I may regret this in the morning

It's early--not even 5 p.m., the sun still shining brightly--and yet I'm going to pack it in for today. I lugged all the homework for all three classes home, and I'm going to lug it all back to campus without having done a damned thing with it. My original plan for today was to finish grading the essays for my Tuesday conferences and then dive into the homework. Nope. Here's why.

I got a bit more of a reprieve than I anticipated; I didn't realize until just a little while ago that not one but two of the students with conferences scheduled for Tuesday did not submit essays. So I only had three to grade. I graded two (the mother-daughter students); the third? Nah. It can wait.

As for the homework, most of the students in tomorrow's 101 opted to keep their articles and notes over the weekend, so I really don't have much to mark, and I think (I hope) I can get it done during my time in Advisement. If not, no big whoop. I can get it back to them on Thursday. I have an enormous stack of stuff for the Tuesday/Thursday class, as they all submitted their articles and notes (no one asked if they could keep them, so I didn't make the offer). But that's Tuesday. And I have all of tomorrow afternoon (my last conference is at 3:20) plus my time in Advisement on Tuesday morning in which to get their stuff done and back to them.

And, truth to be told: I'm tired. Not so much physically as psychologically. Weekends simply don't seem long enough--even though they're longer than most working stiffs get and even though they're as long as they've been for the last 17 years--and I have that "one foot out the door" feeling: I do not feel like exerting any effort, or giving up any time that I don't absolutely have to exert or give up.

I had a thought about next week's paper grading onslaught (which really is causing underground tremors of anxiety): I'll mark the check list I give the students, and I'll mark no more than two things per page of each essay. Today, I got an essay from the woman who was in my office on Thursday; I'll call her Ms Scattered. She got it in under the 72-hour deadline, so she did get some points, but the rule is no comments. I sort of slid the rule a bit, as I did fill out the check list for her and provided comments on that--but I didn't mark a thing on the essay itself. And whaddaya know: it didn't take long at all, and it was pretty painless.

My entire teaching career I've been told by other teachers that students cannot possibly absorb extensive comments, so producing them is just a lot of strain on me and no real benefit to the students. My entire teaching career, I've been told by students that they actually like the extensive comments. As one student said, "I know I can't possibly address them all, but they give me an idea of just how far I have to go." I figure, between the checklist and keeping comments on the papers themselves to a minimum, I may be hitting a sort of happy medium. And if not? If I'm shortchanging the students? They'll survive. They just won't have had the full experience of having me as a professor as previous students have.

Shifting back to the 102: I'm still trying to figure out what to do about the mechanics: the sentence-level, editing stuff. I haven't read a paper yet that doesn't need some work on that level, so I do want to give them that feedback--but I want them to revise first. I know I can't entirely control that no matter what I do, but my current plan is to tell everyone that I'll email the checklist and marked essays after the last of the conferences on Thursday. That gives me time to mark them, and the copier in the office on campus can scan--and rapidly--so that should work pretty well. If it works well enough with them (and doesn't take too long), I'll do the same for the 101s. I opted against spending a class period on that stuff, but ... it does need to be done. Hmmm.

In any event, while the sun is still shining, I'm going to pack it in. My main goal for today is to get to bed waaaay earlier than usual so that 6 a.m. alarm isn't quite as painful as usual. Here's hoping.