Oh, and I forgot...

...the absolute best moment of the day!

In Advisement, a young woman came to get some advice about courses to take next semester. She seemed very glum and unhappy about the whole thing, mostly was concerned that she take classes only in the morning, as she just got a job with a fire house and wanted to focus on that. I explained that she'd make her own schedule; I'd just recommend courses. But I told her we have an A.S. degree in Fire Science, asked if she'd be interested. I let her read the degree description--and she started to perk up. So I began advising her on that, but after I stepped away for a moment to collect something from the printer and then came back, she told me she's really more interested in getting into the police force or criminal justice. Oh, well, we have an A.S. degree in that too, I said. So I advised her about classes she could take that would satisfy both general liberal arts requirements and the CRJ degree requirements. She only wanted to go part time, but we got to about 10 credits, so I told her she might do better to go ahead and go full time (12 credits), as it might be cheaper--though of course she should keep her schedule and time constraints in mind. OK, she said, and as she was gathering up her stuff to leave, she muttered something about being very nervous. Oh? I said. Why? She said she was nervous about summer classes. I said, "Well, we should talk about that." She never went to summer school, didn't know what to expect. So I told her a little about how summer classes work and said she could either think, "I'm going to take on something that I need to focus all my attention on, no other class material to get in the way," or she could think, "I'm going to take something that's just fun, no worries--fulfills credits but is for me, not anything mentally challenging"--like some of our PE classes.

The whole time I was talking, her face kept getting brighter and brighter; she started to smile, even to laugh a little. When I finished talking about some of the PE class options (adventure activities, sailing), she looked at me, astonished, and said, "You are awesome."

I need to put that on repeat play. I thanked her, of course, and told her we all try to be--but ... well, there you go. I made college feel a little less of a prison, a little more like an adventure. She left Advisement with a smile on her face and a spring in her step.

I'm taking that to the bank.

Fiddling while the students fall apart

I was working on grading the essays for the SF class--and I graded one of the essays for the Nature in Lit.

I despair.

So, I switched to placing my book orders for fall. That felt relatively productive--but I realized two things. One, the book I was so happy to find--Edgar V. Roberts's What Every Student Should Know About Writing About Literature--isn't really helpful at all. I can assign the stuff, and students can diligently regurgitate it, but it does absolutely bugger all in terms of making them understand how to write a literature essay. (I don't know what will make them understand. I'm going to try doing a video for the online students, and I'll go back to doing a talk for the face-to-face classes, but ... well, they just don't get it.)

Two, the anthology I've used for Native American Lit is insanely expensive: $140 new. I understand why--lots of living authors whose work needs to be paid for under copyright laws--but still, given our student population (and the cost of other textbooks), I just don't feel right using a textbook that costs so much. So I'm looking at other less-expensive anthologies--but that means my book order may change, and, more important, well, I have to look at the less-expensive options. Not just glance at the cover, but read them. And, if I use one of them, figure out the readings to assign. In other words, pretty much reinvent the wheel.

I also made the snap decision to teach Ceremony again--even though I'd rather hoped to find something that is newer, and even though it's a plagiarism trap: there is so much out there that students can raid from online, some of them are bound to do it.

(Oh, but that reminds me: the essay from a student in the SF class that put me over the edge tonight was notably awful not only in having no argument and in being rife with word-salad sentences but also in using an online summary of the novel rather than any actual quotations from the literature itself--and putting those bits from the online source in quotation marks but otherwise not citing them. Fuuuucking hell.)

The 101 students--those who actually came to class (all six of them)--were mostly eager to talk about the sources they found and their concerns about writing their essays, but ... I kept them about 40 minutes, then let them go. They didn't have anything else to bring to the class, and I wasn't going to force them to stay and do busy work. Peer review on Wednesday. Conferences Monday. The painful process of grading those final essays next week. Then done.

Oh, god, we're almost done--but I feel like I'm barely going to make it over that finish line. I'm in a bit of the usual end-of-semester panic about all the work I have to do (grading those essays, yes, but also P&B stuff), but I'm even more just hanging on by my fingernails, which are bending backward with the effort.

I am going to move the deadline for revisions of second essays for the lit electives closer to the last day of classes; I want to give them a little more time, since I'm so late getting everything back to them. It will make the last days of the semester a little more harried for me, but I'll be doing the students a favor. I don't quite know what to do about the fact that their essays are so ungodly bad, but that's a worry for another day.

And the system keeps locking me out--when I'm typing in the correct password. So I have to wait until it unfreezes and try again. But not tonight. Tonight, I'm going to fold my tents and steal away. (I like the idea of stealing away, as in taking "away" and not paying for it...)

The Mentoring rock star

In terms of my "seminar hours" obligations, I am turning out to be something of a rock star. Of course, a lot of my appointments are taking place outside the "grid" of when I'm technically available--and if I were to put down the actual amount of time I spend with some of them, I'd be putting in even more time than is appearing in the formal records. But not only do I enjoy those one-on-one conversations with students, they also seem to be very beneficial to the students.

I'm thinking in particular of one young man from the SF class. He's pretty bright--though he's seriously fucked up his transcript, through a lot of unofficial withdrawals (and a few too many F's)--but he hit a serious snag in his personal life a few weeks ago, and I've been helping him figure out how to handle the class (and his academics in general) while he's dealing with it. I do believe him, too; I know I tend to be a soft touch when it comes to students who talk about a crisis in their lives, but this young man is a little older than the run of the mill, and he was clearly, visibly shattered. In any event, I'm offering him an incomplete for the semester, and today we talked over the timeline for his completion of the work. He's not going to get the kind of grade he'd normally deserve, but he will complete the semester, and he'll pass the class. And he's truly grateful that I'm willing to work with him, spend the time with him as an individual. Which is, of course, one of the things I usually love most about this job.

I also met with two young women during my seminar/office hours today. One is the former "salon" member (and I guess I'll be seeing her pretty much every week now); the other is a student who was in a 101 class last semester (in the good 101, not the train wreck). Either one of them would have been happy to talk with me for the entire time I had and then some; I had to cut both of them off short.

