Oh, argh

Well, I spent about twice as long as I "should" have grading the essays for the Nature in Lit class. They're graded and back to students now, but I didn't even glance at the essays for the SF students--and I wanted to get those back to them tomorrow. I have 14 of them to grade. I'm meeting a student from the 101 at 1 tomorrow (she's struggling and we need to talk), and at 3:30, I'm meeting with the adjunct whose class I observed last week. Another student from 101 may show up during my office hour. (I also have another observation to conduct, and I'm meeting with a student from Nature in Lit about her plagiarism after that observation, so tomorrow is going to be a looooooong day.)

So, if I'm wildly optimistic, I have a maximum of five hours in which to grade them. That's three per hour, 20 minutes each. I "should" be able to do that--but even when I'm trying to be efficient as hell, I usually can only get through two in an hour.

Fuck fuck fuck.

The kicker, too, is I have no idea which students won't come to class; we have a late start tomorrow, operating on the assumption that roads will be clear enough that people can get to campus by 1, but a lot of students won't risk it anyway--and given how badly some of them drive, that's probably a good plan.

I sort of have a back-up plan in mind. It's a crap plan, but it's the best I can come up with right now. If I don't get them all marked--which is likely--I'll give back the ones I have done tomorrow, and the rest I'll scan and email back to the students ASAP. (I can hold back the two that were submitted to Turnitin late, and I think one student plagiarized, which makes grading her essay easier. Sadly, it's one of the students who comes regularly to the Monday salon, but, well, we can use the seminar hours appointment to talk about the plagiarism, and ask the other student to wait until we're done.) There may be one more that's just so god-awful it won't take long to grade--but I'm grasping at straws here.

The other kicker is, although I am caught up on the essays for the Nature in Lit, I'm way behind on all the rest of their work--again.

Well, this is what spring break is for. This, and constructing the weekly folders for the last few weeks of the semester. And reviewing an article for a journal for which I am a jury reader. And proofreading the section of the college's literary journal that I've been assigned. And probably about 4,000 other things that I'm blissfully forgetting. Oh, and there's P&B work, too. When I'll get to that is anyone's guess.

Now, however, it's late enough that I need to switch to self-care and evening wind-down as rapidly  as I can. There's something a little counterproductive about trying to wind down quickly, but such is the easy and privileged life of a professor in the trenches.