Worrying myself a bit...

I am starting to feel some concern over the depths of my exhaustion. I got a fair amount of sleep last night, and I still feel like I haven't slept in a month. I got a few papers graded--nowhere near the quota I had set myself--and it's only a little after 5 p.m., and I almost feel like I can't see. I certainly can't concentrate.

Also, I have mixed feelings about the fact that a few students did, in fact, submit their essays late. One is a student who is potentially very good indeed; I'd have been unhappy if he hadn't submitted. (One of the students who is still AWOL is also potentially very good, but I'm not going to chase her down. Maybe I should--she's worth reaching out to--but I'd rather talk to her about what's going on, especially as I already chased her down some over her first essay.) One student hasn't in fact submitted yet, but he tried--or said he tried--last night and couldn't find the link. It's there, but he missed the entire first essay, so he's struggling with the whole process and missed the day when I went over how to find things. One of the very annoying blips in Blackboard these days is that the course menu on the left can disappear and be replaced with a blue band down the side. I didn't know what the hell to do the first time I saw that--but I knew there should be something on the left, so I clicked on the blue band and, behold!, the course menu appeared. But a student who has never seen the Blackboard page before won't know that there should be something there, so wouldn't know to try to get at it. So I can understand that he had trouble--and I wrote an email talking him through the process--but I don't quite know why I'm bothering; he's missed so much work, he can't pass. I guess I'm bothering because he wants to try, and I don't want to discourage the effort, even though it comes too late.

Writing that reminded me of another young woman who needs to withdraw. When she came to class on Tuesday, in fact, I handed her a withdrawal slip--but I didn't explain the process to her, and I'm afraid she will think the withdrawal is complete. It isn't, and for various reasons that I don't fully understand, we are no longer allowed to give students a W; they have to complete the process by taking the form to the Registrar. It is possible--though complicated--to do a change of grade to a W, but it has to be done through a paper form, not online. Well, I'll fret about her for a little bit, too.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that I am once again going to kick things down the road, and hope like hell I can get a good, strong day of work in tomorrow--without being so tired my eyes feel sandpapered. I will say--apropos of nothing except the "interruptions" of the day--that the documentary about Le Guin that I watched this afternoon was absolutely worth the trip to the City and the disruption of my grading. I hope it appears in some form that allows it wider viewership; it is quite wonderful.

And with that, I'm going to turn into something more vegetable than animal until tomorrow. Eleven essays to grade tomorrow, god help me. But that's tomorrow. Tomorrow is not today, thank God.