Further, a student I mentored several semesters ago--one who was never in any of my classes, just a mentee--is coming to see me next week to say goodbye, as he transitions into the engineering program at Stony Brook. And several other students from the SF class will probably come to see me next week, about their essays.

Forget what happens in any of the classes; that stuff is good meat.

And for the record, the class today went very well. We didn't talk much about the book, but we talked about the Hainish "matrix" and the other novels set in it and some of the deeper philosophy that goes with it, especially in the conceptualization of the Ekumen. (If you don't know Le Guin, most of that won't mean anything to you, but trust me, it's good stuff.)

Now, however, I need to zip out of here to meet the colleague who wants to start up a journal on American mystery. I'm looking forward to that--and to the accompanying adult beverages, which will be just what the doctor (Ph.D. variety) ordered.

Slogging forward

The number of students in Advisement was mercifully low today; they tended to come in little clusters, but there were moments in which I could get a little work done, which was nice. I have marked the notes submitted by the SF students yesterday (yes, already! might be a record), and I've started grading their second essays. I haven't gotten very far with that, but just having started feels pretty good.

I got a little work from the students in the 101 class today. Of course, there's never much, as there are only about seven students left, but even from those seven, I didn't get much. The student who was thankful that I pointed out her progress with her second essay had engaged in some "plagiarism by being sloppy," so I told her to come see me about it. She'd cited the sources (not following any format, but she did cite), but in two places she'd used the exact words from the source (not exactly but almost)--but she hadn't used quotation marks. I pointed that out and told her that I could have given her a zero for the assignment--and that some professors might fail her for the entire course just for that error. She expressed her gratitude that I gave her credit and instead used the error as a "teaching opportunity." You're most welcome.

Shifting gears entirely, last night when I checked my email, I saw a message from the adjunct who wants to start up a scholarly journal on American mysteries. We were supposed to meet at a nearby restaurant--and I completely, utterly spaced it. Fortunately, he didn't wait around for me very long--and I apologized profusely, when I at last got his email and saw how remiss I'd been. I'll see him tomorrow instead--and I've set several reminders for myself so I don't space it again. It will be very pleasant to talk with him about it, and it could be an interesting project. Even if I don't get involved in it, it will be fun to hear what he envisions and what he thinks would be required to get the thing rolling. I'd probably be more useful on the technical side (copy-editing, proofreading, perhaps developing a house style) than on the academic side (because, really, I've never done any scholarship on mystery--just enough to teach it but not enough to have any claim to know the field, which is why I don't teach it any more), but at this point, it's all just talk, which I can do. Especially over what Scott calls an adult beverage.

Shifting gears again, I've signed up to attend some kind of workshop being offered on Friday by the Distance Education folks. I don't even remember what the topic is, but it sort of doesn't matter. I need a "professional development" event of some kind to fulfill my contractual obligations, and that will count. My only area of grumpiness about it is that it starts at 8:30 a.m., which is insanely early for me under any circumstance but especially on a Friday. My hunch is that, as soon as I can after, I'll head home for a nap (unless I have a riding lesson scheduled, in which case, I may find things to do to keep me occupied until it's time to bounce around on a horse).

And that's about all I've got for now. I'm getting things set up for the last day of conferencing with the 101 students (which will be easy as the proverbial dessert, since I'll be seeing so few students)--and I keep reminding myself that there is very little more I will need to do with them. The SF students are another thing entirely (not to mention the students in Nature in Lit), but no matter what, in three weeks, it's all over but the shouting.

Progress has been made

Despite my lack of sleep and thanks in no small part to the fact that today's P&B meeting was canceled, I not only got everything marked for the 101 class, I got all the reading notes marked and back to the students in SF--and I just went through last week's discussion board posts from the Nature in Lit students. (I haven't given them grades yet, but at least I provided comments.)

That was feeling pretty good--until I realized that I have two sets of essays to grade (the second essay for both lit electives) plus a batch of revisions from the SF students.

The fun just doesn't quit until the semester ends, does it.

I also was--I admit somewhat shame-faced--delighted that a dinner tonight with Paul and Cathy was also canceled. I was simply not in the mood to be social. I think I'm having a slightly delayed difficulty with re-entry after my weekend upstate; I was fine Sunday night, but last night, oof--and today I was carrying last night's existential malaise with me. Just as well to avoid a situation in which it would behoove me to be pleasant.

Class today was fine; they weren't on top form, but they still were doing well, and they're still a grand bunch to work with. They're all sort of imploding over essay due dates and requirements (as in "forgetting" or not checking Turnitin uploads, not turning in required hard copies until ridiculously late), but ... enh. I'm not inclined to fight 'em too hard about it.

I did get the final essay assignment cleaned up a bit and copied to give to them on Thursday. Part of me hopes that there is some kind of miracle tomorrow, so I can get a whack of work done in Advisement, but I know that's a pretty forlorn hope. It's not the kind of mad scene we can get between fall and spring, when students know they don't have much time to register, but it's still a pretty steady stream of students, wanting everything from "I need you to do my schedule for me" (um, no; we don't do that--but I can make recommendations for which courses to take and show you how to make your schedule) to "I don't know what I want to do with my life" (which makes it a bit difficult to know what courses to suggest). I think enough of them have had the experience--or have heard from others who have--of not being able to put together a decent schedule because classes are filled to the cap or canceling for lack of enrollment, so more of them are taking the whole "register for fall in the spring" thing a bit more seriously than used to be the case. That's great for the students, and I'm glad to see it--but, well, selfishly, of course, I want the time to grade.

I also have some P&B stuff I have to crank out soon, but, well, I'll figure out when to do that later.

Now, while there is still some light in the sky, I am going to toddle off into the evening, secure in the knowledge that tomorrow will be yet another in a long series of days--which I hope continues for a long time into the future.

Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow...

..because maybe, tomorrow, I'll be stronger. Well, you don't know. It could happen.

I started to work on the grading for the 101 class, because I very much want to get that stuff back to them on Wednesday--and really, there are so few of them, how hard could it be?

Well, hard, actually. Because they just fucking will not do the work--and even when they do, it's generally so ungodly awful.

