Tsunami of grading

Well, dammit: the students are submitting their essays. Only three of the students remaining in the M/W 101 have not submitted. The students in today's class have until midnight to submit, so of course most of them have not. Five, maybe six, students were not there today (the "maybe" is a young woman who was out for a long while, came back--because her mother insists that she do so--but to whom I handed an Add/Drop form when she was in class on Tuesday. She cannot, absolutely cannot, pass. I wonder whether I'll see her again.) Of those, one submitted his essay already--not surprisingly. He's an adult, and therefore diligent about deadlines and requirements. We'll see about the rest.

And it is true that the attrition has been slow but steady, but even so, it's just a lot of essays to grade--especially while I also have homework from those classes that I haven't looked at yet, and while I need to stay on top of the homework for the 102.

I am taking the 102 homework with me when I leave today. I know it's highly unlikely I'll get to any of it; I'm worried enough about having time to respond to the essays for the 101s. Both tomorrow and Saturday already have built-in interruptions--at awkward times in terms of when I am at peak productivity--so I don't know how things will proceed, given the number of students I'll be seeing on Monday--and the fact that I won't have tons of time before the next "pig in the python" moment on Thursday.

The one thing I do know is that one way or another (probably another) it will all get done. At what cost to my sleep or sanity, I can't predict, but it will get done. My sense of impending doom about it all arises primarily from the fact that I am already tired, and would love nothing more than to sleep and sleep and sleep.

Which will begin at least in some measure starting December 23, when I am in Montana with the family, and will be a more common occurrence come mid-January, when I am adjusting to the start of the whole new phase in my life.

I will say that the students in 102 were a bit of a disappointment today; they did great in their groups, but when I turned it over to class as a whole, there was a whole lot of silence. I may have to resort to the tactic of assigning a more specific task to the groups, as in, "I'm going to take something specific from each group, so make sure as a group you decide on at least three things you want to discuss or get cleared up." But I also have started to get red flags about possible plagiarism. I might not have noticed, but one student's language is a bit more formal and stilted than is usual for her, and she and another student made the same observation about a rather subtle interpretation--and I'd be very surprised if they came up with it independently. I don't like the idea of having to search for plagiarism, in part because I'd really hoped there wouldn't be much out there about the novel, so there wouldn't be much possibility of plagiarism. We'll see. I'll run checks a few ways--but if they are plagiarizing, I will be very, very unhappy. (And so will the Enthusiastic Adult, whose daughter is one of the possible plagiarists.)

Now, however, I am going to get out of here early--though, since the clock change, it doesn't feel early. The fact that it is full dark out makes it feel quite late, and my body still thinks it's on the old time. (I'm slow, what can I say.) It's also important that I leave now because I have to hop on a train in to the City to meet a friend for dinner. As a pleasant reframe for the day, I am happy to report that I  leave having crossed the P&B minutes off my "to do" list for this week, anyway. We take our triumphs where we can.

"If I only had a brain..."

I'm not sure I'd be as smart as the Scarecrow, but it sure would be nice to know what happened to the brain I used to have. It has been AWOL for weeks now. If I didn't know something about what kind of memory lapses are routine and what kind cause for alarm, I'd be in a panic right now--but even as it is, there have been a couple of moments that have sorta worried me.

But I am still sharp enough that I picked up on some errors in the one promotion folder I'm mentoring, and remembered to do a few little stinky tasks (four assessment reports, for instance) that could easily have disappeared through the floorboards. I am still drowning in stuff to do--and more than a little freaked out about the grading I'm facing this weekend--so pearls may still roll behind the furniture, but it does feel good to have some of the underbrush cleared away.

My usual Wednesday evening appointment was canceled today, too, which bought me a little bit of time. I'd love to burn through a little more, but ... the wall has been hit.

It occurs to me: maybe what happened is, one of the times I hit the wall, my brain was knocked out of my head and acted like one of those pearls. Maybe it's behind a bookcase somewhere...?

Oh, yes: I am tired. When my sense of humor goes daffy, I know I'm running on fumes.

Class today was easy, as they were doing peer review. It was annoying that so many of them were late (or simply didn't show up at all: hope hope, maybe those students won't submit essays??), but eventually they were working in pairs and being at least marginally productive. And I turned them loose as soon as they decided they had done all they could do. I'm not going to try to get them to think more deeply at this juncture. I'll just roll along and let the consequences occur as if I had nothing to do with them.

I do anticipate that tomorrow's 101 will be at least somewhat different. Certainly they were, once again, much more diligent and animated even about the lesson on APA style (which is, I confess, pretty much a snore), so I assume whoever shows up will be more likely to work with some diligence on the peer review process.

The 102, however: well, I do hope it flies. I hope the novel flies. The Enthusiastic Adult (or whatever I decided to call her) sent an email today asking for help so she wouldn't get completely overwhelmed with wanting to take notes about everything. As she noted, "the language is amazing and packed." Indeed yes. I don't know if the other students will respond as well--or see as much--but I can only hope.

As for today, I'm going to tie a ribbon around it: finis. And tomorrow, etc....

