Not fun, but done

I'm not happy that one of the last things I had to do this semester was let two students know they were guilty of plagiarizing: not the usual copy-and-paste-from-the-internet thing, but one student used the other student's paper for his own. In fact, he plagiarized his "self" evaluation. I told them they both would fail the class--and I got a very angry, upset, "I won't accept this" e-mail from the young woman. When she left the room, the young man all but confessed his sins: he said, "Professor, don't fail her for the class. Fail me, but she didn't do anything wrong." I couldn't get him to admit that he took work from her paper--although clearly he did--so I was still going to fail them both, but when I got her e-mail, I decided to go ahead and give her the grade for her paper. I told her that her tone was more likely to make me want not to change my mind than to persuade me to change it--but I recognized that she was writing in the heat of the moment and not being very careful about what she said or how she said it. So I gave her credit for the paper, the grade I'd have given it if I hadn't later found out that she'd aided in academic dishonesty--and her grade calculates as a D+. Even if I'd given the young man credit for what he'd borrowed from her, giving him the same grade I gave her, he'd still have failed the class. And she'll still be furious about the D+. I'm fully expecting a shit storm about that. However, if she raises a stink, I'll refer her to the grade grievance policy and we'll follow procedures. She may think my grading is too harsh, but she can't win a grade grievance on that.

Still, just the fact that I'm thinking about this now is sick-making.

On the other hand, reading the self-evaluations (which were really more "now I get to bash the professor a littles"), I can rest assured that I haven't lost my inner bitchitude, that my reputation as ridiculously demanding and harsh remains intact. So that's something.

The other thing to hold on to is that the charming young woman I've been enjoying chats with after class came in after I'd had that unpleasant confrontation with the two cheaters. She gave me a perky hello, and the tone of my response made her say, "Oh, no: are you having a bad day? Can I cheer you up?" I said something that made her feel she had already improved my mood--and then she gave me a little gift. Two actually, wrapped in brown paper and a paper doily, tied with brown twine. I just now opened them: a book mark and a little sign that says, "I work hard so my cat can have a better life." The bookmark I may use. The other goes on the shelf in the office where I have other gifts from students and various other oddments. And I will think of her, and be charmed by the warmth behind the gift.

It's now after 10 p.m.--and yes, I'm still in the office, but I just finished submitting my grades to Banner and my paper grade forms are filled out (Paul will submit them to the office for me tomorrow: thank you Paul). I'm not going to worry about photocopies for the 101s: they're still too tiny to fret about. And I'm going to take lots of copied poems and a few anthologies home with me so I can continue to work on the Poetry class over the break. I'll nickle and dime at the semester prep, when and as I feel the urge.

Right now, I mostly feel the urge to have a stiff drink, or a good cry, or both. But I finished the grading, so I don't have to come back to the office until it's time to start scheduling in January. That feels incredibly bizarre right now, but I expect the relief will sink in slowly, over time. I have to do a little noodling to pack up and make sure I know what the hell I'm looking at when I come back, but then--finally--I can put a period at the end of this semester. I'll probably post to the blog from time to time over the break, but not often--so for the most part, please enjoy reruns until the season resumes in January.

And to all a good night.

Tomorrow, the big crunch (not the of the universe, just my own)

I'm not talking about the idea of expanding and contracting universes here, just what it takes to get through the end of semester. Weirdly, for reasons I can't explain, yesterday I had a whalloping case of the blues: the "I can't get off the couch; I can't do anything but read dopey mysteries" kind of day. I managed to finally lever myself out of the supine position and put in a little bitty bit of semester prep on the spring 101s, but I'd intended to have a glorious, burning, churning, productive day of semester prep. Nope. Didn't happen.

And of course, there was a constant stream of students in Advisement today (who are these people? Don't they have anything better to do, like study for finals, or write final papers, or Christmas shop or something?), so I didn't get any work done. But I have just completed all the papers for students who wanted to get their work back in the classes tomorrow, and I filled out all the final paperwork for the teeny-tiny 101.