Cathy thinks I'll be great at any of the courses that essentially work with students who need "developmental" writing as they merge into credit bearing; I don't know how to convince her that I would completely suck at it, because I have no patience for this shit. Oh, I have patience with individual students up to a point, but I passed that point a long while ago.

And I realize that I have to redo a lot for the Nature in Lit class--because the students don't even begin to understand my essay assignment questions, so they can't possibly write papers for the class. If there weren't the requirement for students to use some critical material, it would be easier to come up with topics--but the critical material isn't for undergrads, and I don't know how to get them to understand what we need to do. I met with a student today; she truly didn't understand in the least what she was supposed to do with the critical material--and she clearly hadn't read past the first page, so she didn't even understand the critic's real argument. I don't blame her, though; she can't really understand a lot of the primary material, so it's hardly surprising the secondary stuff baffles her, and in her shoes, I might read to the point where I feel like "I don't get this at all" and hope that just the bit I got would be enough.

Oh, god. I really just need this semester to be over.

But laughing with Paul helps. (He came in at that point, and I showed him a little cartoon I posted on FB. He and I both laughed pretty hard. That was good.)

Right now, however, my head is hurting--again--and I am tired and hungry and cranky (not a good combination). I'm going to go home ridiculously early (unless I sign off here and suddenly think of something I really must do), and I'm going to hope I get a good whack at the work tomorrow. It may never be "tomorrow," but it will--we assume--eventually be Tuesday, April 24, 2018, and when it is, I hope I am more able to approach the bolus of work I've collected from the 101 class so I can return it on Wednesday. If I'm super efficient (unlikely), I may even be able to return some stuff to the students in the SF class, which would be great.

But we'll see. I'm not taking any bets at this point.

You'd think I'd know myself better by now...

I brought all kinds of student work with me upstate for this Breath-Body-Mind teacher training workshop that I'm doing--and of course I realize I'm not going to even look at it. Even thinking about it increases my anxiety levels about a thousand-fold, so ... no. I'm not quite sure where the anxiety and resistance come from; it's not like I don't know what I'm facing or how to handle it. This is just situation normal: some of the work will be good, some will be awful--but it's at the point in the semester when I don't need to drive myself nuts trying to shift anything better: they've gotten all my feedback, so now it's just about them using what they've learned to work on themselves.

Kinda like what I'm doing up here. But in a really nifty turn of events, one of the organizers--not even one of the teachers--had great ideas. I mentioned the panic response students have--especially in the comp classes--when faced with their first assignments, and he suggested that their first writing assignment of the term should be to write as badly as they can imagine writing: make every mistake they can think of to make, break every rule, really suck on purpose. I'm not sure how the students would respond to that, as so many of them think they suck no matter what--intentionally or not--but it's certainly worth trying, just to see if it would loosen up anything in them.

The other idea was that I can present a calmer, less daunting persona to the class the first day (or days) if I do some of my Breath-Body-Mind practice immediately before entering the classroom. So often I see the students almost recoil when I first walk in, as if they were expecting a mere teacher and instead are faced with a dragon--a friendly and smiling dragon, but nonetheless.... That's a bit of an overstatement, but it certainly can't hurt me to practice reducing my own stress, anxieties, tensions, before I walk into the classroom.

In fact, it can't hurt me to practice reducing all that stuff period. So even if I never end up teaching the BBM stuff, it sure is great to learn.

I get to be a student again all day tomorrow, then drive home and settle into being home before I go back to wearing my dragon disguise.

Mooping in depression...

Actually, I'm not depressed, though the situation in that 101 is depressing; I just ran across a student blooper from a set of reading notes about Atwood's Oryx and Crake: "His mother would constantly moop in depression." I'm sure we've all mooped at some point in our lives.

But I have to stop mooping about the 101. Today, as class was wrapping up (early, as there wasn't much discussion going on), I realized that it really isn't very helpful to anyone if I continue to focus on how frustratingly dismal the experience is for me. I need to adopt a more laissez faire attitude. They won't do well. I can't do anything to get them to do better at this point. 'Nuff said. There are only four more Mondays and four more Wednesdays until the end of the semester; one day I will be holding optional conferences (my guess is that about three students will come), one day will be end-of-semester wrap-up, when students bring in their final self-evaluations, and one day will be grade conferences (code for "Go away, kid, ya bother me"). So that's five days of something like teaching. If I can't do that with calm and sang-froid, there's something very wrong.

And I realize that since class ended yesterday, my whole attitude has just been "turning the crank," as my Dad would say, until I head out of town tomorrow: just grinding through whatever needs to be ground and not thinking much about it. I have a relatively impressive looking parcel of work to take north with me, though how much I'll actually work on it is another whole issue. And it looks more impressively large than it is, as some of the bulk is the various steps of the essay process for the 101.

That does remind me of a fairly annoying moment at the end of class today. One of the struggling students (who also is chronically late) came to me and said, "You didn't give me back my essay." I just stared at her. "Or maybe you didn't grade it yet?" I said, "I just got them. Give me a break." She short of shrugged with a little "Oh, my bad" smile--which is her standard reaction to almost anything--and then said, "Another thing; I don't have my reflection essay today." "Why not?" "I thought it was due next week." "Why did you think that?" "I remembered you said something about..." I jumped in: "You remembered something? But you didn't look at the schedule, which I gave you, which we went over in class?" Same little smile. "Can I give it to you Tuesday?" "You can, but there will be a huge late penalty." She was trying to negotiate with me about that but I just wasn't having it. I won't be on campus tomorrow, I'm never on campus Fridays, submit it whenever, it will still be late and be penalized. "Oh, OK," and she shuffles slowly out the door.

I told the students who fell asleep in class that they're not present if they're sleeping. I told one of the falling-apart students--who had a personal tragedy but was completely disorganized and off-track even before that happened--that I'm tired of rescuing him.

And I was ready to fire rockets at another student who has the ability to do well but has been falling apart all over the place--but he wasn't there.

