Moody

I've meant to post every night this week and just haven't been in the right head-space. I'm not entirely sure I am tonight, either. I've fallen off some sort of ledge and have been in an rank mood most of the week. I think it's largely cumulative effect: I've been nagging myself pretty hard all semester and at the same time trying to find balance, looking for bright sides wherever I can find them. The bright sides are decidedly there, but this week it's been harder to focus on them, and the nagging voice has gotten so loud I think I'm rebelling against myself. When I lose sight of the bright bits, I tend to get into a negative feedback loop: I feel crappy, so it's hard to focus on work, so I don't get "enough" done, so I feel more stressed, so I feel even more crappy, yadda yadda yadda. And random detritus in my personal life has been feeding the negative cycle lately, so I'm struggling to snap out of it.

I didn't get those homework assignments marked that I talked about on Monday: they're still sitting in a pile (on the office floor at the moment, as I contemplate where they belong in the ever-shifting list of priorities--which in turn dictates whether they stay here or go home with me). And now I've got first versions of the second paper for my 101 classes to mark; those have to be back as soon as I can manage, so the students have time to revise without doing damage to the time they need for their final projects and papers. P&B business is piling up (though I did crank out drafts of letters of support for sabbatical applications today, one of my myriad responsibilities crossed off that list). I just spent hours adding to and refining the final project assignment for the 101 classes. This is the time of semester when I feel as if we're cranking our way toward the highest point on a roller-coaster: one can see that insane rush downhill toward the end looming, but we're still chugging painfully toward the crest--and yet I have a white-knuckled grip on the safety bar, trying to prepare myself for that wild ride. Once we hit that point, everything happens so fast there's no time to anything but hang on and holler until final grades are turned in.

I came in this morning for a symposium (good for the promo folder--and as a bonus, I actually got some decent ideas out of it), and I've been in the office since. I think on Monday I talked about how full my (metaphoric) dance-card is this weekend, and because I've got so many other things going on--and am in this crabby state--I'm not at all sure how much I can realistically expect to get done.

I keep reminding myself, however, that 99.9 percent of the pressure I feel is self-imposed. Even the P&B pressure is in a sense self-imposed, as I chose to run for the committee. (And--evidence of something, perhaps my lack of sanity--I think I will run again this year, for another 2-year term.) I've picked the committees I'm on; I put together the assignment schedules; I decide how much to comment on papers, and so on. In turn, that means I can decide how to proceed. I can cancel or reconstruct assignments; I can handle paper grading in a different way; I can duck out of some committee meetings instead of always being the good Do-Bee (a reference for those of you who remember Romper Room). I need to seriously think through what I can let go of, what I can do differently--without feeling that I'm compromising my standards. And that includes considering whether it would do any significant damage to my students were I to cancel another day or two of classes. It feels a little ridiculous that I cancel classes in order to do what I need to for my classes, but it's a relatively simple solution to the time crunch. The main thing, though, is to make a decision that leaves me feeling good about myself professionally and doesn't ride me ragged personally.

It's relatively early--not even 6 yet--but I think the most productive thing I can do this evening is attitude adjustment (and take care of my bodily health). I do wish I could run away to the Virgin Islands for a few weeks and then pick up from here--but as capable as I am, I haven't yet invented a time-dilation device, so I can't squeeze a two-week vacation into 12 hours, more's the pity. But I have pictures of beaches up on my bulletin board, and there are times when it is immensely soothing to stare long and lovingly at them and daydream: me, creamy sand, crystal waves, gentle salt breeze, delicious book lying idle in my lap--and infinite stillness all around. Ah, heavy sigh. Imagination is a wonderful thing.

