Thud

That sound you hear is me hitting the wall. As it happens, the meeting with the problem adjunct that was scheduled for today got postponed; if I'd known, I wouldn't have had to come in at all (as I could have put off starting work on summer schedules). It is a bit stupid that I lost a day of sick leave when I've been here the whole damned day, but in fact, it's probably for the best: I work better here than I do at home. But at this point, even M&Ms plus potato chips are not enough to keep me going.

I've been cranking through the 102 revisions--and I've developed a new technique to save myself a lot of trouble. Sometimes I'll mark a page or two first, sometimes I institute the new procedure starting with the first page: I write a note saying, "From here on, I'll focus on pointing out improvements." Since most of the papers don't have any (or many), I've just saved myself 5-10 minutes per paper. Indeed, one paper I simply stopped reading. It was riddled with the most amazingly sloppy errors, and I'm fed to the teeth with that kind of shit. If the student doesn't care enough about his paper even to run spell check, why the fuck should I read it, never mind provide any kind of comments?

But the fact that so many of the students are simply not revising is making me seriously question the merit of the whole assignment. I spend a lot of time providing detailed comments, only to have them completely ignored--and I'm fed up with that, too. I was tossing around some preliminary ideas for next semester earlier: I don't have it worked out yet, but I think I'm going to try to figure out a way to adjust the grading process so students can opt out of revising--but only if they get a whopping penalty for doing so. I thought it would be sufficient if 10% of their grade rode on revision, but apparently, that doesn't compute for them. I think they need to see points taken off the paper grade--including for cases when all the student does is make superficial corrections (punctuation, a few word choices, that sort of thing). But I really want to find a way so I don't provide comments for students who have zero intention of doing anything with them. I'll have to mull this over quite a bit: I don't just want to penalize them if they don't revise--I don't want to put any of my own time and effort into looking at their papers if they aren't going to. I used to do the whole "If you do not actively engage in revision, your grade will go down" thing--but I still ended up giving lots of feedback to no avail.

It has occurred to me that I can hold off on giving them the grade distribution info and talk to them about it at the start of the semester. I can set out the situation for them and ask them what they think makes sense. I won't necessarily do what they suggest, but sometimes they have good ideas: they often know what motivates them better than I do.

I'm still getting comments in response to my post to ASLE--including one that suggested giving comments without a grade and then going over the paper in a tutorial with the student a week later, "by which time they've gone over it in detail." Ah, the vast difference between a prestigious university in Great Britain and a community college in the U.S. I sort of do that already with first versions of papers (though I give a ball-park of what the grade would be)--and even when I conferenced with students as Paul does (no time for "tutorials"), they did not ever go over it in detail--not even the very good students, for the most part.

Well, fuck. I don't know what else to try that feels like it makes any sense, either for the students or for me. I almost wonder if it's time to go back to 101, in which I'd feel more comfortable with another idea I've had, which is to spend the last third of the semester continually revising one paper, over and over and over--turning a paper from the earlier part of the semester into the final paper, in part by adding research but mostly by reworking it until it's as good as the student can make it or we run out of time. Of course, the really good students might be able to rework more than one paper.... Hm.

In any event, I can't do anything to change the assignments this semester: the revision bit is done. The final papers are not revised but built incrementally--though I've told students they can, if they prefer, write the entire paper and revise it twice instead of building it in pieces. But really, any brilliant (or not so brilliant) ideas I come up with at this point will be for next semester.

As for the remaining five papers I have to grade, I may try to get one (or two??) more done tonight, though it's unlikely. I have to get up pretty damned early tomorrow in any event (have to get my kitten to the vet to be spayed), so I'm hoping I'll be in the office in time to get through more before I have to go to Advisement. And if need be, I'm hoping that I'll be able to squeeze out enough time in Advisement to finish the last one or two. I am saving the best of the second batch for last. In the first class, the best student of the bunch comes last in the alphabet, so I always get to finish with her work (and the second best student comes first in the alphabet: I like the bookend effect). But in the second class, the one really good student--in terms of writing papers anyway--is closer to the middle of the alphabet, so I've learned to pull his papers out and use them as my reward for having gotten through the rest of them. (I just realized that the second-best student is also in the middle of the alphabet for that class. I almost should turn the class inside out to achieve the bookend effect--but it also works to grade a bunch of crap, then get a good one, grade a bunch more crap, then finish with a sigh of relief at grading something that is actually pleasant to read.

Today I thought I detected plagiarism in a paper. I typed it in and ran it through the Turnitin software--which turned up nothing. I think I found a possible source for a relatively distinctive work choice, but I'm not going to nail the student for it. I am, however, going to talk to her about sources.

I realize, too, that this is just going to be one of those days in which I end up not doing the things that I would prefer to do in order to finish the things I have to do. I've been trying to figure out whether to go to dance class, and I realize I shouldn't. I either should stay here and grade more papers or I should go home and try to get to bed early. Or both. Or write up that wretched observation from yesterday (the adjunct is already hounding me for it--like she is my ultimate first priority). But dancing will get me home late and delay my wind-down to sleep. I hate to miss the exercise (like I hated to miss my Native American Lit students, and P&B, and even more time doing the summer scheduling, much of a pain in the ass as that can be). But in addition to the stupid revisions, I have a stack of homework from all the classes that is not going to get any smaller over the next two days, unless I can get the revisions out from underfoot and turn my attention to hacking my way through that stuff, too. And the observation. And I've got two more observations coming up in the next few weeks. Ugh.

Well, what I know--what all my faithful readers know--is that one way or another, it all gets done. Sometimes what the students get back is pretty minimal, but they get it back, I get all my committee work done, and by the end of the semester, my hands are empty again. Five weeks from today, it will be all over. I'll be doing a mad dash of scheduling (both getting ready for adjunct contract signing and doing the full-time schedules for spring 2014), and I'll be trying to get my conference paper written--but all the rest of my chores for this semester will be finished. I meet my classes nine more times: that's it. Seriously: hang on to the safety bar and scream, because we're on that downward plunge to the end of the ride.