But whatever happens, this too shall pass. And it doesn't much matter to me whether they do well now or not. I care about the success of two of the students who are remaining (one of whom has had trouble staying awake all semester but is pretty smart; another is the one to whom I offered an incomplete); the rest, not so much. I don't actively wish them any harm, I just can't be bothered to continue the rescue attempts. I sent the boats. Fuck it. No helicopter.

Shifting gears pretty significantly, I felt buoyed up today by the fact that my two fall electives--Native American Lit and Nature in Lit already have a few students in them, and registration just started on Monday. Not that this is a guarantee of anything; you may all remember that I went through the roller-coaster ride of gain some, lose some, repeatedly up until just before the semester started--but still, it feels good to look and see more than zero students registered.

I really am now done (as in stick-a-fork-in-me) for today--it's a cinch I won't be doing any marking of student work at this point, my brain having checked out long ago--but today is one of my "evening supervisor" evenings, so I'll be hanging out for about another hour. Not such a bad thing. Noodling will ensue. And I look forward to being a teacher in training for the next few days, not a teacher teaching.

I really just love 'em

That SF class. Those students. There are a few who are riding the coattails of the others, but the majority of them are getting Left Hand on levels that I've never experienced before. I was all set to ditch the book for next semester--but now I'm wondering if I should keep it after all. I do have to remind myself that this is an anomalous experience; as lovely as it is, in the fall (assuming the course runs), I'm statistically more likely to get a bunch of students who can't hack it than I am to have a repeat of this pleasure.

Today, for instance, we were talking about one of the more important passages in the early chapters--the ones I wanted to make sure I covered with them (and did, today). The narrator of chapter 7, in her field report as an investigator, notes, "The First [envoy], if one is sent [to Gethen/Winter, a planet of genderless humans], must be warned that unless he is very self-assured, or senile, his pride will suffer. A man wants his virility regarded, a woman wants her femininity appreciated, however indirect and subtle the indications of regard and appreciation. On Winter they will not exist. One is respected and judged only as a human being. It is an appalling experience." First, a student pointed out that Genly--the man from Terra who was sent to Gethen--is certainly not senile, and the student thought Genly was sent in contradiction to what had been said. I pointed out that the recommendation wasn't to not send someone but simply to warn that person, and Genly had been warned. But I pointed to the more challenging and important bit: that being "respected and judged only as a human being" is "appalling." First, I asked, what does it mean to be respected and judged that way? They got it: it means to be seen for "who you are," your real, inner self. And why would that be appalling? Well ... yikes. Do we really want people looking that deeply into the content of our character and judging us only on that?

I think we have to revisit chapter 7, as we didn't get a chance to talk about all the psycho-social implications of living in a genderless society, as reported by the investigator--nor how Genly is struggling with those implications, as we might, no matter how much we think our society has "advanced" since 1969 in terms of gender politics. But ... well, they're getting it.

And it just now occurs to me (just call me Pollyanna) that--wonderful as these students are--they may be getting it because I encouraged them to use the crutches and props of the "cheater" websites and audio books and whatever else would give them the handles they need. If they are using those resources, it's working: they're able to see and understand details in the novel that students haven't been able to notice in the past. So if that's what makes the difference, yeah: I can keep assigning it--as long as I condone the use of those props and crutches.

Shifting gears: I am accumulating enough homework and essay submissions that I really do need to pay attention to them. I should start today--and I did do some work responding to the posts by the students in Nature in Lit--but apart from that, well, it's tired and I'm late. Or something like that.

And, of course, tomorrow is ... well, it sure isn't today.

Sorta like the joke about "The Lord will provide..."

Here's the joke:

A guy is in New Orleans when Katrina strikes. Being a devout Christian, he believes that the Lord will help him in his time of trial.

As the waters rise, a couple of people come along in a row boat and offer to row him to safety. "No thanks," he replies. "The Lord will provide."

The waters continue to rise, and pretty soon the guy has to retreat to the second floor of his house, then to the attic. He looks out the attic window, and a couple of people in a motor boat come by. "Hop in!" they say. "We can get you out and to safety." "No thanks," he replies. "The Lord will provide."

The waters still rise, and pretty soon the guy is on top of his house, on the ridge of his roof, the waters still rising around him. The National Guard come by in a helicopter, and dangle a ladder down to him, urging him to grab on so they can whisk him to safety. "No thanks," he replies, yelling over the sound of the rotors. "The Lord will provide."

The waters rise yet further, sweep him off the roof, and he drowns. He goes to heaven, and there he sees the Lord. He goes over to God and says, "I don't understand: I'm a good Christian, and I had perfect faith. I knew you would provide. Why did you let me drown?"

"Listen, asshole," God replies, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter."


Not being God, I draw the line at even a metaphoric helicopter, but I'm not even sending any more boats. I've sent enough. Now, it's up to the students. Sink or swim, folks; I am not here to rescue you.

So the students who are AWOL from the 101? I figure they're gone. They'll either figure out they need to withdraw or they won't. One student arrived back in class today; he'd been misled about last week's classes by another student, who told him that the whole week would be conferences (and the student who'd been ready to return thought the conferences must be the whole English department--and he's having a glitch with his email so he can't access it to contact me or to see whatever I sent). I'm making some pretty large allowances to help him finish the semester with something passing, just because ... well, honestly, I want one more body in there to make it through to the end. But there are still three who apparently have given up, and I'm not going to reach out to save them.

I did send an email to two students who are AWOL from Nature in Lit, letting them know they still can withdraw. (A lot of students are confused by the "automatic withdrawal" period and think they absolutely cannot withdraw after that deadline, when the reality is that it simply becomes the professor's prerogative about whether to grant the W or not.) The guy who plagiarized several times did not get that email, for obvious reasons.

And the SF class seems to be holding on. A few students are pretty behind in terms of their required notes--but if they can stay on top of the work for the rest of the semester (especially when it comes to their essays, one of which is due tomorrow), they can still squeeze out something reasonable.

Mostly this isn't me holding firm to anything; it's me giving up. I don't have the energy to chase after students, offering help, if they can't help themselves. Get in the fucking boat or don't. Your choice. But don't say I didn't send you one.