Noodling

I got a bunch of homework marked this weekend and it actually went pretty quickly, so I haven't pushed myself to finish up the stuff for the Tuesday/Thursday classes yet. I've got a jump on it, but I think I can get most of it done before my first class tomorrow. Students are also doing peer review of papers tomorrow, so I can chip away during class while they work, and finish (I hope) in the break in between--and still have time for lunch. Because I wasn't feeling time crunched, I did a fair amount of noodling today: silly housekeeping things that require very little in the way of mental lifting but still make me feel as if I'm accomplishing something, not just reading fluff and (metaphorically) eating bon-bons. I did get the first batch of the next round of 101 papers today (oh argh), but I'm hoping madly I can get a good whallop of those done on Wednesday so I don't have to chain myself to the office this weekend in order to get them back in time for the students to revise. I have a relatively full calendar this weekend too (symposium Friday a.m., placement reading Saturday a.m., long-overdue double birthday celebration with a friend Saturday p.m.; laundry in there somewhere), so any window of time I find in which to crank out papers, I'll have to take advantage. (I'm saying this mostly to myself, to gird my loins, so to speak.)

Among my housekeeping chores was to make a list of the little bits and shreds of things I have to prep for later this week and next--even slightly beyond (trying to get a fraction ahead of the curve before all hell breaks loose again). I didn't actually do any of those bits, mind you: noodling means making a list instead of simply getting something done. But in all honesty, I need the list: while I'm accomplishing one thing, much will vanish from my mind, and then I'll have another of those "oh shit" moments. Taking a breath to jot 'em down gives me something concrete to refer to--and the gratification of crossing things off later as I do them. Assuming I don't lose the list, or bury it under a pile of other things I need to attend to, which seems to be happening a lot this semester. I think about vast and complex cultures without written language and the consequent feats of memory they are capable of that seem so impossible to us. Writing stuff down has led to memory atrophy (imagine having to remember the entire Odyssey and your shopping list, at the same time). But here we are, and that's what's happened to our brains. Funny that we're so dependent on the written word and yet so many are scarcely able to decipher a marginally complex sentence. A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox (ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha). (Any Gilbert & Sullivan fans out there? Sing along...)

I did the last of my observations today, most interesting. At one point, the students were working away in their groups, and my colleague came over to chat with me for a moment. I told him our 200-level classes are pretty much interchangeable: same kinds of students (good and bad), same struggles with their writing (and their insistence that we are wrong to find any problems in what has always been good enough before), and so on. When he sent an e-mail last night to give me a little context about the class, I was enormously comforted to see how similar our experiences have been. I'm relieved to discover yet another colleague who shares my views on the standard to which we must hold our students. Many don't (witness the lack of preparedness among so many students), but enough do that I can feel secure in my position. I'm not the only one in this trench, facing the bombardments from all sides--including some "friendly" fire.

Just noticing how quiet the building gets at this hour. Not as quiet as it is on Saturdays, but still. The little dust-pan thingy that the maintenance staff uses makes a distinctive noise--and the slight reverberation of that sound down the hall is evidence of how little other noise there is to interfere. Very quiet walking across campus at this hour, too; little traffic, few students, occasionally the avian calls of geese or (at certain seasons) plovers on the quad. A breath, a small peaceful moment at the end of the day.

Yesterday

Couldn't pull my brains together well enough to report in last night--although a couple of things happened that I think are worth reporting.

In the KB 101, I put the kids in groups, as I had done with MB on Wednesday, to have them work on thesis statements. One group simply would not work. Every time I listened in on them, they were just chatting about whatever. One young man in particular was a lot of the problem: he is a nice enough kid, but in groups he just talks nonstop about anything and nothing. However, the problem was worse because he was also in a group with a young woman who doesn't seem invested in anything having to do with school--but especially not group work. It was luck of the draw that they ended up together--and that the two other students in the group didn't have strong enough personalities to rein them in: in terms of a personality combo, it was a disaster. I kept going over to get them back on task, with increasing firmness. Finally, I said, "OK, if you don't want to work, you can split. Go ahead and take off." A minute later I looked back and saw that no one was moving but no one was working, either. I said, "I'm serious: you can split--you can go. If you're not doing anything productive, there's no reason for you to be here, so you might as well leave." I didn't say it in an angry way (I don't think, though their perception may be different); I was just matter of fact. The young man explained that they had thought I meant they could split up into pairs instead of a group of four--but I reiterated that no, they should just go away, and then I heard him say, "Well, I want to work..." and lo and behold, they did. Not terribly well, perhaps, because the "I don't care" girl pretty much did her own thing and didn't interact with the rest of them, but it did make me wish I'd resorted to that tactic before, as they might have gotten productive earlier if I had. It's very strange, psychologically: sometimes students act like they don't want to be in class, but if you tell them to leave, they want to stay. Go figure.

