I'm so screwed (redux)

Obviously, once again, I was overly optimistic about how much I can get accomplished in X amount of time. (Climb Mt. Everest: half an hour...) I still have seven essays to grade. I'm doing about two an hour--partly because I'm also marking homework, which I want to get back to the students so I don't have a huge backlog to rush through before they have to write their next essays. But in any case, that's a minimum of three hours--so I either have to return to work this evening or get up super-extra early tomorrow, or a little of both. And I did not sleep well last night (minor migraine), so the idea of either one--working late or getting up early--is deeply painful.

Of course, the other option is to do a reboot: move when the revision of essay 1 is due, hold conferences a different week, and buy myself time that way. That would certainly make sense in terms of husbanding my scant mental energies, but, as is usually the case when one simply kicks a problem down the road, there's likely to be a whole new bottle-neck/collision of shit to mark at whatever time in the future I select.

I'm feeling rather stubborn about this at the moment: "Dammit, I want to get these fuckers done and out of my hair." That feeling is intensified by my innate desire, when faced with something nasty, to just get it over with. (I've always been a "dive into the cold water" type, not the "inch in slowly" type.) I did--finally--mark one essay, one, that had the right kind of focus, made sense, was reasonably well supported (in other words, a B) instead of the unmitigated bilge I've been dealing with, but I'm not anticipating many, if any, more such wonders in the seven that remain.

So, well, it's a puzzlement. And all I want to do is sit on the floor and wail like a toddler.

Poor, pitiful Prof. P! Let me remind myself that I am blessed beyond all measure to make a good living doing something that matters deeply to me, that it is actually a good thing that I still care so much about the quality of what the students produce and am trying mightily to figure out how to get them at least close to where I want them to be, As I said to a student, this is a good problem to have. I am healthy, well educated, gainfully employed, and enormously privileged. So, enough of the whining. Let me be grateful.