The stacks are getting exponentially higher...

The stacks of "to do" work are getting ridiculously large. Some of it is deceptive: the revisions of essays come with lots of other stuff attached (the first version, some indication of what was done in revision, articles the students found for the 101s), but I still have to look at all the bits, even if I'm only evaluating the revised essay itself. And then the homework stacks. Also a bit deceptive, as for the 101s, I have the actual printouts of the articles the students read, along with their notes on the reading. Nevertheless, it really is completely ridiculous.

And answers the question "What will you do with Thanksgiving weekend, Prof. P?" I hope I actually do some of the work this time, instead of simply dragging it home and back again. I have a markedly rose-colored sense of how much time I actually have during the week to do much of anything, which is hard to recognize as unduly optimistic when I am at home and longing just to snuggle up with a good book and a cat and cups of tea.

Well, the time for that will come.

Today's classes both went pretty well. I have no complaints about either one. The students from 102 are (for the most part) latching on to the details in the novel in a lovely way; the students from today's 101 can always be counted on to participate in class discussion and to have good ideas.

Among other things I need to do is to rework the final essay topic for the 102 class. It's close, but I want somehow to also provide information about how to do the research. That can't be part of the essay assignment--which is already far too long and detailed--but they do need the information, and I can't be sure I'll have time to go over any of it with them in class.

So that gets tacked on the rest of the "things to do" list, along with P&B minutes (which I will do after my Advisement stint tomorrow, I hope) and other things that I'm almost certainly forgetting.

I'm sure there is more I could record about today, but nothing springs to mind. Often as I am walking from point A to point B on campus, I am planning what I might put in the post of the day, or mulling possible titles, but today, my mind is either engaged in the task immediately at hand or essentially making white noise. We'll see how tomorrow goes. Because, you realize, it is another day.