The other thing was a nice little interaction between me and Monkey Skulls--a name I know use with some affection rather than the hint of bitterness I felt previously. He was working in a group--not being very effective, I have a feeling, as I don't think he'd done the reading, but at least he was there and participating in some way. At one point, another student in his group had a question, so I was standing next to him, explaining--and out of the corner of my eye, I saw him imitating my hand gestures. So without turning my head, I whacked him (gently), a little backhand across his shoulder. He laughed, as did the rest of the group. I then looked at him and said, "Would you like to just get up and teach this?" (Shook his head, did a little "no, no" waving gesture with his hands.) "Are you sure, since you seem to have my hand gestures down exactly, maybe you want to just take over for me?" (Laughing, again, shook his head, and mumbled something about it being OK, I should just go ahead.)

It was all very light-hearted and fun--and then at the end of class, when I was returning papers, he said, "Did I do OK? Were you proud of me?"--and I think he genuinely wanted the reassurance, the approval. It was lovely that I could give it, and tell him his paper was indeed much improved, and that I was, in fact, very proud of him. Today I got an e-mail from him: he had asked in class if he could use a Penn and Teller video as a source for his paper: at first I said yes, but today he sent me the link--and I had a moment to consider--so I had to rescind the permission. But he signed his message, "your favorite hand-gesturing student." The funny thing is, he is becoming one of my favorite students, simply because of the transformation in his attitude. Now I just hope he does enough work to pass....

There were other things going on that I could probably dig into and explore, but I'm just not in the right frame of mind. Sea cucumber time rapidly approaches.

9 more...

First, correction to yesterday's post: Pollan's essay was published in 2007, not 1997. (What millennium is this again?)

And the title of today's post refers to the papers yet to be graded for tomorrow's 101RB: I've got a zillion miscellaneous homework things piled up, but only 9 more actual papers to grade--until next week. Very sad today: one of my best students in RB--the young woman who first started following this blog--had to withdraw, not just from my class but from all her classes. There is a family crisis going on, so she has to leave school and move, probably upstate. I'm very sorry to lose her. When she appeared at the end of my class today with the withdrawal slip, I said, "Oh, Laura no! Oh, please no!" She started to cry; made me feel awful. I didn't want to add to her distress, as what she's going through is hard enough, but I genuinely am very sad to lose her--and I'd welcome her back into any class of mine, any time, should she return to NCC.

Oh, and speaking of papers for RB: remember Monkey Skulls? He wrote a lovely evaluation of my comments, in which he said he'd expected our conference to consist of me telling him to withdraw but that instead, he said, "All I got was positive re-assurance and a guideline of which [sic] I should follow." He ends his report saying, "I believe that I did infact [sic] improve upon my repertoire, making myself not sound like a high school boy, but a college man." And he turned in a paper that was appropriate on all levels. If he'd done that for his first draft, he'd have been able to get a fine grade in revision, I'm sure--and even with the flaws of his second attempt, I'm tremendously proud of him. He may not manage to do enough work and attend enough classes to pass, but he's learned something possibly more valuable, which is how to gain respect. I am thrilled to my socks--and, quite honestly, pretty damned proud of how I handled that whole situation.

But apparently it was a day for withdrawals: I lost a student from 229, too--again, he wasn't withdrawing just from my class but from everything. Family issues there, too, I believe. He's a sweetheart, so it's a shame--and he made a couple of buddies who hugged him goodbye, which I thought was lovely. I find it gratifying when students make friends in my class (and my classes are responsible for a couple of long-term and very close friendships. I don't think a class relationship has led to a marriage yet, but who knows.) The class itself went OK. We cranked through a bunch of poems, so we only have two more to do on Monday, plus starting in on Ceremony.

