Tsunami of grading

Well, dammit: the students are submitting their essays. Only three of the students remaining in the M/W 101 have not submitted. The students in today's class have until midnight to submit, so of course most of them have not. Five, maybe six, students were not there today (the "maybe" is a young woman who was out for a long while, came back--because her mother insists that she do so--but to whom I handed an Add/Drop form when she was in class on Tuesday. She cannot, absolutely cannot, pass. I wonder whether I'll see her again.) Of those, one submitted his essay already--not surprisingly. He's an adult, and therefore diligent about deadlines and requirements. We'll see about the rest.

And it is true that the attrition has been slow but steady, but even so, it's just a lot of essays to grade--especially while I also have homework from those classes that I haven't looked at yet, and while I need to stay on top of the homework for the 102.

I am taking the 102 homework with me when I leave today. I know it's highly unlikely I'll get to any of it; I'm worried enough about having time to respond to the essays for the 101s. Both tomorrow and Saturday already have built-in interruptions--at awkward times in terms of when I am at peak productivity--so I don't know how things will proceed, given the number of students I'll be seeing on Monday--and the fact that I won't have tons of time before the next "pig in the python" moment on Thursday.

The one thing I do know is that one way or another (probably another) it will all get done. At what cost to my sleep or sanity, I can't predict, but it will get done. My sense of impending doom about it all arises primarily from the fact that I am already tired, and would love nothing more than to sleep and sleep and sleep.

Which will begin at least in some measure starting December 23, when I am in Montana with the family, and will be a more common occurrence come mid-January, when I am adjusting to the start of the whole new phase in my life.

I will say that the students in 102 were a bit of a disappointment today; they did great in their groups, but when I turned it over to class as a whole, there was a whole lot of silence. I may have to resort to the tactic of assigning a more specific task to the groups, as in, "I'm going to take something specific from each group, so make sure as a group you decide on at least three things you want to discuss or get cleared up." But I also have started to get red flags about possible plagiarism. I might not have noticed, but one student's language is a bit more formal and stilted than is usual for her, and she and another student made the same observation about a rather subtle interpretation--and I'd be very surprised if they came up with it independently. I don't like the idea of having to search for plagiarism, in part because I'd really hoped there wouldn't be much out there about the novel, so there wouldn't be much possibility of plagiarism. We'll see. I'll run checks a few ways--but if they are plagiarizing, I will be very, very unhappy. (And so will the Enthusiastic Adult, whose daughter is one of the possible plagiarists.)

Now, however, I am going to get out of here early--though, since the clock change, it doesn't feel early. The fact that it is full dark out makes it feel quite late, and my body still thinks it's on the old time. (I'm slow, what can I say.) It's also important that I leave now because I have to hop on a train in to the City to meet a friend for dinner. As a pleasant reframe for the day, I am happy to report that I  leave having crossed the P&B minutes off my "to do" list for this week, anyway. We take our triumphs where we can.