God smiled

I was deeply worried as I left the office to go to Advisement this morning: I still had four papers to grade, and as things have been going, I feared I'd be facing back-to-back students with nary a moment in which to finish the grading. As it happened, I got a gift from heaven: Advisement was essentially empty. I saw one student, I think, and the rest of the time I could get ready for classes. In fact, I had time to type in a student paper that I suspected of plagiarism. If it was plagiarized, Turnitin didn't catch it--so I'm giving the student the benefit of the doubt. I did talk to him after class today, though, and told him that he needs to find a focus, and that it was problematic that he hadn't actually addressed any of the concerns I raised on the first version.

The student I caught plagiarizing yesterday received his paper back with the typical letter--and he didn't talk to me after class. However, when I signed in to my e-mail a little bit ago, there was a message from him asking if he could simply "cite" the source and still use it. No, you little twit: 89% of the words in the paper are not yours. That's not simply a matter of an error in giving credit: that's using someone else's work as your own. With Paul's help, I sent an e-mail to the kid. I was going to require that he come to talk to me, but Paul persuaded me that the e-mail was sufficient. In fact, it may be better, as it establishes a "paper" trail about the problem.

The second 102 class today was chaotic but great fun. Three young men sitting in one corner of the room are all fiercely smart, and they were not only asking great questions; they were getting into some pretty interesting and esoteric territory (about quantum reality, how readers' preconceptions color interpretations, the nature of capital-T Truth). The other students were mostly lost, but as long as I made sure they got their questions answered, I don't mind. Let them experience what it's like when the real stuff starts happening.

I love that class, but they can be really exhausting. They all get along well enough that there is a lot of side talk, which gets distracting--for the other students and for me. Several times I had to stop mid-sentence and say, rather pointedly looking at a few students, "Are you with me?" Oh, yeah, embarrassed shuffle....

Another moment I particularly liked was with the A student from that class. The second version of his paper is better than what I usually get as a final version. I took him aside after class and said, "As far as I'm concerned, if you just clean this up a little and submit it, you're done." He was thrilled. I don't see any reason to make him struggle to continue to revise when he's truly completed the assignment and done excellent work on it. He can put his energy into other classes: he's done all he needs to for me.

As for now, I have a shitload of work still to be done (of course), but I'm going to assume that one way or another I can get the papers marked for Native American Lit before class tomorrow--despite the fact that I have to spend the entire morning in Advisement, making up for missed time because of departmental assessment meetings. There are only four of the papers, after all; surely I can knock those out. And if I'm truly lucky, completely blessed with manna from the gods, I'll also be able to knock out the year-end evaluations tomorrow and get those the hell off my desk. Two were so problematic that I immediately kicked them back to the faculty members: one needs to re-do hers entirely and submit it to me this year; the other gets a pass until next year--because he needs a chance to actually fulfill his contractual obligation to attend two "professional development" events for each academic year. One faculty member hasn't submitted anything at all (his problem, not mine), so that leave three write-ups. The write-ups are mercifully brief, shouldn't take me very long at all, but the one-more-thingness of the task is still grinding on me.

I'm not going to look at my desk now. I'm not going to even pretend that I'm going to do another damned thing. I'm making sure I have what I need to take home and I'm out of here. Ok, everyone, what is tomorrow? Right: it's another day.