So, tomorrow means whipping my way through the papers and unread last-minute reading responses for the lit electives, crunching the numbers, filling out the forms, and putting the grades on Banner. I would be beyond ecstatic if I can get all that done with enough time left over to also send the packet of stuff to be copied for the first few weeks of class for the 101s--though it may not be necessary, if the numbers don't suddenly increase rather astronomically. Normally, there'd be a chance for Bruce to cancel some sections and spread the students around among the remaining sections, but he's already canceled sections: in the time slots when my classes run, I've got one of two sections, the other also being taught by a full-time professor. So we really have to hope for an uptick in registration. In any event, if the classes stay small, I have enough copies of things already that I may be able to fill in what I need just by copying myself on the machines downstairs, without having to call on the Printing office. I'll keep an eye on it all and see.

The same holds true for the Poetry class. Right now, there are seven students registered (all young women so far, which is interesting). I didn't see it on the potential chopping block when I was assigning adjunct courses, but I may talk to Bruce about it tomorrow, see if there's something I could pick up if it doesn't run. There's an unassigned 102, for instance--though I may well have assigned it to a senior adjunct, in which case ... well, I won't get into the minutiae of that domino chain. We'll see what happens, I reckon. But this is the kind of think I'll be working on with Bruce the week of January 11.

I want so shift gears back to today, however. The 101 students were very sweet. One rather annoyed me in her self-evaluation: she said she never did the online discussion board posts because she didn't think they'd be useful (to which I wanted to reply, "How would you know, since you never tried them out?"), but mostly they seemed to have gotten out of the class exactly what I most hoped for: that writing is a process; that to write well, they need to go over their papers more than once; that finding information is interesting; that it feels good to be treated like a responsible adult. The young man with the frat boy demeanor said that the first time we went through the rather involved process I take them through, he couldn't see how it could make any difference, thought it would be just a big waste of time--but by the second time, he was sold on it: he knew it would make his writing better to do the process. The one thing they wanted was more review of sentence-level mechanics--and I can see how to make that part of the mechanics review day. It's hard for me to teach about sentence fragments and that sort of bilge without it becoming deadly dull.

(Oops. Sorry: I'm back. I just went over to see if I could find some humorous ways to teach sentence stuff, and apart from a few rather grand bits on very specific issues, I couldn't find anything on the absolute basics, like, you know, the boring stuff: sentence fragments and that sort of bilge.)

And OMIGOD I just saw what time it is. What am I still doing here? Time to go home time to go home time to go home. I have to be back here way too soon as it is.

One done (well, mostly), two to go

I graded all the papers for the 101 students--all five of them (imagine how exhausting)--and I've crunched most of the numbers: I've done a larger-scale break-down for the students, and I'll have to do a teeny bit more math for the paper rosters (and no, I don't know why we're still doing paper rosters; this place is idiotically antiquated in any number of ways). But apart from that--and reading their self-evaluations, which should be enjoyable--that course is packaged up and tied with a ribbon. Almost literally: the plastic accordion folders I use to carry course materials in are tied closed with ribbons.

And the adjunct schedules are as finished as I can get them. There are some classes I couldn't assign, because I don't know who is qualified to teach them--and I may have made a few mistakes in what I did assign (revise that: I almost certainly made mistakes in what I did assign). But at least Bruce now can work with the preliminary pass and tweak what I've done instead of having to start from nothing.

Part of me hoped I'd get a little further along a little faster than I managed, but I think it's a pretty good Friday's worth of work. I'm going to take the risk of not bringing any papers home with me to grade. I'm trusting that between whatever time I have on Monday and Tuesday before class, I can get through the ones that want comments or at least to know the grade. The rest? Well, who knows. But I'm 99.9% certain I'll be here on Wednesday, finishing up. I "should" take some of that work home with me, I know, but I have a lot of life maintenance to do over the weekend--not to mention class prep for the 101s at least (that I can do pretty easily: all the conceptualization is there, it's just a matter of changing dates and making minor adjustments--and sending the first batch of assignments off to Printing to be photocopied).

