Could I do more? Yes. Will I do more? Not a chance in hell.

I find it fascinating how fiercely I resent coming to work every day. After the exhausting push of the past few weeks, I'm actually not in bad shape right now, as these things go, and no matter what, I only have to come to work as a professor six more days. I should be feeling relief, but that light at the end of the tunnel keeps looking like the headlights of an oncoming train.

I know this is all really strange manifestations of the underlying anxieties and uncertainties about the whole retirement thing. I am both looking forward to it and petrified. And I want the transition to be over with already. My usual MO when dealing with anything potentially difficult is--although I may dither on the shore for a while--I am a run and dive off the end of the dock kind of person, not an inch slowly into the water getting used to it a little at a time kind of person. And in this case, I can't just take the plunge. It's all going to transition gradually, over time, and I need to learn to be OK with that.

Very little happened in terms of interactions with students today. Didn't see many in Advisement (the system kept going down). Only a few showed up to meet with me during class today--one, unfortunately (but wisely for him) to withdraw--and although I ended up being there the entire class period, it was hardly heavy lifting. I got another panic-stricken (and subtly accusatory) email from the Mom student--which I replied to at some length, responding to what was happening with her ideas. At the end of my response, I told her I wouldn't respond to her last two paragraphs, as I knew she was simply venting frustration and distress. I came close to saying, "However, I might caution you to refrain from venting in that manner to any professor. It can be taken amiss." I didn't though. And just now, I got a much calmer, more focused, intelligent email--in which she also thanked me for helping her and apologized for being "needy." (Not the word I'd use, but OK.)

I confess that one piece of "help" that I offered was to wait to give her a grade for the first version. She needs to upload something today, but she can upload anything: a complete hairball of ideas, under-length, an utter mess. That at least gives me something to work with, and I can give her comments. Then she has a week to finish up, and whatever grade she gets on the final version, I'll give her for the first version, too. (Essentially I'm informally doing for her what I'm doing more formally for the 101s: everything hangs on the final version grade.) I think that probably went further than anything toward calming her down, as she is frantic for an A. (At least she has a chance of making it; her daughter may get a B and be very disappointed.)

I had a couple of conferences, which were fine. I was a little afraid the last one might go on for a while, but we kept it to a reasonable length.

So, tomorrow, when I come in, I'll be commenting on essays for the two 102 students who have conferences set up with me for later tomorrow, and then I'll try to comment on essays for the additional six student who have conferences set for Thursday. (I may be working on some of those on Thursday itself.) Then I'll do comments on whatever else I get; there may be another four, or there may not. We'll see. Of course, any essay that is late gets zero comments.

And yes, that may mean that I have to bail on Advisement one more time. Or maybe I'll just conference with them without having the comments done and get the comments to them on Friday.

Whatever. It will all come out in the end. I'll bring the laptop to work with me tomorrow and Thursday, as there are still glitches with the electronic commenting process when I try to use the work computer, but that's fine: I can just sit at my desk with the laptop and do my thing.

And now, my "thing" is to go home and decompress until tomorrow morning. End of day is always a good thing.