Pretty embarrassing, I admit

The howling blunders on handouts/assignments for the 102 continue apace. Good thing at least one student is paying attention--although, perhaps if she weren't, the others would just assume they were missing something, and I would never know I had made the errors so wouldn't have to continually apologize for them and come up with solutions. Ah well.

I just finished marking all the homework for the 102, so that's a good thing. I still have a wodge of 101 homework to mark before tomorrow afternoon--and honestly, I probably won't get it all done. I keep blissfully forgetting about P&B, and in the current "I don't care; I'm halfway out the door anyway" mode, I also tend to forget that I can's simply say, "Sorry, won't make today's meeting"--because, like an idiot, I agreed to be the recording secretary. Of course, if I were to miss the meeting, someone would have to step into the breach and take notes for the minutes, but ... well, there's just enough of me that wants to be the good girl that I will actually be there unless I truly, positively can't be. Knowing that the only time I'll have will be the time before my 1:00 class, I can only hope that tomorrow morning's (routine) doctor's appointment goes very quickly and I can get to the office early enough to get a bunch done, maybe enough so I have at least a whisker of a chance at finishing up during class, while they do other stuff.

And speaking of getting work done: I managed to get the work done for today's class in large measure because I didn't do my stint in Advisement. It was another morning of waking up at 4:30 a.m. with an incipient migraine (a habit I really do have to break), so I opted to sleep in--which wasn't entirely successful but at least was better than getting up at 6 having had only 4-1/2 hours of sleep. That put me in the office about 11--and I had done enough work over the weekend (a habit I'm going to have to continue most if not all of this semester) that that hour and a half very nearly did it.

And perhaps in part because I had to finish marking and recording grades while the students worked, today's 101 was pretty disastrous. I started with some of the Breath-Body-Mind exercises, and the students were far too self-conscious and inhibited to really do any of them. I'll do them again a couple of times, hoping they get a little more serious about them--or that I can teach them better--but I certainly won't spend time on them every class. Most of the period was spent going over the distinctions between quotation and paraphrase, what changes are permitted to quotations, and how to recognize plagiarism and avoid it. I gave them an exercise to do (after doing some lecture about it all)--and I had to keep reminding them that I should hear them talking about what they were doing. Usually the "find the plagiarism" exercise goes down great but this group just wouldn't respond. (It doesn't help that I have a very hard time hearing them: their voices get lost in the large room, and I have to go to the back of the classroom to get my ears away from a loud AC unit that produces the kind of white noise that effectively cancels out my ability to hear at all). So none of that worked all that well. When I was going to turn attention to the article the students were supposed to have read for today, I found a number of them didn't have it and didn't know it was even due because they hadn't bothered to look at the assignment schedule but simply assumed they knew what to do. They got  a mini-lecture about that (read the assignment schedule; if you don't have a handout for something that's required, find it on Blackboard, subtext: "what the fuck is the matter with you"), but then I said that I'd let everyone go early (only by about 15 minutes); we'll discuss three articles on Wednesday (the two assigned for Wednesday plus the one assigned for today); and everyone who did the work on time gets two extra points. I should have said everyone who didn't do the work gets zero credit--but I figured if I did that, none of them would do the reading they had neglected this time around. Whatever. The student who joined the class late is turning out to be by far the best student in the class, so much so that when he sent me an email earlier today, I responded and then said I was sorry that he wasn't in a class with more students like he is. He really deserves a better experience, and I'm sorry it looks like he won't get it. I hope I can avoid a rocket launch of temper with those kids--and they are kids, despite whatever their ages might be. I try to breathe and remember that I can let go of a lot of trying to get them to grow up and behave and just let them decide whether they want to grow up or whether they prefer to run the risk of failing the class.

It will be interesting to see how the 102 goes tomorrow--and then comes the first deluge of essays (due on Thursday). My hunch is that I'll get about nine or ten essays on time, another three or four late, and a couple not at all. That's eminently doable. When I get the essays from the 101s, that's going to be more of a crunch. But that's a worry for another time.

Right now, my brain has turned to so much oatmeal, so I reckon it's time to pack it in for the night, hoping to get a better start on the day tomorrow. It's been a day filled with conversations with colleagues--which is lovely but time consuming--so I may hole up in the office and pretend I'm not here tomorrow, whenever I arrive after seeing the doctor.

Whatever. In thirteen weeks, it will all be over. The countdown continues.