I have reached the state of exhaustion when I teeter on the line between total collapse and hyper mania: I fully understand why over-tired toddlers are so hard to put to bed, as I am exactly the same way. Unfortunately, however, I don't have parents to make me sit in my high chair and eat the nutritious dinner they've prepared, put me into my jammies, and tuck me into bed. I have to do all that for myself. (The cats are useless at this sort of thing. They don't seem to have any sense of responsibility at all. They won't help me grade papers; they don't clean the house; they never make dinner for me but always expect me to feed them. Useless. It's truly surprising that I haven't turned them into charming little hats.)

See? That's what happens when I get overly tired: I get loopy and start blathering nonsense. This is a very good indication that it's time to step away from the keyboard and drive very carefully home. I know that tomorrow is another day--and it's nice to remember that so is Sunday, and Monday. And right now, I don't have to worry about a single one of them. I'm stick-a-fork-in-me done for tonight, and that's all that matters.

Comin' in tomorrow, goin' home tonight

That sounds like a country music song, don't it. But no: it simply describes my frame of mind. It is--by my usual schedule--wildly early, the roosters have barely opened their eyes (OK, so maybe I exaggerate a bit), and yet, I'm about ready to pack it in and head off into the rainy night. I didn't get very far today in terms of working on the adjunct schedules, so that has to be my first priority tomorrow. The office is closing early, too, so I have to be sure to be here in plenty of time to get in there before they lock the doors.

As I was in there, working on the scheduling, I gave Bruce a little bit of a hard time because he was apparently going to work right through the department "meeting"/party--which ostensibly he has to be there to run. I had no intention of going to the party part--being the raging introvert that I am--but I was going to be there for the department meeting part. However, Bruce decided not to make any announcements: he felt they'd just be downers, and he didn't want to end the semester on that note. Fair enough.

So I returned to his office, went back to scheduling--and suddenly remembered that I actually had a class to meet at 1:00. It was 12:55. Bruce very kindly didn't harass me in turn for getting so involved in what I was doing that I forgot I actually had another responsibility--and the students didn't mind that I was a few minutes late.

Both classes weren't really classes, as such. I made sure they had their names and a page number in the upper right hand corner of each page of their papers; I made sure they had works cited pages; I made sure that those who wanted to know their paper grade or to receive comments made a note to that effect on the first page of their essays. I distributed the self-evaluation assignment--which is barely an assignment at all (as I went to great lengths to point out): informal, personal voice, no need to think about it very hard. But I did explain the rationale for the assignment. First, as I explained, I think it's important for them to look back to what they knew at the beginning of the semester and recognize what they've learned. It's particularly important for them to have learned something about the actual literature we've been reading (and I didn't mention this point, but this is actually a kind of test for me: if they haven't learned anything of substance about the genre in question, I need to reconsider how I approach the material). However, they can also talk about anything they've learned (like "never take a class from Prof. TLP"). The other reason for the assignment is that it helps me make adjustments, depending on what works and what doesn't--and most important, why X or Y works, or doesn't.

Most of the students were there on time, but there were a few stragglers, so as I waited for them, I started grading papers--particularly the ones for which the student had requested comments.

Between classes I didn't even try to get back into the adjunct scheduling thing. I don't quite know what I did: it was another time of shreds and patches. I know I did some photocopying of poems I may teach, and I shuffled some stacks of paper around for various reasons ... who knows. Anyway, the M&D class ran essentially the same way the SF class had earlier: same spiel, same use of the time while waiting for stragglers.

My favorite bit was the last of the stragglers. She's one of the young women with a train-wreck of a home life but who is dazzling and delightful in class. I'd gotten an e-mail from her earlier today, indicating that she was floundering in trying to find a thesis--but I didn't get her message until so late that all I could say was, essentially, "Finish it any way you can so you have something to turn in." And I told her I'd be in the room until 5:15, so she had until then to finish the paper, print it, and bring it to me. She arrived maybe a few minutes before 5, and we ended up having a great chat. One part of the conversation with her I'd had earlier with two of her classmates (a triumvirate of lovely young women): all three said that they'd had to write their way into a thesis, and two of them said that--for the first time--they'd started with the evidence instead of with a thesis-esque idea. All three of them  had the "ah-hah!" moment, when suddenly the point one is actually making reveals itself. The issue then, of course, is to have allowed oneself enough time to go back to the beginning and rework the whole essay to focus on that point, from introduction/thesis all the way through to conclusion. And that takes time.