But there are two students in the class who are starting to get my goat. She is the one who, on Monday, suggested that my standards/assignments were responsible for the uniformly low level of papers on the first one. He is her boyfriend. They are patently in the class only because they need an English class to graduate and this one fit their schedules. They equally patently hate being there. He doodles or writes notes to her; she reads them and smirks. Monday was the first time she ever said a word (to complain, mind you, not to get clarification). Today was the first time he ever said anything: one student remarked that it was pretty ridiculous that Europeans thought they could claim someone else's land simply by planting a flag--and he flung his hand up in the air to say it wasn't ridiculous because it had been going on for thousands of years, ever since the Greeks and Romans. (I don't think the ancient Greeks and Romans did the whole flag thing, but never mind.) If we follow his logic, slavery is also OK because it has been going on for thousands of years, as has subjugation of women (though he'd probably agree with that one)....

He's of the "we [Euro-Americans] won, so they [indigenous peoples] don't have any thing to complain about" school. Not worth trying to argue with him. I did point out that just because something was ancient didn't prevent it from being ridiculous, and then I moved on. But her smirking is starting to crawl all over me. I have to think about how to handle it. The nasty bitch in me wants to call her on it: "What's funny? Do please share it with all of us." "You're smiling; what's occurring to you about the reading?" that sort of thing--every time I catch a smirk, ask her about it. Or I could tell them to sit on opposite sides of the room, but I suspect I'd encounter resistance, and the showdown would just make a bad situation worse. If their behavior were more egregious and affecting other students negatively, I'd take them aside after class and politely tell them that they would not be coming back. As is, the only person who is being bugged is me--and theoretically anyway, I'm adult enough to figure out a way not to be bugged. So, stewing about that one. I'll consult with Paul. Somehow we always find it easier to deal with each other's classroom problems than to handle our own.

101MB went great. I walked in with zero plan, no clue what to have them do. The homework didn't provide a clear focus, so I figured I'd let them decide, and if they decided they didn't want to do anything at all, I'd let them go. I asked if they'd had any problems with the homework: no takers. I said I'd help with the sentence-level stuff they were supposed to locate in their papers for in their homework: no takers. I finally reminded them that their second papers are due Monday, and said they know what they need: help with research, help with thesis statements: suddenly, enthusiasm. Yes, please, help with thesis statements. So, I put them in groups according to which topic they had chosen and had them work through a thesis, then an introductory paragraph, and from that, search terms to fill in the blanks they discovered. I told them that it's OK if all the students in a group used the same thesis/intro, as I know the rest of their papers will be unique. And I emphasized that even though they'd worked hard on coming up with something in class, they shouldn't consider them final: those statements are still works in progress. If the students write the paper and suddenly realize (as often happens to all writers), "Oh, that's what I'm really talking about," they need to be willing to go back and change the thesis. Or if their research turns up something. Or whatever. But they were very engaged in the work--and actually came up with pretty good theses, as far as I could tell on the fly. So, now I do know what I'm going to do with the 101s tomorrow--and we'll see if it goes as well.

But I don't have it in me to deal with any more papers tonight. I'll be a lot more productive after I've slept--and eaten something at least vaguely nourishing. I wish I could fax myself home: right now, walking to my car and then driving the 20 minutes home seems a journey of epic proportions. However, it is the only way to get home, so....

Cooked...

...and that's not just because it's hot as hell in here. Every year, when we're in this in-between weather, those of us on the "old" side of campus generally swelter: the old buildings have heating that is either on (cranking full blast all the time) or off (so the indoor temps quickly approach those outdoors). As a good environmentalist, I am driven bats by the energy waste, as we run the AC in the office and have the windows in all classrooms wide open (and some of those rooms still approach sauna temps). Among other things, the overheated rooms exacerbate the problem of keeping students who are operating on about 15 minutes of sleep from dropping off altogether.

