Lots of hand-holding

I feel like today has been a day of holding toddlers' sweaty little hands while they cling and whine... I got a lot of whining about the fact that the 101 students were to have revised their essays by today (most hadn't) and that the final versions are due on Wednesday (as if they couldn't have figured that out by, oh, say, looking at the assignment schedule), and I just wasn't having it. If you want credit for the assignment, you have to do what's required by the date when it's required.

Oddly, however, I have a lot more patience with the young woman who had a panic attack before the essay was due. She missed her conference, as I think I mentioned, and I thought she wasn't going to show up today--but she did. She was shaky and frightened, but she was here. She gets huge courage points for that; I'll call her the Cowardly Lioness--but she's less cowardly than she knows, and probably more lioness than she's yet realized. And she said she didn't care about the grade--that she knows she already failed the class (well, maybe, but maybe not)--but she wants to learn what she can so she can move forward eventually. I can work with that. She's really struggling to overcome the crippling anxiety--which is largely caused by being in college and feeling unprepared for it. (Ironically, that's the topic she's not addressing in this first essay; in fact, she said the article that pointed out that students are often afraid to go for help was more discouraging than heartening, which surprised me.)

In any event, I'm getting testy with the 101 students. One man in the class is going to drive me nuts: he is wildly eager to do well--but he's going to be here during my office hours every week, I think, asking for help with his writing. On the one hand, I'm glad he's being proactive and getting the help; on the other, he's trying so hard that--to use Paul's metaphor--he's throwing everything at the wall to see what will stick. I'd rather he admit that he has no idea, but that's a tall order, I know.

One thing in class that I found fascinating: On a quiz, I had asked students, "Under what circumstance would you paraphrase instead of quoting?" Most of the students answered with a definition of paraphrase--or explained why one uses evidence in an academic argument, neither of which answered the question. So I went over it with them in class today, and extracting impacted wisdom teeth would be a casual event by comparison. We finally had to define by exclusion--why do we quote instead of paraphrasing?--but then a student asked why they should paraphrase at all. I hadn't realized how challenging that whole concept would be, and I'm still not sure how best to address the concept so it makes sense.

I had hoped to get a lot more done on the other classes today, but I had lots of weeds and vines around my feet all day, so it seemed I couldn't move a step without disentangling something or other. The end result is that I've spent the day feeling highly addled--and behind the curve (so whatever incremental progress I made over the break is now sufficiently in the past that it's not progress at all). I have a doctor's appointment in the morning, and I'll be meeting with the Cowardly Lioness just before I have to meet with the SF class. I'm hoping wildly there will be enough time in between the doctor and the student meeting that I can get some homework marked for the SF--and then I hope to be able to turn my attention to the Nature in Lit, which once again is going untended. (This is the peril of teaching online. I'm as bad as the students are about putting it off because there's no set time when I must do it, even though I swore to myself that I'd work on it every Thursday and Sunday. Um, no so much.)

And I have several life-maintenance things I must do before I get home, so, I'm off. (I'm also leaving.)