Complete shift of gears here, but I got an offer from one of our adjuncts to join him and a colleague of his at Pace in starting up a new scholarly journal devoted to American mysteries. I would love to do it--though I'm not at all sure I have the skill set--but ... time? Energy? Qu'est que c'est? Anyway, I told him I'm interested enough to talk with him about it, but I confessed to monumental burn-out levels. I don't know whether I indicated enough interest for him to want to talk to me, but we'll see.

And now, I'm off to meet Paul so we can ride the train into the City together to meet William and Kristin for that much-postponed steak blowout. I'll almost certainly feel like dog food tomorrow, after the rich meal, but man, will it be worth it.

Comparison/contrast: didn't just make my day, made my semester...

So, the young woman who has been attending my "salon" now comes on Thursdays instead of Mondays (because of a change in her work schedule); I didn't know to expect her, but she showed up--and we talked through my seminar hour and all the way through my office hour as well. She started off the meeting by saying that she absolutely loves Left Hand. Loves it.

She wasn't kidding; she couldn't get enough talking about it: specific passages, turns of phrase... Not only that, but she's getting everything she needs to get and then some when it comes to the important understandings (she even picked up on the shadow motif, and we're only up to chapter 3). We had a blast talking--just generally nattering about whatever--but a lot of it was about Le Guin's writing and my work on her writing. I mentioned my dissertation and hauled it off the shelf to show her--and she actually started reading it (impressed by the fact that I used footnotes, among other things). She wanted to take it with her; I might let her, if she promises faithfully to return it. I doubt she'd read much, if any of it, but if she wants to give it a whirl, why not? As long as it doesn't disappear.

Class was wonderful, too. First, they started putting the desks in a circle--and I had to say, no, not today, as I needed to put things on the board. I showed them some of the online materials I created over the sabbatical (paying particular attention to the images of "Gethenian" faces--actually Inuit, Peruvian, Chilean, Tibetan), and then we just went through and talked about what's going on in the first three chapters. One of the shakier students actually had great questions about chapter 2; I was glad to have him ask--not just because the answers were informative but also because it indicates that he's reading and working to understand. Excellent. And the brighter students were, well, bright. Some confusions, some questions--already getting into some of the philosophical questions (when does a conflict become a war? What makes something a war? What happens when we can only see people through the lens of gender?). I am not only happy, I'm deeply relieved. Oh, thank God, they're not going to disappoint me--or not yet anyway. And they're getting such a good start on things that I don't think they will, though I know there will be some places where we have to do some real work to get to the meat of what we need.

I didn't get much else done today; I got in late, got a little work done (enough that I could return assignments to students), and then the Budding Bluestocking showed up ... and then I taught class. Now, I'm about to take off (physical therapy appointment), but ... what a lovely way to end the week. If I could have classes like this reliably, I could teach a long, long, long time without burning out.

The wheels have fallen off, the undercarriage is lying in the road...

The 101 class is a complete disaster. It's falling apart in so many directions, I pretty much have given up. I was going to read the riot act to the students in the 101, but ... nah. What would be the point?

Seven showed up (two very late). One has missed almost as many classes as she's attended. (Chances of passing? Next to nil.) One is a student I really wanted to have back and was afraid I'd lost; I'm offering her an incomplete, if she manages to pull everything together for the rest of the semester. One is a student whose personal life is in turmoil but who didn't have his head together even before the turmoil began; he left his binder, his books, his essay, his handouts ... everything, pretty much, in the classroom at the end of class. I thought about calling him to let him know it's all still sitting there. Nah. I'm not going to run around after him, cleaning up the trail of chaos he leaves behind. Little Mr. Formatting was there--and I could praise him for a good idea; he already knows what he wants to write his essay on (which worries me a bit; I think he may have written something in high school that he wants to retread, but ... we'll see). The young woman who was excited that I saw signs of progress was there--about 30 minutes late. I kept them for about 40 minutes because, really, I don't have it in me to haul ideas out of them. As it is, I replaced one of the most interesting readings with something more mundane but easy to understand--and rereading another of the required readings, I'm already dreading the bizarre ways they'll misunderstand it.

Whatever. Technically, I see them ten more times before the semester is over, but really, that's only eight teaching days (plus a wrap-up day and a day of "conferences"--which is, I tell them, code for "I'll be in my office grading, and I don't expect to see any of you"). I can survive that.

I think.

I've made a little headway on some of the other stuff that's swirling around the chaos on my desk (and the chaos is reduced somewhat, as I can put things in the "to be filed" file, having completed the task). Poor Paul told me earlier that he's drowning in stuff to do. I didn't want to tell him that--miraculously--I'm not. Next week might be a bit of a cluster fuck, as I'll be getting essays from both my lit electives (at least that's the theory), but I don't have to grade them toot sweet, so I think I'll be OK.

My primary thought as the day winds to a close is that I do not need to set an alarm tomorrow. Of course that nearly guarantees that I'll have another bout of insomnia, but ... I don't strictly have to be on campus until 1 p.m. That, my friends, counts as bliss. I have a sense of the triage list for the day tomorrow--and a sense of how I want to approach things for the SF class (which will be a bit disastrous, I'm sure, given how sketchy my set-up of the novel was)--and that's about as good as it gets these days.

So, I will, for now, sign off. Early. And it's still light out.

Surely I'm forgetting something crucial...

I don't seem to have a lot hanging, threateningly, over my head this evening, which leads me to believe I'm forgetting something important. I actually had, until I wrote that sentence, forgotten I have to do a write-up of the observation I conducted last week, but I mean, I feel like I'm forgetting something more important than that. Well, either it won't matter that I forgot it or I'll have an "oh shit" moment.

Today, on the way in to P&B, I was chatting with a colleague who casually mentioned her love of Le Guin's writing--including Left Hand--so I asked her if she'd be willing to sub for me. She said she'd think about it, but I actually had already developed little ballot slips for the students, so they could vote on either changing the schedule (knowing it will make for a relatively intense weekend coming up) or keep the schedule as is, knowing they'd either have a sub next week--or we'd just be discussing a lot of the book when I'm back. I did warn them that they needed to carefully consider what they'll be facing over the weekend and not just to consider this carte blanche to slack off--but only one person voted to keep the schedule as is; everyone else wanted to change it. So, I won't need my colleague to sub for me--but we're starting with Left Hand for next class, and I had to do the world's fastest set-up of the book, which I know what completely inadequate. But we'll get things rolling better in class on Thursday, and I feel better knowing that I'll be able to talk with them about the whole book.

