Hooray! Oh, no, wait, Boo...

Hooray! I got everything marked for every class before I went to the first of the 102s today, so my feet are entirely clear for reading, marking, and commenting on the first versions of their second papers.

Boo! Now comes the hard part: getting through them. This is when the attrition rate starts to work in my favor: I collected a grand total of 25 papers today. (I'm disappointed that I didn't get one from one of my favorite students in the later 102, the student who carried everyone through the homework last week, but ah well.) I marked/commented on three papers this evening (hooray!) but I'm not sure how on earth I can get through the rest before class on Wednesday (boo!). There are theoretically enough hours of waking time--or should be, barring disaster; the wrinkle is how having to spend time in Advisement affects the commenting process.

On these first versions, I don't write much with my red pen (OK, "much" is a relative term)--but I do type up extensive comments. And it is true that I have access to a computer in Advisement, and can bring my flash drive (to facilitate cutting and pasting, so I don't have to reinvent the wheel every time I need to say "you need to follow the correct formats for quoting poetry"), so theoretically I could type comments there just as easily as anywhere else. But this semester there's a whole new log-on system, and I can't print to any of the printers in the Advisement center itself. If I print a document from their computers, it comes out in the printer here in the office. (I know: stupid.) And I'm not sure I'll have time to dash from there to here to pick up the last batch of typed comments before I have to get to class.

It's all about technology glitches. Ridiculous, really.

Obviously, what would be best would be if I could get through all the marking/commenting tomorrow--but I know damned well I don't have that kind of stamina. So I'm trying out scenarios that will allow me to finish on Wednesday: "If I don't eat lunch and just run to the office..." "If I let the students in the first session go early..." "If I bail on the stint in Advisement...." I rather like that last option, but then I have to wrestle with my conscience about calling in "sick" again--or wrestle with my laziness and make up the time some Thursday morning. I'm already going to have to make up time for other reasons, and I truly don't want to have to give up two Thursday mornings, but it is an option. And may be worth it.

Fortunately, I don't have to decide this minute. And I did get a bit of a reprieve about Wednesday: I still have to go to our departmental Assessment meeting, but I don't have to take new kitten to the vet to be spayed (long story), so I won't be quite as frantic as I feared I might be.

All that aside, two interesting student interactions today. The first was with a young woman in the first section of 102. She's very bright, potential A material (though she may not get there this semester: she's getting B's and B+s so far)--and she wanted to talk to me after class, just to chat. She had mentioned to her father, who is a fan of SF, that we'll be reading Left Hand of Darkness, and he said yes, he'd read it, but he prefers works by C. J. Cherryh--whose work I have not read. I had to explain that my field isn't really SF, blah blah, but we also chatted about the opportunity we all have to see Joy Harjo in Manhattan on Thursday (I'll be there, barring disaster), and clearly this young woman wants to make some personal contact with the professor. Cool by me. She's sweet. She started the semester with pink hair; now it is a beautiful cobalt blue. I like what that says about her.

In the second class there is a young woman who has been turning in rotten work all semester, the same crap over and over, and who clearly is frustrated and feels shamed about her grades--that familiar pattern of acquired helplessness and self-manufactured defeat. I've been wanting to talk with her, as she also clearly had no intention of quitting--and I don't want her to quit. I do, however, want her to do more than crumple in defeat. I've been trying to get her to come to my office for some time, but she says her work schedule makes it impossible (which may be true). But today, since students were finishing up and we had some time before the end of class, I just took her out in the hall and talked to her.

I was my most encouraging, sweetest, nurturing self, and she opened up to it pretty quickly. She was defensive at first, but soon she was admitting that she's hard on herself, that she doesn't understand why--when she responds so emotionally to the poetry--she's not getting good marks, and so on. I trotted out my personal example from grad school, of sitting in my first ever grad class and feeling like an utter moron, as students and the professor were talking right over my head--but I decided, "It's my education, dammit, I don't care if I look like I have the IQ of a slug," and I asked questions. As soon as I did, at least three other people in the room had that "Thank god you asked!" look. As soon as I said that, she admitted she's been on the side of being grateful that someone asked, so I said, "Would you be willing to be the brave one who asks?" She said yes. Cool. I hope it works. I don't think she'll get the B's she wants (especially having left the effort so late), but if she can at least begin to submit C-level work, I'll be happy. Happier. About her at least.

It seems to have been a day for using my stories from grad school, as I trotted out two different stories in the earlier class. I told the students that if they had done all the work they could squeeze out of their brains today, they could go--and one asked if I'd judge her for leaving. So I told my story about having spent a year revising my dissertation, then going in to my advisor only to have her suggest one more monster revision. I sat there, tears puddled up in my eyes, and I said, "Joan, I will do anything you want, but you will have to tell me exactly what to say, because nothing else is coming out of my brain"--at which point she said, "Oh! Well, in that case, you're done." Of course, someone asked whether that meant they could stop now, and I said, "I spent a year revising before I got to that point; you have to spend at least a week."

I then overheard Blue Hair and a student I had last semester (a young woman, smart and very giggly), talking about not being able to imagine writing a book. Ah! Another teaching opportunity. So I trotted out the story of being told that I shouldn't think of writing my dissertation as writing a book: I should just think of it as writing five 25-page papers. (I made sure they understood that by the time one gets to grad school, a 25-page paper is standard; we'd do them all the time). Lesson: break the task down into manageable chunks. Take it a piece at a time. They nodded: "Yes, Yoda."

But that makes me think I should take in the paperback copy of the dissertation (ratty as it has become). I don't often get to show it off, and I did write the damned thing. I mean, I wrote a book. I got a doctorate out of it. That's no small potatoes, and I want the students to understand that there is a reason I get to stand up there and tell them what to do. They should be impressed, dammit. Not intimidated, but aware that I have some literal authority.

It's odd to get on that particular riff, as earlier today I had one of those moments when I was struck by how weird it is that I do what I do--I mean that it's just little ole nothin' much me doing what I do. Bizarre. Doctor? Professor? Me?? Strange, strange. But now that I've reminded myself that, yes, in fact, I have become this person who apparently has some idea what she's doing, I'm going to toddle my inflated ego off home. Let tomorrow take care of itself.