Happy or panic-stricken?

Enrollment in Nature in Lit is up to 10. That seems likely to run--especially as there are still two weeks before class starts--but ... there are only two weeks before class starts, and I've backed up a few paces on having the class ready, so, freak-out time.

On the good news front, I did figure out how to create online quizzes, so I can assign the handbook reading and have a reasonable way to ensure that it's been read. (Ditto for the FTF classes: for the SF class, they'll be take-home quizzes, as I don't want to waste class time on them--and maybe the info will stick a little better if a. I tell them what to focus on and b. they have to give it back in their own words.)

But as for backing up, well, let me back up a bit, provide some context.

This cold/flu thingy is still kicking my ass, energy-wise. So I opted to spend today pretty much bed-bound, drinking tea (OK, yes, taking a nap), and my concession to the fact that I need to work was that I was going through the Norton anthology again, trying to pick readings. And I realized, it's fine to do things chronologically from Bradford and Smith up to Thoreau, but then I really need to organize thematically, as there is no strong historical thread by which to organize. And that meant I had to revisit a lot of the readings, as I don't know them terribly well--in fact, quite honestly, some I didn't remember at all--and try to come up with categories for them.

The categories are, of course, sprawling and ill-defined--and any one piece could conceivably be categorized several different ways. Of readings that appeal to me personally (which are the only kind I'll choose, as I don't want to be stuck teaching something I don't like enough to reread and talk about), a lot fall into specific categories that are not necessarily the most important in terms of the field (so to speak) of whatever we mean when we talk about "nature writing." I also have to bear in mind that some pieces that I love may be too dense or "deep" for students (Thomas Merton's "Rain and the Rhinoceros" being case in point).

And the anthology is fucking huge. It's wonderful because one can go so many different directions with it, but I cannot possibly read all I "should" in it to make good selections. So, tomorrow, I'm going to have to focus on skipping anything that doesn't seem to fall neatly into any of the categories I'm working with--and skimming anything that does, just enough to see whether I think it will work.

I also realize that I probably need to go through everything I set up last year very carefully, to make sure I haven't changed my mind about things.

And I have to remember to tell the IT guys to make it an active class, not in development. (That I can actually do as soon as I finish this post.)

And and and and. The usual domino chain of things to worry about dropping through the floorboards.

Well, Paul's experience last semester should be instructive: he was, god love him, building his online course as he taught it (which I know I cannot do), and he acknowledged that he did a good enough job on it: not the best he could have done, but good enough. Of course, my anxiety is that I won't even feel like what I've done is good enough--but I'll do what I can.

I hope, too, that today's sloth and lassitude will bring at least a partial rebound of energy and verve. This being under the weather is annoying as shit.