And then a miracle occurred (plus a fire drill)

Earlier today, I got an e-mail asking if we could move tomorrow's Taskstream subcommittee meeting from 10:00 to 9:30. Serious "Oh shit" moment. I had been awake briefly at 4:30 this morning and thought, "I hope that Taskstream meeting is next week." Yeah, well. Obviously some part of me remembered that it is, in fact, this week; I just hadn't looked at the calendar in a day or so and had blissfully forgotten. When I read the e-mail, I didn't panic, but I did respond saying I'd probably have to reschedule, as I hadn't started grading the 102 papers yet.

Two hours later, I e-mailed back: "Oh, wait. Never mind: I can meet tomorrow."

Yes, folks, that's the miracle. The new system, using a detailed rubric for the final versions--along with steadfastly refusing to mark ANYTHING on the papers themselves and keeping comments only to those things not covered in the rubric--has saved me hours of time and gallons of sweat. Oh thank God.

So, yes, I have four more to do tomorrow, but I'm trusting (praying) I can get those done during my office hour. The Mystery students will have to wait until next week to get any of their assignments back (unless there is yet another miracle), but they don't urgently need those assignments for anything, so no harm, no foul.

I will say that this evening's schedule was slightly thrown because there was just a fire drill. (Yes, really.) It didn't last too long, but long enough that this post will now have to be a kind of Cliff's Notes version.

The Fiction students didn't have much to say about Le Guin's "The First Contact with the Gorgonids"--much to my disappointment. I find it funny; they didn't like it. But I'd figured we'd run out of things to say, which is why I'd sent my story to be critiqued. The problem there was that only one student had actually printed it out and brought it to class (Mr. Real Writer). We had so much time, however, that I let the rest of them look it up on their phones and had the students read it aloud in class. Their responses were interesting--but the main thing is that they now understand their own assignment much better. Two students were brave enough to tell me something they thought didn't work, which I loved.

After class was the best, though. I had a talk with Mr. Real Writer about his revision of his first story. In his report on his revision, he mentioned a whole additional dimension that he'd wanted to add to the story, and we talked about that, what he should do with it and where the pitfalls might lie. He also wasn't sure how to go about building the SF world for his next story: write more stories about it, I suggested. He liked that idea. But I want to bring a copy of Le Guin's essay about world making for him.

Also after class, I had a long talk with the student who is involved in the Creative Writing Club. He's going through a rough time right now, mostly struggling with career choices and decisions about what to do next in his life in general. I'm not sure I was terribly helpful, but I think simply the fact that he has a sympathetic ear, and someone other than his parents to hash things out with, was beneficial. He's very sweet, and clearly distressed--and stressed--so I told him to take it easy with my class for a while; I'll be flexible about the reading notes and so on, as long as he does the major work. I'll be flexible about absences, too, if he needs that. The last thing in the world I want is for my class to drag him down, particularly as he really loves writing--won first prize in the NCC student writing competition last year, in fact. He needs encouragement, and I'm glad to provide it for him.

And that essentially covers the day. I'll do a little photocopying for tomorrow's classes, and then--hooray!--will head out to meet Paul for that work-play dinner. And we'll see how tomorrow goes.