scheduling snafu

I'm here late, trying to crank through more of the story revisions, which I need to return to the Fiction writing students tomorrow--so they can have them before they write their next stories, due on Monday. Meanwhile, I just collected the final versions of paper 1 from the 102 students, which I need to get back on Thursday--because they have another paper due on Tuesday. I know I've looked at the 102 schedule before and didn't think I could adjust it to move paper 2 any later--but they're going to have to shift from poetry paper to novel and back again anyway, so I need to look again. If there is any way at all that I can give them another week before that poetry paper is due, I think it might help them produce better results.

Or maybe not. I know how most students work, and even if I give them extra time, most of them will write the paper the night or two before it's due. The ones who would actually make use of extra time are generally the ones who will also do OK without it. And honestly, I don't particularly want to drag this out, for my own reasons--among them, that I would prefer to knuckle down and get through October and then be able to lighten up a bit on the grading. I'll still be collecting homework, but that requires less than evaluating papers.

But no matter what I decide about that, tomorrow and Thursday are going to require that I ratchet up the pace. I've been pretty easy on myself this semester, and so far it's worked, but I can't do that this time. I've got to be fiercely disciplined and just push through, no matter what. Paul and I are supposed to have a working dinner (steak and scotch blowout) tomorrow night, but I'll have to see where I am by the time I go to class tomorrow afternoon. If I haven't made a significant dent in the work, I may have to ask for a rain check--especially because I have a committee meeting that I must attend on Thursday (I'm the department's elected representative, so I really can't blow it off). That takes a big bite out of my Thursday morning time before class. I know I'll be doing the "how many papers do I have, what's the average time to grade each paper" calculation to figure out how many hours I need to give myself. Gawd almighty.

As I'm writing all this, I realize that Tuesday night dance classes are simply not going to work for me this term. I can try to do other healthy and enjoyable activities on other nights, but I'm pretty much always going to need much more than an hour between when I get back to the office and when I leave campus: time to put papers in the right stacks, to get some flotsam swept up (last night, I wrote a cover letter for a Chancellor's Award application, one of my committee duties)--and yes, blog.

So, turning my attention to the student interactions of the day. That poor student in 102 who missed the first paper, sort of disappeared, reappeared with apparent resolve to do well in the class? I got an e-mail from her yesterday that said she'd be in class today and asking what she should have ready. I gently suggested she look at the schedule of assignments, but I thought, "Oh, Child, if you are that lost, you're truly lost." Then, icing on the cake, I got a notice today that she has been disenrolled entirely--not just from my class but from the college--because she hasn't provided her immunization records. It's been ages since I've had a student run into that problem, but she's now missed six classes, and the policy is, at six absences, the student has two and only two choices: withdraw or fail. I'm sorry for her--I really do think that under better circumstances she might make an OK student (even though her writing is not terrific, or not yet)--but she needs to cut her losses now.

On a more cheerful note, class went well: the students were struggling with two poems (Cheryl Savageau's "Bones--A City Poem" and Andrew Marvel's "To His Coy Mistress"): both difficult but for very different reasons. But they did a great job of working the process: break it down, focus on the words, make the connections, build it back up again. I'm interested to note that the student who seemed to "get" the poems best started out saying she didn't understand either one at all. She's the student who completely missed the first paper--but she's in there, doing her best to do the work. Once she focused on the process, she nailed both poems beautifully. A couple of other students who had been struggling before are suddenly getting the hang of this work. I liked how things went. I did have to remind students to stick with the language of the poem: some in their groups and one (I think only one, but there may have been more) in the class discussion. They wanted to get to an interpretation based on just a few words without looking at how those words fit into the whole. I was probably too impatient with that, just shot the students down instead of asking the Socratic questions to get them to reconsider--but I also wanted to move things along. We've got three more poems to cover on Thursday, and I cannot wait until we get to Sharon Olds's "Sex without Love." That one's always a kick to teach.

The Mystery class was good, too. I did a quick blast through paper format, incorporating quotations and paraphrase (didn't get to plagiarism, dammit: I wish I had), works cited pages--and My Favorite Student (hereafter MFS) not only knows MLA format to perfection (says she had it drilled into her, for which I am grateful), she also said that she loves the fact that they are to base everything they say on their reading of the text. She said she hates her philosophy papers because they're all personal opinion. I said, well, these are your analysis of the material, which is a kind of "opinion"--but you must have an argument about the material: that's what you're talking about. I said quotations should be brief, pertinent, and rare--and that the bulk of the paper should be explication of the quoted material. MFS joked about that, "But it's so tempting to use lots of quotations to make your paper longer!" Yes, I said, and that's why I said "brief, pertinent, and rare." Of course, then I had to say that they must use some quotation--it's absolutely required--but when they do, they need to know why they're using it.

I fully anticipate that virtually ever paper I receive from them on Thursday will be problematic in any number of ways. Some of them may have had better writing skills than I'll see evidence of but have gotten rusty; many of them never had the skills to start with--certainly not at the level I expect. But this is why I allow (encourage) revision. It's highly unlikely they'll be allowed that second shot when they get to their four-year institutions (those of them who are going on, which is most of them), but at this level, they need it and deserve it: they're still learning.

Oh, God, I need to get out of here. It's almost 9 p.m. and I have to be back here in 12 hours. I'm flinging this up on the blog, rough and raw as it is, no adjustments. I may or may not have time to blog tomorrow--we'll see how the grading goes--but if I don't, I'll certainly check in on Thursday and let you all know how it goes. I leave you now, in breathless anticipation of the next installment from Prof. TLP...