Painfully tired

Two more essays remain to be graded for tomorrow. I cannot, cannot, cannot squeeze them out tonight. I've gone too short on sleep for too long, and I'm now so tired it hurts.

So, tomorrow, I have those two, which I have to do first thing in the morning, plus six now for Thursday. I missed seeing one that had been submitted on time (wishful thinking, perhaps?) and two came in late--but I'm going to allow them to proceed.

I realized today that I wasn't taking points off for the late submissions. I need to make a record of that for myself and take the points off the final versions for the students who submitted late. I don't quite know what to do about the students who submitted late enough that, at five points per day for each submission (printout and Turnitin upload), the penalties would be more points than the essay would earn.

I do know I'm going to have to scream at the students in the 5:00 section. They're just falling apart at the seams, and the few students who are any good in there are suffering terribly because their classmates are not giving them work to respond to. I had to make an agreement with one student that I'd give her full marks for her discussion boards even if she couldn't respond to two classmates with any substance--because what she had to respond to was so inadequate. I may talk to the five or so students in that class who are worth something and let them know that they can just talk to each other and ignore everyone else on the discussion boards. And I'll try to make sure they end up in groups together as often as possible. They deserve the good experience. The rest of the class, I'm not very interested in coddling.

Shifting gears, back to the essay grading issue: I do realize that since we instituted the ENG100 course (which fulfills the same function as 101 but includes an extra 50-minute lab for more intensive writing work and is used to house the "high fails" on placement tests), generally the writing in 101 classes is a little better than it used to be. There's still a pretty wide range, but the ones on the bottom tier are on a slightly higher rung than was the case before ENG100. I've heard tell that the converse is true of 001, the basic developmental writing course: the students there tend to be worse than they used to be. (One more reason I'm glad I've never taught 001 and don't intend to.)

Shifting gears again: P&B today was partly just grinding through business as usual (getting ready to mentor people for sabbatical and promotion), but at the end, Cathy did talk a bit about how hard it is to accomplish even the most basic, routine tasks because apparently a lot of the administrators either are too dazed and confused to stay on top of their work or are deliberately causing bottle-necks and ignoring requests for solutions to problems. The seminar hours meeting that started the day was similarly grim (and Cathy was venting about some of the same problems, to the point that Scott had to say that he needed to turn the meeting from being a Faculty Anger support group to a seminar hours committee). My tolerance for the bullshit on this campus is rapidly diminishing--and was never very high to begin with. The campus is falling apart--in terms of a lot of the buildings, literally falling apart. Part of me almost hopes we do lose our accreditation and have to shut down, as I would pretty much be forced to retire (though I'd hate for my colleagues to have to suffer the consequences of closure, even if we reopen the next day as a campus of Suffolk CC). Meetings like those really do make me want to flee to the hills (or mountains, actually).

But on the other side, there are the students who want to meet with me weekly for mentoring. There's the Drama Queen (which may be unfair to her, but I'm not sure how else to label her) and there's another young man who told me that he thinks I'm crazy to put what I do into my classes--but who also tells me how much he needs what I have to offer. I don't know enough about his story to give him a moniker yet, but I do look forward to seeing him on a weekly basis. (And it makes my stats look good in terms of the number of seminar hours I book.)

But now, it's getting late--again--and I desperately need to get home and wind down. I don't want to look ahead at all, as while I'm grinding out all the essays I'm marking now, other homework is piling up and needs to be tended too. It will be another weekend of immersion in student work. No brain breaks on the horizon for this battered professor. Battered and fried. (Oh, food: there's an idea!)

More tomorrow, if I survive the night.