As I was talking with the young woman at the very end of class, I realized that this is the first year I haven't given my "panic earlier" speech, nor my "college will change you" speech. Maybe I'll give those speeches at the end of the semester, instead of at the beginning, like I usually do. Maybe those set pieces of mine will make more sense to the students now.

We'll see.

I confess to feeling more than a little anxiety now. That calm, sanguine feeling of yesterday has been replaced with just enough subterranean rumblings of nonspecific worry for me to be aware of it, but not enough for me to do anything much about it. I could, I know, try to manage some of the worry by staying here longer to get more work done, but you know what? I'm coming in tomorrow. Tomorrow is soon enough. I'm with Scarlett again: I'll think about it tomorrow, when I'm stronger. (Always assuming I will be stronger, of course, but I suspect an early night might help restore some of the diminished intestinal fortitude.)

Scattershot

It's been one of those days when I'm not quite sure what to do, whether there is anything I can actually complete or whether I just need to make at least a little forward progress on as many different fronts as possible. I've tended rather toward the latter, though I have cleaned up a few little dust bunny type chores that have been drifting around. Among other things, I got my preliminary final paperwork all set up, so once I've actually read all the dang-blanged papers, all I'll have to do is use my trusty calculator, plug in the numbers, and that'll be that. It's fussy, noodly little idiocy, I know: I don't know that it actually saves me any time or energy, but it feels cleaner and neater somehow, so even if it actually takes more time, just the fact that I don't feel like those pearls are bouncing all over the floor is worth the futzing around.

I also noodled around with the Poetry class prep. I want nice, neat, clean copies of the poems, and I want the poems separate--not two or three all photocopied together in a clump--so I can pick and choose in a more dainty fashion. Again, fussy and futzy, but hey. I'd like to have a selection already pulled together of way more poems than I think we'll actually read, if at all possible. I don't know whether we're likely to get through five a day, five a week, what. A lot will depend on the poems, I know, but I'd rather have too much and have to cut back than have to scramble to find more ideas as the semester is getting hairy.

I'm also trying to get some mental themes going, so I can try to come up with more structured paper assignments. The last time I taught the class--five years ago--I had the students do 1-2 page papers that were close reads, and those were supposed to lead into their longer papers, but it didn't work very well. The smarter, stronger students can come up with themes/thesis ideas through in-depth exploration of the poems; the vast majority need more guidance and structure. But at the moment, I'm looking at the poems I'm pulling out and thinking, "Damned if I'd know how to pull a paper out of this." Well, I probably could now, because of that whole "I have a doctorate" thing, so I could do mountains of research until I felt like I knew enough to say something marginally intelligent. But I don't want to make students use critical sources any more: they had such a hard time with it, and honestly, I got tired of the plagiarism. Still, this class may need a little critical backup, just to give them something to hang on to. I do have some stuff already copied that I used before, and I'm sure I can find some more. I don't mind providing it (in fact, I prefer that: again, it's the plagiarism thing). But all I can think is, "Oh, Christ, that's yet one more thing I have to wrap my brain around and then actually do..."

(Would you like a little whine with that?)

I must say, considering how the day started, I'm feeling remarkably calm and collected. I had to get here early (and of course was much later than I should have been: had a hard time getting out of the house and then hit bad traffic)--because I had to meet with Bruce and Cathy and the problematic adjunct: I may or may not have mentioned this before. The meeting was uncomfortably contentious: there wasn't any good way to address the problems with the guy, and he was primed and ready to read everything we said as hostile (including "and" and "but"), but I did feel that my role was largely to act as the diplomat and mediator: to calm everyone down and get to the heart of the matter. If it weren't for the fact that I hate confrontation so profoundly, and feel so physically disturbed in the wake of it, I'd have made an excellent diplomat, I think. I freely confess that I have my moments when I put both feet squarely in it, for sure: my diplomatic sensibilities fail me utterly on occasion. But by and large, I think I'm pretty good at presenting things in a way that is honest, accurate, but emotionally neutral, so no one gets knotted knickers. So, the meeting ended with everyone's panties pretty well untwisted, I think--though I don't think it would take much at all for the parties concerned, probably including yours truly, to get wound pretty tightly again.

