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.