But they didn't today. I'm delighted to report that KB did a great job for my observation: they worked well in their groups; they were (mostly) prepared; they were alert and participatory during class discussion--and it was a pretty interesting discussion. (If you're curious, you can find the article we were talking about--Michael Pollan's "Unhappy Meals"--on the NYTimes website: it was in the Sunday Times Magazine in 1997, September, I think...?) The students seemed to get a kick out of the study questions on little slips of paper: something like a fortune cookie about it, I guess. (I folded the slips in half and put them in a paper bag; a student from each group reached in to grab two slips, so there was an element of random surprise that I think felt a little bit fun.) In any event, I'm happy with how the observation went--and more to the point, the observer was, too. Cross off one more thing I need for the promo folder.

We also went over promo apps in P&B today: I was told mine looked great, which was nice. Still, considering the competition, "great" may not be good enough. Each year, there are 24 slots for promotion beyond assistant for the entire campus. So everyone across all the departments who is applying for associate or full professor is vying for one of 24 slots. The Promotion and Tenure committee can divide the 24 up any way they like: they don't need to maintain any specific balance of full to associate. But the English department alone is sending up 12 candidates (2 for full professor, TEN for associate), and I just can't see P&T giving so many promotions to one department. I grant you, we are the largest department (approx. 100 full-time faculty; the next closest is Math, with about 70), but even so, the rest of the departments would surely think it was unfair for us to get half of what's available. (And the department is already resented by some, partly because we are the 800-pound gorilla of this campus, partly because we teach a 4-4 load, whereas other departments teach 5-5.)

So you see why I am not counting on getting this promotion--this go round anyway. I can always apply again next year (and I can keep applying every year, if I want, until I get it), but I have to say, it would be nice to get it first time out of the gate. If I can get associate now, and then can get full professor as soon as I'm eligible for that, I can make full before I'm 60. That would be wunderbar--for the status; for the fact that at full, one doesn't have to keep pushing to produce scholarship, do committee work, go to "professional development" functions and so on; and, quite honestly, for the money. At my level, we get paid pretty much bubkes. At full, salaries allow for a nice living, thank you very much. Hope springs eternal.

Anyway, in the discussion with P&B, a few points got clarified, and the binder is now back in my hands for me to finish up. I know that the time will fly by at supersonic speeds, but I do have a little time, so I can get some other things crossed off my list of tasks to attend to before I have to go back to the promo thingy. One or two tasks I need to do before I forget (and before I put someone else in a time crunch because I've not been on the ball), but generally, the application can wait a bit while I turn my attention elsewhere.

Like to the rest of those papers for the T/Th classes. I'm going to try very hard to do NOTHING ELSE when I come in tomorrow morning: just start grading and keep on (with time out for my classes) until I'm done. My time keeps getting sucked away by other things. This morning, for instance, I got sucked into reviewing the promotion applications for the two colleagues I'm mentoring; took the whole morning, essentially, leaving just enough time for me to snarf down my lunch, make sure I had what I needed for class, and stride purposefully off to be observed. I'm glad to have it done (crossed something off the list--hooray!!), but there those papers sit, taunting me....

Paul keeps reminding me of "the rule of three": give them three things to work on--and only three. And stop marking so damned much. I'm compulsive about marking. That red pen in my hand exerts a frightening influence on me, and I find myself writing treatises in the margins of the papers--scaring the shit out of the students and probably giving them a hell of a lot more information than they can process anyway. Gotta stop--but it's like having some bizarre form of OCD. Sometimes I make myself put the pen down and read with no writing implement of any kind in my hand. Helps a little--but doesn't last very long. Gack. Does anyone know where I can purchase a little self-control over this?

And perhaps a little self-control over the time I spend blogging? Though it truly is a great release--and a wonderful reframing device. But the clock says it's 8:28, which is late enough--and my body still thinks it's 9:28--and the cats don't know what time it is except dinner time. They're at home, tapping their little wrist-watches, saying to each other, "She should have been home by now. Where is she? Doesn't she know we can't open cat-food cans? We don't have thumbs!"

Can't do it.

About an hour ago I realized I will not be able to get those papers back to my T/Th classes tomorrow. I feel sick about it, but I just cannot do it. In a minute here I'll get back to them, but I'm already trying to figure out what to do with the assignment that hinges on these returned papers when I don't actually return the papers. And I'm trying to figure out when it makes sense to look at the promotion folders for the two colleagues I'm supposed to be mentoring, before tomorrow's P&B. I won't get to anyone else, but I really do feel I need to do at least those two. I wonder what my blood pressure is right about now?