My meetings with students today were a study in contrast. I met with one of the students from the SF class--another very bright, astute young man (though, again, not doing the world's best job with the written components of the class and, I think, bullshitting a lot of his responses to what happens in the books, which I don't think he's reading--or at least not with the schedule I've assigned). He mostly wanted to talk about revising essay 1, and setting up his argument for essay 2--but we ended up talking some about the forthcoming reading, and he seems curious about it.

Then a student from the 101 showed up for his conference. Next to the urban slang dictionary entry for DGAF (doesn't give a fuck) is his picture, I'm sure of it. He talked a little about needing to reorganize his ideas, but mostly he was talking about the essay format. I kept trying to get him to acknowledge--and be concerned about--the fact that he plagiarized. I finally said, "What about the plagiarism? What happened there?" His response, "Oh, that was kind of a formatting thing."

Paul exploded, called the kid on the absolute bullshit of that as an answer. I was delighted: the kid can't see it just as me being the bitch, since Paul chimed in; what the student said truly was preposterous. I said, "You took stuff from the web and used it, word for word in your essay. That's not formatting; formatting is just how it looks on the page. Why did you do that?" "I needed the ideas." "What did I say about using sources from the web?" [shrug] "I TOLD YOU NOT TO USE THEM." Oh.

God, just trying to duplicate the conversation makes me so ... tired. Not angry: tired. If this were a different kind of school and I were a different kind of professor, I'd have gone downstairs, gotten a withdrawal form, told the kid to process it--and told him he has absolutely no fucking business being in college until he actually gives some kind of a shit about learning while he's here. Clearly he doesn't; it's just something his parents are making him do, a chore he wants to cross off the list just by showing up and sort of waving vaguely in the direction of doing any work. Get out of my space; you're using oxygen that could better go to other purposes.

And he's one of the students who actually submitted something.

Give me strength.

The SF class wasn't as fun today as it usually is, either; I think most of them hadn't finished the book. But whatever. We're limping toward the finish line at this point, all of us staggering with fatigue. We'll get there somehow.

As for now, I believe I have everything packed up in my tote bag to lug to Advisement with me tomorrow, and at some point I'll winnow through the creeping chaos on my desk (I get it sort of sorted out and then ... well, creeping chaos). As is usual, I feel the lack of sleep from two nights ago more acutely now than I did yesterday, so, my evening office hour having officially ended seven minutes ago, I'm going to wend my way homeward, and wait for that other day that is sure to arrive.

Despair or resignation?

I don't mean resigning from the job, though I do think of that all the time (as my faithful readers know all too well). I mean giving up, being resigned to an awful outcome. The 101 class: ye gods, what an unmitigated disaster. One of the best students withdrew today; I very nearly didn't sign the withdrawal for him (it's now--finally--my discretion whether to do so; up until last week, I was required to sign (which, I grant, begs the question why my signature is required, but that's a whole different topic)), but ultimately I decided it wouldn't be in anyone's best interest to force him to stay or to get a crap grade. But ... fuck. The proverbial flies are positively air-borne by comparison to my students. The two who didn't have their essays ready last week both missed their conference times today. One student who submitted his essay late wants to reschedule his conference to a time when I am not available. I'll be curious to see whether he checks his email from a response or whether he simply assumes that the reschedule will be fine by me, that I am here at any time for my students. I have my nose a bit bent out of shape about that idea--the hot and cold running professor at the mere turn of a student's whim--because one of the more marginal students showed up at 2:00 today, even though her appointment was at 3, and she seemed not to understand why I told her I wouldn't see her until her appointment time, even though I wasn't in conference with anyone else. (It was officially my office hour, I realized after the fact, but I was up to my antlers in trying to provide feedback for the student who wants to reschedule tomorrow, and I didn't want to interrupt my train of thought to work with her.)

The wheels are similarly falling off the Nature in Lit bus. My rock stars are back, as I think I noted yesterday, but only eight students seem to remain, possibly a ninth, if the one I've caught plagiarizing multiple times decides to get back on board. Three have just gone AWOL. Three have withdrawn officially. The ones who are left are not posting with anything close to their original acumen; the burn-out factor is weighing in heavily.

And I am deeply concerned about the SF class as we head into reading Left Hand. I'm also concerned because the vast majority of them have blissfully forgotten that they need to use secondary material for their second essays--material I will provide. I think what I'll do is scan all the articles, upload them to Blackboard, and let them download what they need from there, which will be much easier than figuring out which individual student needs to be emailed what source.

Setting all those concerns aside for the moment, I have to say, today was remarkably pleasant. It didn't start out well: I had dreadful insomnia coupled with the dregs of a weekend migraine. But at 4:30 a.m., I emailed Advisement to let them know I would be taking sick leave--and I finally managed to drop off to sleep again at about 7, slept until 9:30. But then I could just do my morning routine, come in to work in no particular hurry, come in to the office, and grade those essays, respond to and grade work for the Nature in Lit, meet with the students who had conferences today, and have the usual "mentoring" appointment with the young man from SF. I haven't come up with a moniker for him yet, in part because I find him hard to characterize in any unique way. He's very smart and highly articulate, but his written work sucks (and he's not turning in enough work to do very well in terms of his final grade, at this point). He's got wide-ranging interests and a personal demeanor that is not, as the theater world would say, "typable." Hmm. Well, if I come up with something before the semester is over, I'll use it. Meanwhile, it was just fun talking with him, laughing at his humor. Nice.

And that's a nice way to end the day. I'm going to sign off and head for the hills--and hope that my experience with the SF class tomorrow makes up for the feeling of despair over the other classes. Please, God, let them not blow up! Please let them "get" the book!