35-second post

OK, a trifle more, but definitely on the fly. The student who can't think is freaking out because he "didn't know" that the essay is due on Thursday--and because his score on the final version of his first essay was under a 90 (technically, an automatic failure for the class, but I told him I don't have to invoke that penalty), and because his reading note scores are super low (because he doesn't fucking think.) I explained to him that he needs to get past the initial thought--and it isn't enough to ask questions, he also has to try to answer them. He's getting increasingly sullen, perhaps understandably, but I simply cannot (or will not) lower that bar for him. He has to think. He has to put words on then page. Period. (College now, Sweetie Pie; expectations are different.)

Whatever. He says he "has" to get a C, and I told him that's marginally possible but unlikely. We'll see. I hope he withdraws, partly for his sake, more for mine.

OK, that was more like 3.5 minutes. Gotta go. Steak and bourbon blow-out with Paul and Cathy. Whew.

Gawd almighty

Well, I got everything marked and the grades recorded. So, whew on that score. Of course, when I got to the office, I remembered why I should have been more ferocious about getting essays graded over the weekend: I rather forgot about the fact that I haven't yet done the minutes for P&B, nor have I looked at the promotion folders. (Of course, only one has actually been submitted so far, so ... maybe I get a bit of a break there, but still. I didn't do the sabbatical applications either. Obviously, I am simply a waste as a human being.)

So, I'm hoping to do the minutes during my Advisement stint tomorrow. And heaven knows when I'll look at applications for sabbatical or promotion. Maybe on Wednesday or Thursday, but then I'll be buried under essays to grade--again. Fuck me blind. Seven students have signed up, one after another, on Monday early afternoon. Ye gods and little fishes. I don't yet have the onslaught from the students in tomorrow's class. Oy oy oy.

Met with the Young Taoist today (a better moniker than the young philosopher). We were interrupted by a colleague worrying about her promotion application, and he didn't have much to say anyway; I'm not sure why he came by, but ... cool that he did. I also met with a student from the 102 who wanted to check out the mentoring thing. He's a budding poet (as well as a visual artist)--and of course that explains a lot about his writing. But we had an interesting chat.

I am now looking over at my desk, at the folder of "to be marked" assignments. I "should" take that to Advisement with me tomorrow, but first, see "P&B minutes," above, and second, whatever time I might have left, I want to spend reading the novel I'll be teaching in 102 starting tomorrow. I do need to stay at least one step ahead of the students; I've only read it once, so I don't have the kind of memory for it that I have for things I've taught many times.

Well, whatever. It's after 9 p.m., and I have to be up at 6 tomorrow, in order to vote and then be here to meet with the TIAA representative and then go to Advisement and then go to class and then go to P&B and then go to class....

I may fall over. I'll try to get home first.

Just basically making my own life more difficult

I called a halt to the grading very early today. I did finish everything for tomorrow's class, but I really made no inroads on everything I need to get done for Tuesday. I may be in the office very late tomorrow night, pushing myself beyond tiredness, in order to get it all done.

So, knowing that's what would occur, why did I opt to halt early today, you may well ask? Because I had life maintenance to do. And that took precedence.

I do want to relate a moment when I was grading that let me see (as if I needed more evidence) just how little patience I have left with the students who cling to the "I shouldn't have to work hard or do anything I don't find fun" attitude. A student wrote in his essay, "I think the solution to the problem with high school students being unprepared for college is that college should be easier." And I came within a nanosecond of writing, "And I think you're stupid to think so." Geez. Cranky a little there, Prof. P? I didn't tell him his conclusion was stupid, but I did tell him that he had not clearly demonstrated its validity (or even argued for it) in the body of his essay.

I was thinking earlier about the student who absolutely insisted that college should teach life skills, such as how to do household chores or handle personal finances. We do have a class in personal finances--in the Finance and Economics department--and I imagine that it is both of practical use and academically sound. But I could not get the kid to see that "How to Do Laundry" or "Changing the Sheets 101" are not the purview of an academic institution. "But that's what students need," he kept saying. He's the one who elicited the comment "THINK" on his notes. Interestingly enough, he's rather stopped brown-nosing. Huh. I wonder if the fact that I am increasingly impatient with him has anything to do with that. Nah. Of course not.

But let me close with some positive thinking. Several of the students wrote papers that were damned good. There may be a student or two in each of the 101s who manages to eke out an A. That would be lovely. I hope so.

And I'll leave it at that. May you all have a calm and peaceful Sunday, with no sense of dread about the week to come.

The procrastinator's credo

"Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow."

Could I grade more essays today? Sure.

Will I grade more essays today? Nope.

Will I be kicking myself about it on Monday evening? Of course.

The question then remaining is, so why do I do this to myself? I don't have a good answer to that. It does have something to do with the fact that it isn't that I work well under pressure; it's that I only  work under pressure. If there's no pressure, I can find 400 things I'd rather do. Or even four. Or even one. Anything rather than work.

