Not a jinx: a choice.

Well, perhaps to no one's vast surprise, I did not get all the essays marked. In fact, I only got two marked, which leaves for to be done tomorrow. That's more than I'd ideally want, of course, but it should be doable. I don't have much time tomorrow except when I'm in Advisement and then for a brief moment after my last appointment--but I still think I can get them done. If not, I'll be finishing up the last one (I hope only one) very early morning on Thursday.

So, you may well ask, what happened to all that time today that I thought I could use for grading? As I said: a choice. I decided to allow myself a little extra sleep this morning, and I allowed myself my full (and very long) morning routine before getting to the office. Then I did have to go through at least some of the crap strewn all over the place to make sure I had what I needed to take to the 102; that included doing some photocopying, which didn't strictly speaking have to be done today, but it felt good to do it.

And I have to say that the first of the essays that I marked today turned out to be a poser. It was one of those in which the problems are so subtle I can't quite put my finger on what they are. Even though I had more sleep than is often the case, I feel as if I'd have done a better job with it if I were more fully rested--and if I didn't have other things poking at my mind while I tried to focus on it. It will be interesting to see how the student responds to my rather vague and befuddled comments; maybe together he and I can figure out what actually is wrong. I know for sure that something doesn't line up; I just don't know what the "something" is.

I will say that at least some time also went to the fact that after I had carefully commented on that student's essay, checked to be sure I had saved it as a "with comments" copy, not just overwriting the original, and closed it so I could reopen it (which sometimes is necessary before the PDF will convert properly), the wretched thing vanished. As in really: nowhere. I searched the hard drive. I searched the thumb drive. It was nowhere. Panic in the streets! As I was freaking out about that, a student showed up for her conference, so I had to put my frantic search for the essay with all my comments on hold--and when I returned to the computer (after sending her an email, which I'll talk about in a minute) ... miraculously the essay was then there, right where I knew I'd put it. But the PDF still refused to save properly. So, in the "when in doubt, reboot" line of trouble-shooting, I restarted the computer, and since then, everything seems to be functioning well. Of course, all that wasn't as much time as it would take me to mark an entire essay, but it was still time out of my day that I didn't anticipate having to allot to something other than essay marking.

Another little glitch occurred because--at the Nth hour, I realized I had completely missed grading an essay for a student who had an appointment with me today. She did finally email to say that she hadn't gotten anything and had been checking all day--by which time I was frantically trying to get the damned thing graded and sent. No harm, no foul: I printed it for her (since it was my fault that she didn't get a chance to do so), and we had a productive conversation about it. (And in hers, I could identify what the problems were--even though it was a very good essay in many ways.) But that was more time I wasn't anticipating having to spend.

Circling back around to the student who came in just as I was freaking out over the "lost" file: I was rather surprised to see her, as she had not submitted her essay--and in fact has submitted almost zero work all semester. She was very calm and collected, but she said she feels like she needs to take a complete and total break from school for a while. The transition from the way one is monitored and hectored in high school to the "you're on your own, kid" methods of college proved to be too much of a challenge for her. She does want to go to college; it's important to her, she said. But she was trying to get into the nursing program largely because her mother is a nurse and the mother expects my student to follow suit. Talking to the student, I began to realize that what at first seemed like "calm and collected" may actually have been restricted affect: I think she's depressed. (Yes, I had to look up the correct term for the condition I think I may have observed.) I suggested that she might get some counseling, and she was very interested in that, said that she really wanted the information. I can't speak to her academic potential, but I think there is someone in there who needs to be allowed to come out and shine. I hope she gets some help--and I encouraged her to keep in touch with me if I could be at all helpful. We all know about my soft spot for troubled young people, especially young women who struggle at home.

I also want to talk about another conference today. The student is a young woman who missed the first day of class because she had to be in court (I have no idea why and have no intention of asking) and who has seemed borderline belligerent, braced to defend herself against perceived disrespect. I admit I was treading carefully with her as I wrote her comments--but she was absolutely lovely in conference. She was thoughtful, her insights into her own process were great, and she was relaxed, open--and in two instances smiled a huge, beaming smile. I don't know why, but it almost made me want to cry. Again, I think this is a young person who just needs to be in the right situation in order to flourish--and I think my class may be the situation for her. I hope so. She's extremely bright and endlessly curious, and those are traits that will serve her well.

I'm sure there's more I could say about the day, but the rest rather went as expected. The 102 went fine--nothing earth shattering but good work on their first foray into reading poetry in my class. We'll see how things progress from here.

Meanwhile, I'm leaving sticky notes for myself all over the place, as I keep having random thoughts about things I need to remember to take care of--and up to this point, I've created several triage lists and then completely forgotten to look at them at all, which rather defeats their purpose. The sticky notes, however, are on my work surface, so I can't escape them.

I'm not going to end this post with a forecast of what the next days will hold. Sufficient unto and all that rot. I just want to get out of here before it gets any later.