It was pretty painful in 229 today. The students were not merely devastated with the grades on their papers; many were angry. The emotion in the room was palpable--and very uncomfortable. In the past I'd have told them that these grades are a genuine appraisal of their ability to do college level work, and the problem is that no one has ever held them to that standard before. And I do believe that's true. But this time I was painfully aware that they were feeling shock, and shame, and despair. One student suggested that, since they've been writing papers since they were freshmen and getting better grades than I gave, the problem (of course) is my expectations and my assignment. Bearing their emotional state in mind, instead of defending the validity of my assignment and telling them that the problem is their lack of preparation, I said, "I'm teaching you something new. This is new, but it builds on what you have learned in previous classes: you can take what you've learned and put it to use in a new kind of assignment. I understand that it will be difficult and confusing at first, but it's my job to prepare you for the next level, and at the next level, you will be required to do this kind of work. What I don't get is why you were so confused, where the miscommunication happened so you didn't understand what you needed to do." She told me that the assignment was confusing, and I said, "So you needed to ask questions. I can't help you if I don't know you're confused, or why you are confused." Not the answer she wanted to hear, but true. She did ask why something was considered plagiarism (response: the lack of quotation marks around someone else's exact words), but other than that, she asked no questions of substance that might have helped her clarify what she could do better next time. (Because, of course, the problem is with me and my expectations. I'm just an insane bitch, obviously, so what would be the point of asking me for help?)

I could not get them to help me understand what went wrong in the previous assignment, but at least I got them to talk to me about their confusions and concerns for the next paper. I have no idea if they are any less confused--I doubt it, somehow. I think they were just too ashamed to try to explain what went wrong, even though I said repeatedly that I had some of the blame because I made assumptions about what they understood. The problem is talking in the abstract: they don't want to reveal their personal mistakes (which I truly understand), but they also need to see how their own papers didn't do what was required.

So I reminded them they can revise. I reminded them they can--and should--meet with me. I told them they can e-mail papers in progress to me and I'll give them feedback (though I won't read/comment on the whole thing). I told them I will do whatever I can to help them. I ditched the research portion of the next assignment. I postponed the paper: even though we have no class on Wednesday (Veteran's Day), I said they can bring their papers to me on Thursday next week: three extra days to work on 'em. We're going to have a tough, bifurcated day on Monday, as we'll have to finish up talking about the poetry and begin the novel--which will really throw them: if they thought what we've done so far is hard, wait until they start to grapple with Silko's Ceremony. Most of the students who last out the semester will eventually get it--and usually they end up liking it--but I freely admit, it's very confusing at first. I don't want them to be so miserable, but I won't compromise my standards: they do have to do college level work, no matter how hard and scary and shaming it is for them to try.

But I've felt sick to my stomach all day--since last night actually (some personal stuff mixed in there, too, which doesn't help). The 101 class went a little better: God I hope it goes well for my observation tomorrow. Going over the study questions I composed at least helped reveal what they misunderstood about the reading, so I could clear some of that up. As for the rest of their comprehension (or, more to the point, lack thereof)... fortunately, they don't have to use the Pollan essay for their next papers if they feel they understand the other essays better.

I'm just in a bad place today, emotionally. Not conducive to doing one's best work. But back I go to try to crank through a few more papers before my brains completely shut down for the night.

