Sunday Post: When Mom writes your work...

I believe that in Wednesday's post (if we can cast our minds back that far) I mentioned a student who needed to call his mother to get his password to log on to the campus computers. I just read his self-evaluation and at least the first of his discussion boards, and either he is a great deal more facile with language and understands a great deal more than is apparent from his demeanor in class, or Mom is also doing his writing for him.

Even if I'm wrong in this case--and I might be--what the fuck is the matter with parents who do that??? Do they seriously think they are helping their children by keeping them dependent and delaying the moment when their inabilities end up being so manifest as to be crippling? Is Mom going to follow you to your career, too, and do all your work for you there? And don't you think your boss might eventually figure it out?

Years ago I gave up on doing in-class essays, deciding instead to focus on spending time working through revisions. I'm half a hair from reinstating the in-class midterm and final, as students can't fudge their way out of those. Even the students who get extra time for exams are proctored in the Center for Students with Disabilities, so someone is making sure the student is doing the work (or at least most of it, depending on the generosity of the proctor).

Well, whatever.

But I'm also kicking myself for not staying on top of the discussion board posts: students are already slipping, primarily in their responses to each other's posts. They either aren't doing the responses, or the responses are just, "I agree; you made a really good point." No, no, no. As I said in the earlier section's class meeting on Wednesday, they need to review the handout on discussion boards--because handouts are only helpful if the students actually read them.

In both classes, in fact, I think I have to ask whether they are actually reading my comments, whether my comments make sense, whether they are honestly trying to address my comments. This is particularly important for me to know before I launch into grading essays. If they're not reading comments, or can't take them in, I really don't need to spend time commenting.

Speaking of things I don't need to spend time doing, I had a bunch of rubric sheets copied, only to remember that I will be doing all my commenting electronically. I also decided (forgot, remembered that I decided) to only mark a rubric about editing concerns, not to mark up copies of their initial submissions. They get too confused by seeing marks on an essay that (at least in theory) they have changed considerably. If the specific sentence isn't there or has changed, they think the problem has disappeared. So perhaps if I simply mark the rubric, saying things such as "lots of sentence fragments" or "review comma use," they'll understand that they have to work through the revised essay, find the errors I'm pointing out, and fix them (by hand on a printout first, then type them up).

We'll see.

I lost a lot of much-needed work time this weekend to attend a "Breath, Body, Mind" workshop. Ironically, of course, the purpose of the workshop was to help us decrease stress, but I found myself stressed over the fact that I was in the workshop instead of churning through student assignments. I didn't get as far as I'd hoped to tonight, but I've been horribly sleep deprived for a number of nights now, so I hit the wall already: I cannot look at one more set of reading notes, one more discussion board post, one more anything having to do with work. (Well, maybe I'll check email. But otherwise, nope.)

And I may have to bail on Advisement tomorrow. We aren't seeing many students, but seeing any students is more than I feel I can handle and still get my own stuff done. I'll consider the options in the morning--and part of what will decide for me is how well I've slept.

In order to get good sleep tonight, in fact, I need to get off the computer now. I don't need that stimulus, neither mentally nor through the effect of the light from the computer screen on my production of melatonin....

More tomorrow--at which time you'll find out how successful I was at getting caught up on the work. Stay tuned for another exciting adventure in the trenches.