Truly painful

I've just spent a little time grading the essays for the student in the 101 class--three of the five who actually submitted anything--and it's not been fun, I have to say. One of them can think--good ideas, good support--but organizationally it's a mess (and clearly written in so much of a rush that he didn't even run spell-check on it), and on a sentence level ... well, it leaves something to be desired. One can almost think, but her ideas are not only disorganized, they're disconnected and underdeveloped. The third? On a sentence level, not bad--but the sentences don't mean much and ... well I don't even know what to say about the thinking. Except the poor guy clearly sort of can't.

I could have done the other two today, even given the fact that it's a bit on the late side, but I just couldn't bear facing any more of it. In that regard, I suppose I should be grateful that I only got five submissions. But ... I had to talk to Cathy on Thursday about what I should do if I end up with a class in which everyone really should fail. (Answer: work with them wherever they are on this essay and curve the grades at the end. I'm not liking this trend; last semester was the first time I ever had to grade on a curve at the end, and doing it again so soon disturbs me.) I'm also not delighted with the fact that--unless a few of the students who were AWOL last week show up--I may end up with only five students in the class at the end. That also doesn't look very good.

Well, we'll see what happens from here. Nothing much I can do but roll with whatever the gods send down the pike.

Meanwhile, the Nature in Lit class is in need of some attention--which they'll get tomorrow. I'm happy to see that both the rock stars are back posting to the discussion board--but again, lots of students AWOL. The only one where the students seem to be sticking for the most part (including one who shouldn't) is the SF class--but there you have it: face-to-face interaction plus the miracle of class chemistry. Can't beat that combo with a stick.

Speaking of the SF, though, I'm still fretting about my need to be away on April 19. I don't want to hustle them through the reading any faster than we're going (too fast as it is)--but I don't want them floundering without guidance for those very important chapters. I think I may have to do more hand-holding than I normally would and give them chapter summaries--or turn them on to the online help sites--at least until we get past chapter seven. I hate to do it, but ... well, I want them to get it.

For now, I'm going to pack it in for the night. I'll shove stuff back in my tote bag (I got it out of the bag but did nothing at all with any of it (and here's the chorus of "I'll think about that tomorrow")) and shift gears into wind-down mode.

This semester can't wind down fast enough. I keep counting the remaining weeks, but somehow, between Monday and now, that hasn't changed.... I meet the 101 twelve more times, SF ten. I wish it were the other way!

Thank God for the SF class

Today felt relatively productive--seminar hours meeting, followed by marking the homework for the SF students (done!), getting things on my desk at least loosely organized (done!), taking care of some P&B business (done!).

The one major downer is that only two students in the 101 class submitted their essays to Turnitin on time. One emailed me last night: he sent what looks like just the title page of his essay (in the belief that he'd emailed me the assignment--which is verboten) and a request to meet with me today to discuss revision. I informed him that 1. he needs to upload his essay to Turnitin, not email it to me and B. I am not holding revision conferences until next week--and in any event, I'd hardly have had time to evaluate his essay before a meeting today. (What, I'm at your beck and call now??) I see that he uploaded to Turnitin. I see he did not sign up for a conference.

I haven't wanted to check in on the Nature in Lit class; at last check, hardly anyone had done any work. They seem to be falling by the wayside in droves--not that there were droves of them to begin with, but in terms of percentage. I'll take a look tomorrow, but I have to say, they rather add to my despair.

On the other hand, a lot of students wanted to talk to me after the SF class today, and several want to conference with me, which is dandy; I've just asked them to email to remind me--and to let me look at the schedule so I can be sure I'm not double-booking anyone. I'm not sure how many will do that, but ... we'll see.

(And somehow that just reminded me of some other "paperwork" I needed to take care of: done!)

As for the class meeting itself today, it was, as usual, a delight. They talk to each other; they're interested and invested; they're working on essay ideas... Of course, most (if not all) of them forgot that they needed to get me the list of critical sources they want to look at for potential use in their second essay, but, well, either they'll email me about it, so I'll have something to bring to them on Tuesday, or they won't, in which case ... well, if it were another class, I'd say they're just fucked, but in this case, I'll probably do everything in my power to get those articles to them so they have at least a little time to find something to use. I'm just having a blast with them. It's a great way to end the week.

Well, actually, I ended the week with an observation--but that also was fun (good class, well run), so all is, for the moment, hunk and Dora.

But it's full dark now, and I am heading into that wall at a rather alarming speed, so I'll sign off. It doesn't really matter that tomorrow is another day--but starting Monday is a new week, and the count-down is on.

Yet another quickie

I'm setting them up and knocking them down today, boy.

Well, not the homework for the SF class, though I did get at least a little whack at that. But I did the review of the article submitted to a journal (which took a bit longer than anticipated but is now done); I wrote up the observation; I wrote a letter of recommendation; I made a bunch of photocopies; I got at least a teensy bit organized....

Of course, I still feel run ragged--and afraid to find out what pearls have dropped through the floorboards or have scampered under the furniture--but ... I have made progress. I'll take it.

The 101 was particularly disappointing today. Six students showed up (out of eleven still registered; one withdrew earlier today); two of the six didn't have their essays done. Three of the best students weren't there at all. God dammit. But it did make today relatively easy. And I remembered to review what "revision" entails--and what it doesn't. The two pairs who actually did some work did help each other--especially one pretty good student paired with one of the ones who is out of her depth; he gave her a lot of good, solid, constructive feedback--and, even more gratifying, he told me he learned a lot about what he needed to say in his own essay through that process. Yes, I said; that's why we do it.

Tomorrow I have to be in at 10 for a Seminar Hours committee meeting--not that that's an unduly early hour, just not typical for a Thursday. I have to double check my calendar, but apart from one seminar hours appointment (and the possibility of seeing a student or two during my office hour), I think I'll have a good chunk of time between the end of the meeting and class to get more stuff knocked off the "to do before it bursts into flames" list. I then have another observation after the SF class, so it will be a slightly later night than usual for a Thursday. But then it's another week down; six to go. Counting tomorrow, I meet with the SF students eleven more times; I meet with the 101 students ten more times--well, actually nine, as the tenth will be the "conferences in my office" day (make up for the snow day).

