Procrastination

I'm in Advisement, and there are no students, so of course I'm not grading any of the papers I brought here with me; I'm noodling around at anything else instead. I just had a nice conversation with one of the professional Advisers here about lives outside of work, and now I'm blogging.

I'm a bit unhappy right now about the revisions I collected today from the Short Story class. Two of them I suspect may maybe be plagiarized, so I need to type them in for the plagiarism checker. I'll be relieved if nothing turns up; even if the student got "too much help" from someone, I'll pretend the work is legitimately the student's own and let it go. But I do resent the time it takes. I was a little disappointed with the class--but not actually surprised. Only three students had read the story we were supposed to discuss; they'd been frantically working on their revisions instead. Fair enough. We ended up talking first about questions/concerns about their final papers, then about the structure of the course in general--and they've got me thinking about possible changes for next semester.

The commentary that is influencing my plans for spring was regarding whether the mini-papers are useful. Somehow, despite all I said (and wrote), most of the students didn't grasp the idea that the mini-papers were prep for their bigger papers, just as they didn't grasp how reading journals also are prep for papers. Several students were saying they wished they'd been able to do the proposal process for all their big papers, not just the final one, so I asked if I should do that instead of assigning the mini-papers. But then the debate began. Some had found the mini-papers very useful--and liked the chance to have the low-stakes chances to find out about my grading. Others, the ones who hadn't seen the connection between the mini-papers and the other assignments, thought I should make the switch. They did admit, across the board, that I told them that the journals and mini-papers were tools to get them to the big papers, but they said "somehow" they still thought of them as separate assignments and therefore just as something to complete for their final grades, not a useful tool.

So now I'm wondering if I should call the assignments something else. Instead of calling them mini-papers, should I call them preparatory papers? Should I refer to reading journals as idea logs? A lot of this teaching gig is really psychology: what is happening in their heads that makes them behave in X fashion, and how can I influence that with the way I present things?

I will say, I'm happy with the idea that each journal is 1% of the final grade--though many students still tend to blow them off. However, if I call them idea logs, that may mean reworking the structure of the assignment (certainly the instructions), but then they might more fully understand how each percentage point works toward a paper assignment. The more I can indicate the ways in which the assignments are interconnected--through language and through the grading structure--the better. As I'm writing this, I'm thinking maybe I can include journals and mini-papers in the grade for each paper: the paper is worth 30%, say, but that includes X percent from idea logs and X percent from preparatory papers...? Hmmmm. It's something to consider. I might be able to do that for the comp classes, too, tying the journals to the paper grades. Never thought of that before.

The 102 students were ready to fling their papers at me and run until I suggested that they not look at their own, just read someone else's specifically to find and fix bozo errors and formatting or citations. They did that--and still finished up about 45 minutes early. It was great for me, as I was able to return to the office for a leisurely lunch and a little staring at the walls before I had to come here.

And now my time here is done. I'm going to post this without rereading at all and head out. I'm going to return Little Dorrit to the library, post some more fliers, and head to my office. I'll be here until heaven knows when, but not too late I hope.