Break's over...

It feels excessively bizarre to be back on campus--especially knowing that we now have a long push without benefit of any further breaks before the end. I also know that it won't be long before I'm wailing in blog posts about how quickly time is passing and how much I have to get done and how I don't know how I'll ever manage (plus ca change and all that), but right now, it just looks like a slog.

The poetry class was OK today; I'll be very curious to see how Wednesday's class works out, as I've given them a "student choice" day. Two students want to bring in their own poetry to have the class read and analyze; the rest want to simply review bits that we didn't cover well enough (or at all). Fine by me. I did get a few to sign up for conferences with me regarding their paper revisions; those conferences will be interesting too.

The 101 was typically rather disastrous: seven students were there, five of whom actually had papers with them. They did a little peer review, but it didn't seem very productive. I also just spent some time looking at their discussion board posts: dismal in the extreme. If I have time between now and the next class, I'm going to do the reality check thing: figure the math for where they are right now and give them a target number, so they know if the math is in their favor in terms of passing the class. Most are going to get much lower grades than they might otherwise because of the missing discussion board posts--but that may be part of their learning curve.

By contrast, of course, the discussion board posts by the other class are terrific--and actually include discussion.Thank heaven I have that class to look forward to.

In any event, I'm expecting to have eight, maybe nine papers to grade for Wednesday--but I don't dare think I'm out of the woods in terms of amounts of marking to do, as I need to have time on Wednesday to at least start the work for Thursday's 101, or I won't get those ready in time.

Fortunately, there will only be one more big push like this, right at the end of the term. Between now and then, just cranking along as usual.

I'm tired and restless and hungry now, however, and want to just get out of here and get home. Maybe I'll have more patience to post tomorrow, but probably not, especially as the plan is to have dinner with Paul and Ed tomorrow evening, which may truncate posting time. But I'll be back at it, no doubt, in full gory detail, starting next week. I do have lots I want to share, stuff I've been thinking about, but not tonight. I'm heading for the hills in 5, 4, 3...