Ever hopeful

I did mark the last of the essays for the 5:30 102 class, despite a number of SNAFUs (including leaving those last three in my office when I went to Advisement; I had a little bit of time to work in Advisement--more on that in a minute--and I had other work to do, but not those). I still have to churn through all the reading notes for that class, and record marks for the notes from the other class, but I'm trusting I'll have time for that somewhere along the line tomorrow. Although there are political reasons why it's unfortunate that tomorrow's meeting got canceled, it's a god-send to me, as it buys me time when I don't have any students coming in to crank through stuff.

The other good thing about getting those essays graded is I was also able to complete the assessment thingy I had to do. I could have waited to do it for the final essay (which might have made the success rates for some of the outcomes look better), but I didn't want it tangled around my ankles any more. Done is beautiful.

I think I mentioned yesterday that I had the sudden sinking realization that I had set things up as if I were going to do the usual mechanics review step on the 102 students' final essays when, in fact, I have no time to do that. I reworked one of the handouts pertaining to that mental error yesterday; today I realized that another handout would have to be reworked as well. Those are all set and ready to photocopy. The temptation was to photocopy them this evening, but I refrained: I put my energy where it really needed to go, instead of clearing my feet of things that really aren't underfoot enough to need clearing.

If that makes sense.

Class was ... well, about like usual. I was very glad that two of the students who are usually completely silent spoke up today; excellent. I also made a suggestion for their notes for Monday, as I found that most of what they were picking up on in the text really has little to do with the "nature" part of the Nature in Literature course. Moreover, what they're picking up on probably won't serve them very well in working on their final essays. So, I asked them to review all the pages they've read looking specifically for anything about what "nature" is on the spacecraft of the story. I'll be interested to see if they actually do that--and if they do, what they find.

Advisement was different from usual today: I was in the Library, not the Advisement Center, helping new students. The procedures are somewhat different, and I hope I followed them correctly. I will say that the new students are so Bambi-eyed and tremulous, it's rather touching. It's been a long while since I've recalled how overwhelming the initial experiences of registration and so on were--not so much my first year as an undergrad, when I was at a small, private, women's college but certainly my second, when I was at an enormous state university. Today, I felt little sympathetic vibrations of the uncertainty and sense of being overwhelmed with expectations... Of course, feeling the remembered visceral sensations, I was able to be quite compassionate with the students, and I think most understood what they needed to know--or enough for now. I'll be back there next week, at least one of my days in Advisement. We'll see how that goes.

For now, my plan is to look at yesterday's post to retrieve the "to do" list I transcribed there, as I think it's more complete and up-to-date than anything else I have, and heaven knows that Prof. P can't function without a list, even if it's a list of the manifestly obvious. Once that is done, and I put the various piles of things in slightly less precarious positions, I will toddle off home. No 6 a.m. alarm tomorrow, thank all the gods at once. However, it remains to be seen whether I'll be able to sleep. (Haven't been too successful at that for a while.)

Tomorrow = another day. That's an equation I can do.