled anyway. I brought something to eat for dinner, but I don't want it. I think--I'm not sure, but I think--I'm going to go out to eat and then go to dance class for the first time in months. I may bail on both (my appetite and moods are utterly weird these days), but I'll see which way I turn once I'm in the car: toward the restaurant or toward home. Tomorrow will be a steak night with Paul, assuming he and I both have settled enough tummies to handle that extravaganza. It will only partly be a working session, but we have a deadline to have some actual work done on our project for the Wednesday after the break. It will be good to have the fire lit under my ass to actually start getting some stuff on paper (or the electronic equivalent thereof). We're not going to have a real handle on the thing until we start actually writing--even knowing that we'll have a huge task of writing, revising, cutting, replacing, lather, rinse, repeat ahead of us. Gotta start somewhere. I'm looking forward to that.