Oh, thank god.

Everything is graded. I have--as far as I can tell--absolutely zero student work in my hands at the moment.

I confused hell out of the 102 students, because I realized we had nothing to do next Tuesday--I kind forgot about peer review--so I ended up having to send an email detailing what will happen each day between now and the bitter end. Tuesday, I'll be there, but I'll be working with anyone who shows up, on whatever that person wants to talk about. I also realized that I can, in fact, get the essays commented on and send to the students--though not necessarily in advance of their conferences. Still, I can send the comments post conference, so they can get a more detailed set of responses from me. There just aren't a lot of students left. But I also adjusted things so we'll finish on the final Tuesday, not Thursday, as originally planned. I'll collect self-evaluations on Tuesday, along with final essays--though if students can't get those done by Tuesday, I'll collect them on Thursday (because they're worth something like 20 points and I can do them in about 5 minutes max). Whew.

I did have a long and difficult talk with one student before class. She's sweet, and she's been trying her damndest all semester--and has been worrying about whether or not she'd pass--and I finally realized that, purely on a sentence level, her skills are so below what's required I really can't pass her unless she can get the help to write sentences that make sense and are at least close to grammatically correct, punctuated properly, and so on. After some talking, I told her that we'd just put all our effort into her final essay. I won't even worry about the ideas: we'll just focus on getting the sentences to work. I haven't yet given her a grade on the second essay--originally, I was going to have her redo that one, correcting sentence-level problems, but I realized there really isn't time for that now--but if she can pull out a final essay that is at all passable, I'll give her a passing grade for the class, whatever I have to adjust to her marks along the way. Bless her heart: English is not her first language, and she has never been taught to write correctly--and has gotten this far without anyone saying, "Nope, you're not ready for the next step." She tried to tell me that she's going into business, so she doesn't need to "be good at English," but I reminded her that she will have to write for business, too....

And the plagiarizing student showed up today to find out where to get a withdrawal slip. I actually had some with me, so I filled it out for him there--and I apologized to him. I said, "You did fix some of the plagiarism, just not all of it--and there were other problems as well." He didn't seem pissed off any more; I guess he got it out of his system (or was putting on a hell of a good act)--and I think my apology helped. (I also wasn't cranky with him; that may have helped too.)

Another student in that class needed a talking to as well. He's very bright but ... drifty. He speaks very slowly, tends to look off into space, ambles in late, ambles out slowly. I had to tell him that his attendance was a real problem (he showed up in the last 15 minutes of class today--and he might not have come in, except I happened to go out into the hall, saw him, and told him to go ahead on in so I could talk with him). I explained that it "reads" as disrespectful--and as if he doesn't give a fuck about the class. (And yes, I said "fuck.") He was obviously taken aback by that: he'd never considered it in that light, I'm sure. In any event, he probably will come in to talk about the novel on Tuesday. And another student from the class specifically asked if he could talk to me individually about the novel, as he feels so frustrated by the indeterminate ending. Sure, happy to do it.

So, next week is shaping up to be ... interesting. I will see a slew of students on Monday right after my advisement stint, then a few on Tuesday when my 101 would normally meet. (Two more students need to let me know whether they're going to conference with me or do the "one and done" option.) Wednesday I have two conferences with 102 students, and Thursday, I'll see four more--scattered across the day, with huge gaps between them. (Excellent: time to comment on the essays for the students who are not conferencing with me, if I haven't gotten a chance to do it before then.) I can easily do all my Advisement time. Of course, once I get all the final stuff in, on Wednesday, Thursday, and next Tuesday, there will be the mad push to the finish, but that's completely do-able. I've decided that anyone who wants comments on her or his essay will have to make an appointment with me to retrieve the essay with comments. No more of this leaving stuff on my office door that never gets collected.

I probably "should" stick around for a bit to input the appointments in the Writing Center software, but fuck it. I'm already here later than I wanted to be. I canceled on the colleague with whom I was going to have dinner tonight (better for her, too, as it turns out, as she's coming down with a cold), because I am so fucking tired. I had a complete blast last night. Cathy bailed, unfortunately, but the four of us had our usual brilliant time--and I didn't feel tired at all, or cranky, while I was out. I also wrote to a colleague who has been using my cell and home phones to contact me and explained that it isn't just a "preference" but a real boundary that matters to me. She was apologetic, which made me feel bad: I wasn't clear with her, and I told her that. The miscommunication was my fault. So I'm not cranky about that, either.

In fact, I'm not cranky about anything at the moment. I'd better get out of here while that's still the case.