So, the new challenge that I am setting myself is to just accept that this is how I work, how I have always worked, and to stop whining about it: stop the kicking of self, and simply buckle down as needed to grind through the work. I know I am being ridiculously unrealistic in hoping I can make a huge dent in the grading tomorrow; life maintenance will get in the way and will--of course--take longer than I think. (I know how paradoxical that sounds: if I know it will take longer than I think, why do I not know how long it will take? The mysteries that the mind cannot unravel.)

I know, too, that part of why I am putting off doing more grading today is that I am feeling so discouraged by the essays--and am not looking forward to the wailing or belligerence that will ensue when I return them to students. I expect there will be a wave of attrition after they get these grades, especially as the next essay is coming right on the heels of their getting this one, so they may well get into the "I can't do this" mindset.

And oddly, I find I still care about that. Some of them, I grant you, I'd be happy to lose. (I'd be happy to lose almost the entire M/W class, in fact, if not all of them.) But I don't want them to give up on getting educated. I want them to work hard to get better. It's ironic that I'm working on essays where the students talk about the fact that high school did not prepare them for college and they are demonstrating exactly the behaviors one of the articles points out as problematic: the "do the minimum necessary" thing; the "quit rather than persevere" thing. Someone once told me I fulfill an important psychological function for them, giving them their first experience with limits, with genuine demands, with accurate appraisal of their abilities. All I can say is, it may be important for them but it is awfully damned wearing on me.

Ah well. This too shall pass. Seven more weeks of this. Breathe. Breathe. (And sure, procrastinate if that kinda works. If it works for today.)

"I've been eating for 18 years, and I feel fine; why should I care?"

That was a student's response to the entire agriculture-environment-health topic. I tried to suggest to the kid that it might be nice if he thought about someone other than himself. "I care about my little brother." Or your immediate family. And--to avoid the impulse to just say "get the fuck out of my classroom, you little shit"--instead I suggested that his group mates might talk to him about reasons why he should care. I only realized when I started to write this blog post that the more effective response might have been, "Why should you care? Because you have to write an essay about it, and if you can't come up with something to actually say, you're going to flunk."

I'll breathe in just a moment in order to regain a little patience and compassion, but before I do, let me just state that the "I only care about me" attitude infuriates me. We see it all over the damned place, and it's a significant contributor to everything--and I do mean everything--that's wrong with the world right now.

And--regaining some equilibrium--I think of yet a better response. "Why should you care? I don't know; why should you?" If the kid can't come up with a reason why he should care, the response would then be, "OK, so you don't have any reason to care. Nothing for us to talk about then, is there. See you next class."

As a rule--and as a member of P&B--I don't think I'd consider it good pedagogy to spend the last seven weeks of the semester saying, "If you want to learn anything, please feel free to stay. If you don't, see you next class." But for the last seven weeks of this semester for myself, it may well be the way I can get through it. No essay? OK, that's a zero. Let's move on. No homework? OK, that's a zero. Let's move on. Nothing to contribute? OK, see you next class.

I always said I wanted to retire before I became either completely jaded or overtly hostile to the students--and somehow I'm managing to hit both of those bases at once. Not good for me, not good for the students. Time to go.

On a much happier note, however, I did have some great conferences with students today--including what turned into more of a mentoring session with a student who submitted her essay too late for me to give it a grade or provide any comments, and a very pleasant and wide ranging chat with the Mom of the mother-daughter duo. I want to give her a different identity, though, not just as someone's mother but as a student herself--and she is like a whole string of firecrackers going off, hyper and filled with ideas and quick-fire associations. Paul said he'd find her exhausting. I have a family filled with people with ADHD and ADD, so I'm pretty used to it. And she is interesting, if a bit hard to follow. I also got to praise a student whose immediate affect is that of an earnest lunkhead--but he's actually quite bright and he picked up on a key detail in the poems he was writing about that no one else saw. It was fun to be able to enthusiastically praise him and his work.

And one student is capable of being a real star in the class. He's very quiet (and absent a lot; I think he may have health problems), but his essays are truly first rate. My work with him is getting him to be more focused on just close reading, not making the larger step into socio-historical significance. On a sentence level, I can't find a thing to suggest. Seriously. I'd love it if some of my colleagues could write as well.

So, that was today. I might put in a few more minutes on stuff here; I'm meeting a friend in the city this evening, and I don't have to get a train immediately, so I can noodle around here for a while longer. It would be nice to chip a few little bits off the triage list. And this weekend, I am somehow going to have to find time to grind through the revised essays for the 101s--around seeing my kid sister and going to a talk she's giving and doing general life maintenance. Somehow it will all get done, and I'm trying not to exhaust myself by thinking too far into the future (like knowing that next weekend is also going to be a huge grind, as I'll have first versions of essay 2 from the 101 students--and first versions take a lot more time). But let me now express gratitude to the cosmos. I was not at all happy about taking a 102, initially, but now I am overwhelmed with relief, not only because it's turning out to be a pretty great class but also because their essays are on a different schedule. If I were grading three sections of 101 all at the same time? Well, let's not even go there. The cosmos saved me once again, giving me what was right for me instead of what I thought I wanted. Thanks and praise.