Another torturous Wednesday crossed off...

I cannot, cannot, cannot wait until I am finished with the M/W 101 and don't have to deal with them ever again. There are a few I'd be happy to have in any of my classes in the future, but for the most part, I'll be thrilled to bits to see the back of them--and I'd lay any odds you like that they feel the same way about me.

The Poetry class was also somewhat torturous, but I just shoved interpretations at them: "Read it this way." I am simply baffled that they still struggle over poems that I think are (at least relatively) easy. Even the best students were stumped by poems that I expected to be a cake-walk.

I see them all six more times (plus the final Monday, which is "see me in my office if you want to discuss your grade" day). Two of those times don't really "count": the Monday of the last full week, they'll hand me their final papers and collect the end-of-semester self-evaluation. The Wednesday, we'll do the semester debriefing--and given how little they've had to say about almost everything, I'm rather suspecting they won't have much to say about how the semester worked for them either. Of course, there's a chance the students in the 101 will suddenly feel they can rip into me--the hostility in the room is back to near toxic levels--but whatever. I may rip into them. I shouldn't, for all sorts of reasons, but I will be tempted to finally and at long last tell them exactly what the semester has been like for me.

Yeah, I'm feeling a little pissed off at the moment. But it will pass--perhaps like a kidney stone, but it will pass.

Meanwhile, just for amusement's sake, I checked to see if anyone has signed up for any of my classes in the fall. One of the students in the T/Th 101 has already signed up for 102. I don't remember if I mentioned before, but he's the one who not only felt comfortable enough to open up about his social anxiety, he also shared with me his work to help a friend--a cyber friend--who was contemplating suicide. I told him what he'd done was a mitzvah, and he knew the term. He's struggling to stay on top of the discussion boards, but his work is otherwise very good. I'll be happy to have him in 102.

I am thinking about 102 quite a bit, even as I'm still working on this semester. I want to change the readings a bit, especially the poetry selections (especially based on my experience with the poetry class), and I think I want to change handbooks. I'm not sure whether I'll dive into the whole "web enhanced" bit or not: it's met with such mixed success with the 101s, I'm not sure I want to bother.

But I really don't have to fuss about that just now. I still have most of the assignments for tomorrow's class yet to grade, and there is some P&B business I need to tend to (writing up that observation, and other paperwork that is too boring to go into here). I don't know how the next few weeks are going to shake out, in terms of my work flow--but whatever happens, by May 17, I'll have everything having to do with classes tied with a bow, and anything beyond that will work itself out however it works out.

Despite two days of rest at home, I'm still idiotically tired, so I'm going to head for the hills before it gets any later. It is truly lovely to leave the office when it's still full light out, to know I'll be home before dusk. Natural light is just a good thing. Let us take a moment to celebrate the increasing daylight of spring.