A little of this, a little of that, and a whole lot of nothing

Since the pressure is (briefly) off in terms of monetized work, I've had a hell of a time trying to dedicate myself to anything much today. I did dutifully hold my office hour (why, why did I set that up??); a student was even going to be a test subject for me, but in the event, he couldn't make it. I did a little writing on the maybe-too-personal essay I've been working on, or rather, that I haven't worked on in a while but haven't yet gotten to the point where I feel like I want to make it public. I recorded a little video about research and documentation for my students. It's still early enough I could easily do something else, but ... nah.

As for that student. He's one of those maddening cases of a student who says he really wants to succeed and wants help--but then he doesn't actually get the help, or do what he needs to do in order to succeed. He's an adult, too--student, works, single parent--but he seems to want an awful lot of hand-holding. I'm glad that he has an appointment with one of my colleagues who does mentoring specifically for distance ed students, and I hope she can help him; more, I hope he actually shows up for his appointment with her. He said he was going to go to the Writing Center, too, but somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

One of the things that's going to be interesting for me is that, even when I have the impulse to do a lot of hand-holding and shepherding of students, I kinda can't, since I'm not physically able to meet with them. I'm oddly frustrated by that, but I'm also going to use it as practice in letting the students develop their skills as responsible adults (even the adults) without my doing so much to herd them along.

As for the essay, well, hmmmm. The more I work on it, the more I begin to think it may be one that's just for me: a chance for me to work through my own thinking about something but not anything I necessarily want to share, or at least not share publicly. (A select friend or two may get to see it.) I have several other essays that are in various states of development--mostly of the "not very" variety--but none of them are calling to me much at the moment.

But we'll see what the morrow brings. I am keeping myself from doing any more grading until a lot more students have gotten on the ball with their submissions, but who knows when either of those freelance jobs might boomerang back to me. If there is no work of that variety to be done tomorrow, I hope I can make myself do something that has to do with my own writing, no matter how paltry or scattered that "something" may be.

For now, I'm going to just noodle away until it's time to call a halt to all things having to do with the computer and figure out what to do for dinner.