The tightrope

I had completely forgotten that today was change the clocks day until my sister reminded me about an hour ago. My god, what a relief! It means I can still take a little more wind-down time and yet get to bed earlier than I anticipated. It's another "up at 5" week for me--at least for a few days. Grading revisions is a lot easier (usually) than grading the first ones, as I don't have to explain as much (usually), but it still takes time--and I still have 36 papers to go by Tuesday. Even at four an hour (a hugely accelerated pace for me, and not always possible), that means finding an additional 9 hours of work time in the next 36... Meanwhile, my patience and Zen-like calm are fraying rapidly, particularly in the face of the way some students chose to fulfill one of the assignments. I had them write a report on my comments on their papers (specifically not calling it a response. though that's still what I got from a lot of them). The idea was for them to show me 1) that they understood what I was telling them they needed to do and 2) that they understood what to do to fix the problem. I feel compelled to quote two of the responses verbatim:

Student 1 [my comments in brackets]: "The comments that I have received back on my paper were helpful. [And yet she followed none of them.] I thought that you were trying to make me understand that was [sic] no point to my paper. Well there was, [says you] but just not a clear one. I was unable to fix that part of the essay because of lack of time, considering my new job has completely taken over my life. Anytime I am not attending school, I work, therefore I have lacked in school work and my grades ave [sic] slipped. [OK, so we see where your priorities are.] Anyways, I had plagerised and I fixed it. My grammatical errors were small but they were also there. I fixed it. But the main point of the one on one conference was to get a better understanding of how I could make my paper better. To be totally honest, it probably would of [sic] made more sense if I liked and was in [sic] the topic given. Being that the essays were a little boring, it made me not take the paper serious and just write whatever just to get it over with. [And boy do teachers love hearing that.] I am not happy with the way I went about writing this paper. And since this analysis part was missing, I probably failed it anyways. But here I am writing it because I would rather get a C rather than an F. [Again, something teachers love to hear.] I promise to work ten times harder on my next paper, considering how serious papers are taken in college. Sorry about the inconvenience." Inconvenience??

Student 2 [again, my comments in brackets]: I understand what you mean by looking deeper into the essays, but I have a lot of trouble doing it. I'm more of a literal person. [Apparently she doesn't understand that paying attention to details and specifics is "literal."] I added the "physical importance of nature" paragraph because I feel that it was important to prove my point. Nature provides the essentials for life on a deeper level, but the physical level is there too. [And yet her point was supposed to be to explain what the authors of the readings are saying, and neither of them talks about the importance of nature to our physical survival. But in her estimation, because she wanted to say it, it's worth saying, and I'm just too stupid to see its validity to her argument.] I corrected the 'misread' and 'not necessarily true' portions." She corrected them partially, perhaps, but nothing else. She changed about 10 words total, across five pages of "revision."

I grant you, these two students are the exception, but after the rush of anger I initially felt (you truculent, arrogant, ignorant little snots), I thought, "OK, let 'em go. If they don't care about learning anything or don't believe I know what I'm talking about, they have three choices: they can drop, they can do what I ask, or they can continue not to do what I ask and get the grades that come with that choice. Their decision; no skin off my nose."

Still, I am waiting for student 2 to turn up in my office to complain about the reduced grade on her "revision" (reduced because, well, the assignment was to revise, and she didn't; she's actually lucky I didn't flunk it).

Most of the students' revisions consisted of a few changes that don't go very deep, but they're very new at this, so I'm not surprised or unhappy. Conversely, I am delighted when I run across the papers that are genuine revisions, with actual, real live rethinking and reworking going on--and usually a better result. I know they'll be frustrated that their grades don't suddenly rise to A's (and some don't rise at all--though at least they don't go down), but a few made significant enough changes to raise their grades quite a bit.

Doing this, however, I always think "Damn, I need to give lower marks on those first versions so I have somewhere to go with the second ones." I also tend to mark a little high with the first batch of papers (though I'm sure the students would be shocked to hear me say so): I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because, if I were to give them honest appraisals, I fear they'd be so discouraged that more of them would disappear and sooner. I truly do not want to chase them away or make them feel despondent. It's this tightrope walk, always, between providing encouragement and telling the truth about where they are. Seriously, I wish I could teach and never, ever have to assign a grade. Just providing an evaluation would be hard enough, as even then I'd have to say to a lot of them, "This is not good enough for this level. You are not where you need to be to succeed." I'd much rather build from wherever they are and not have to measure them against any external standard. This is why I used to love tutoring in the Writing Center: I didn't have to measure, I only had to help. And that part, I love.

Here's hoping I can hang on to my patience and not get insanely crabby while I crank through those 36 remaining papers....