[Insert profanities here]

I'm posting quickly, and I'm feeling outrageously frantic all of a sudden. I got almost no work done over the weekend--the willful ignoring of the amount of work I need to do and the time remaining in which to do it has, as I suspected it might, turned around to bite me in the ass. I'm getting pretty soundly chewed up, in fact.

I came back to the office after meeting with the 102s in utter despair: why do I torture myself by making students read the novel? Any novel--but especially this one? I'm kind of locked into it for the spring, as I've already ordered the books, but after spring, I'm going to stop teaching 102 entirely: I'm going to stick to 101s and whatever lit elective I can get--trying to limit the range of those as well, sticking pretty much to SF, Nature in Lit, and Native American Lit. The students' inability to read and comprehend is simply too painful.

But, thank God, Paul was here and ready to talk--and with his encouragement, I have decided to redo the schedule for the rest of the semester, ditch the last round of conferences, only do one pass on comments for the essays, and give the students a fraction longer in which to read the book. It's still awfully damned tight, but not quite as bad as it was. I knew when I put the schedule together that I was pushing them through the novel too fast--and it turns out it wasn't just a little too fast but WAY WAY WAY too fast.

So, I started to do a reboot this evening, but I can't focus well enough to continue. I'll have to hit the ground running tomorrow, but I will, in fact, hit the ground running--and I'll have to work pretty much the entire holiday weekend, but if it gets me caught up, it's worth it.

I have to dash: I should have been out of here half an hour ago. Tomorrow, I can stay here until all hours, but tonight, I'm going.

fuckfuckfuckfuck...