And at that, I think I'm out of here. I feel like I'm forgetting something I needed to take care of before leaving tonight, but whatever it is, if I don't remember it in the next one and a half minutes, will just have to be forgotten.

The seven-minute post

I have to be out of here in seven minutes. Actually, I should already be out of here--I have to get to PT--but I was trying to figure out the mess on my desk so I can approach it with some sense of where things are tomorrow, and I have a bunch of stuff I needed to get organized for the 102. I will have some time before class to do the required photocopying, but if I didn't know what I had where, that task, which should only take about 10 minutes max, would take four times as long.

And then there was the lure of conversation with Paul, which is always delightful.

The students in the SF class are sort of falling down on the job in terms of coming to class prepared, but the conversation can still be OK. (It's better when more of them have done the reading.) I'm in the process of doing some tap-dancing since I can't find a sub for the Thursday when I have to head upstate--and the students will be right at a crucial point in reading Left Hand of Darkness. I've made the executive decision that I will not try to head upstate after class, arriving at my hotel after midnight; somehow the students and I will have to muddle along. But along those lines, I did ask them to bring their books to class on the day when their next essay is due; they don't have to start reading yet, but if they have the books, we can get started in class. It's bumpy, but...it's what I can do.

In the good news department, I did get all the essays graded and back to them. I still have a stack of homework to mark for them (and more that I collected today), but I think I can get at least most of that knocked off before class on Thursday.

I have all sorts of little things tangling my feet--writing up the observation, conducting another, writing a promised letter of recommendation, "diversity" training (in case we ever get to hire anyone new), blah blah blah--but the essays for the 101 students will also be arriving tomorrow; they're due by midnight, so I won't be able to do anything with them tomorrow anyway, and probably won't do anything with them until Sunday, knowing me. But I'm trying to get things cleared away--and that includes getting back to the Nature in Lit class, which I haven't checked since I've been back from the break.

And I am now ... out of time. In haste...

Systemic resistance to the work

Man, I am just ferociously resistant to actually doing the work I need to do. I did manage to get one (one!) essay graded for the SF class; I have no idea what else I got done, but it sure wasn't much. I did write up a new version of the progression from first submission of essays to final version for the 101; I realized that--with the schedule now rather significantly truncated--if I gave them all the individual handouts for the various steps, they'd be utterly lost. So I removed almost all the explanation and made a check-off list. For each step, there's a box to check off, "Done."

I don't think it will help, but maybe. If it does, great.

I also had to redo a couple of handouts, because of changes I've made that hadn't tracked through somehow--but now I have a bunch of disorganized papers, some already copied, some that need to be copied, some I will hand out, some I won't, all over my desk, and I have to sort them out tomorrow.

That observation? Not written up. We'll have to see how tomorrow goes.

And the rest of the essays for the SF class: that's first priority tomorrow. Today, they got (again) the fuzzy end of the lollipop, as I had to get my shit together for the 101.

And in the 101, there were seven of twelve students. Most had done the research (though they didn't say so at first), so we talked about what they'd found, how they can use it, how they can focus their ideas ... they actually did pretty well, helping each other out a little, making suggestions, asking good questions. Those seven students know about the change to the assignment schedule. One other student may know now because he wrote to tell me why he couldn't be in class today. (Clearly he didn't check to see the email from me). One student responded (well, sort of) indicating that he'd gotten the information--but he wasn't in class today. The other two? AWOL. One, possibly (probably) permanently.

My salon consisted of just me and one student today; the other student who usually attends couldn't make it (her work schedule has changed), so I'll see her on Thursday.

Oh, yes: and I met with the student who plagiarized and then told me she hadn't. When I presented her with the evidence, she said that obviously she had, though she didn't remember doing it. We talked at length about it; I told her that I was mostly concerned that there was a pattern of dishonesty going on. I think that hit her harder than any affect on her grade; I said, "This is going to sound harsh, but really, this is theft. What should happen to someone who steals something, is warned, and then steals again?" She suggested arrest--which I can't do, obviously. At first she'd asked if she could do the work over, but when I put it that way, she understood why she shouldn't be given that opportunity. It's a zero; her marks have been low, so the zero may or may not hurt her at the end of the semester--but she said she understands that if she screws up again, there will be no reprieve: she'll simply fail the class. Yep. I'm being generous letting her stay--but she's within a hair of graduating, and she is one of those students who probably didn't need to go to college, should have found another route to a solid career, so I don't see any reason to punish her any more harshly. She'll pass or she won't. Up to her, really.

In any event, I do want to get out of here pretty damned soon--and I will, by God, be in relatively early tomorrow, so I can get a flying start on all that work that's silting up the desk right now. So, for now, I'm outta here...

The pushmepullu of burnout versus amount of work

I did the proofreading, which was easy.

I went through the homework for the 101, which was only difficult because it was so discouraging. If I were to give the students the grades I honestly think they deserve, most would not be passing. And there isn't anything I can do about it. I was going to say there isn't anything I can do about it at this stage in the semester, but really, there isn't anything I can do about it, period.

They do not know how to read, understand, think, write. I keep saying it, but I have to keep re-realizing it, apparently; hard to believe just how profound the problem is.

Having dealt with the 101, I didn't have it in me to wade through the remaining essays for the SF class. One or two may be reasonably OK, but mostly, it's just a more advanced version of the same wade through that I do.

I've been thinking about my handouts, though. I need to just dictate, not explain. Don't do this. Don't do that. Do this. Do that. They still won't understand what I mean (like the 101 students who read a handout that clearly said "don't summarize" and then, when I asked them what they should do, said "summarize"). They absolutely cannot believe that what they've been doing all along no longer is going to cut it.

Yeah, I need to retire. I can feel the effect of the burnout not only on myself but on my interactions with them. I'm starting to vacillate between "oh, fuck, I don't care, whatever" and "the fucking ingrates, I'll show their asses." Neither of which is a beneficial approach to teaching.

Ach, enough griping. The days are getting longer, and what remains of the semester is getting shorter. Life is fine. A bit beige at the moment, but fine. I'll take beige.