"I'm so screwed" post number 10,483

I've lost count. How many times have I wailed about how screwed I am by the amount of work I've been pushing down the pike? How many times have I carried on about the fact that I'm staring at (in this case metaphoric) mountains of student work to hack through and my brain is completely out of gas, not even any fumes to keep it going?

Well, here's one more.

I'm very discouraged by the progress (or lack thereof) in the Nature in Lit class. The week before the break, only seven students posted. Another dropped today (that's three official, and two more ought to, as they haven't done any work in weeks). That's not counting the young man who plagiarized (and I have to say, reading a post that he legitimately wrote on his own, I can sure see why he was plagiarizing--though his emails have been coherent enough). Even one of my rock stars has been falling off the beam lately; he read a completely different text than what I assigned in one case (clearly reading out of something apart from our textbook). And I'm spending way more time than I want to looking for plagiarism: all my alarm bells are going off all the time.

And I'm encountering the problem that I have yet to figure out how to circumvent in that class: the assumption that every author is talking about the "beauty" of nature, even when the language very clearly is not about "beauty" at all, and about "appreciating" it, even in cases when the author might as well say, "I hate nature. Give me a city and electronic devices." I have to continually say (or write), read what's actually there, not what you assume will be there. Read the author's words, which contradict your interpretation.

I also have to say that I'm a bit stung by one student's response to my attempt to help her. Essentially, she said I was "overloading" her with work--especially since she has other classes (which, of course, is specific to her, not any of the other students in the class)--and that even doing what I suggested, she couldn't understand the reading, so ... she's withdrawing, apparently in a four-door Huff.

(Sorry: that's an expression from a friend of my ex. The friend said that a "huff" sounded like a European car, usually a sports model--a two-door Huff--but occasionally a full-sized sedan.)

I simply processed the withdrawal and cc'ed her on the email doing so. I didn't respond to her snotty whine at all. Yes, I know. I'm the evil bog monster from hell. I have insanely high demands. It's all my fault. (Grand. So, now, please fuck off to the left: it's right over there, you can't miss it.) (Raiding a turn of phrase, loosely speaking, from another friend.)

I'm also in a full-bore cranky mood because the break is almost over and I have not been sleeping as well as I'd like. Or, rather, I've been sleeping well but not as long as I'd like. I don't like feeling exhausted when I'm supposed to be recharging, but, there you have it. That's where I am right now.

But because of that state of depletion, I am calling a halt early tonight. I know this will make for a much more frantic weekend than would be ideal, but again: there you have it. Despite my running around waving my hands in the air about how screwed I am, I will get all the work done one way or another, because, well, I always do, not having much choice about it. And although the semester has been extended so I now have seven more weeks to get through, not six, the last of those weeks is going to be nothing at all significant. (I do need to find out if we have to report to Advisement on the make-up day. I bet we do, but I'm going to run it by Paul before asking the head of Advisement.) And then ... ah, to don my sea-cucumber garb and simply roll gently with the tides. Soon, soon. Tempus fugit, no matter what's going on.