In any event, I came back to the office to find Paul in a hell of a state because he'd blown up at students in his class--quite rightly, I must say--and he was both angry with the students (who were being whiny, irresponsible, immature little shits) and with himself for blowing up and thereby upsetting the rest of the class. So  he and I had a nice little exchange of "This is why I'm in a snit, how about you?" He really is too hard on himself (and again, he really was quite right to blow up at those students), but I understand his frustration. We're all stretched pretty thin, and Paul even more than most, because of all the unmitigated shit he has to deal with in trying to do his job as a member of the Academic Senate Executive Committee.

I hope he's feeling better, has forgiven himself, is in his little apartment down here doing something to relax and take care of himself. I am about to try to straighten out the piles of crap so they won't come crashing down on the cleaning staff; then I'm heading out--unflustered, unruffled, surprisingly sanguine. Maybe I'm just too tired to feel anxious: I have been here almost 11 hours, and on only about six hours of sleep. Or maybe things are that good.

I like that option. Let's go with that.

Bitter? Really?

Earlier today, a colleague came in to the office and said he'd heard about the blog and was interested in reading it. He'd heard that it was very forthright--but that it was also sometimes "bitter." That surprised me. I'm still taken aback. I know I express a lot of emotional states in this blog, and many of them are not particularly pretty, but I don't think of myself as bitter. If my posts are coming across as bitter, I'm not expressing myself as clearly as I'd thought I was. I am often angry, frustrated, annoyed, despairing, irritated, snide, snotty, even raging--but somehow there is a connotation to "bitter" that simply doesn't feel like it fits. I suppose it's the connotations of feeling aggrieved or resentful that don't fit how I feel. I'm sure I've resented some things on occasion and complained about them here, but those moments are transitory.

In fact, despite all the ranting that I do here, I'm actually pretty nauseatingly content with my lot in life, and with what I do for a living. No: not content. Overwhelmed with gratitude. I do something that I feel matters profoundly; I do it very well, and I get paid for it. That's a fucking trifecta, folks.

I had a realization today that also rather took me aback. I was marking the revisions for the students in the two lit courses, and on one, I actually wrote a rather lengthy comment. This particular student has been driving me mildly bonkers all semester. I think I've mentioned him before: we've had several little tussles over things like the fact that he shouldn't read in class (Student: "I thought the point of class was to read." Me: "No. Reading you do at home. The point of class is to discuss what you've read."), about the fact that his papers aren't correctly formatted (which mostly consisted of my explaining to him 1. that I wasn't going to interrupt the entire class discussion to talk to him about his paper format and 2. that he needed to look it up and not rely on me to explain it). He finally submitted a paper that was formatted correctly, and his works cited page was almost correct--but the entire tone of the paper is very informal and off-the-cuff, and I told him that he would almost certainly hit a point when that would absolutely, categorically not be acceptable, and that in years past I wouldn't have accepted it.

And that stopped me. In years past I wouldn't have accepted it. That's absolutely true. The former student who wrote to me over the weekend about how I taught her how to write got an experience from me that my students don't get any more. No wonder they don't drop in droves any more: I'm not as hard as I used to be.

I keep poking around in my psyche to see if I feel terrible about that: if I feel any sense of shame or self-loathing that I've let my standards slide. Perhaps I do, a little, in the farthest corners, but mostly I realize that I've changed because I cannot, in good conscience, demand of my students a kind of writing that they have not been taught before. The only way I would feel right about hiking my standards up where they used to be would be if I spent the first weeks of the semester working just on writing skills--a crash course in composition--and then started to work on the literature part.

When Paul and I were talking earlier, I said that I'm really thinking about having the first assignment for the spring's Poetry class have a required conference component: Students would have to submit a paper, which I would mark. They'd then have to meet with me with a carefully considered revision plan. Then the actual revision would be optional--but having to at least meet with me and consider revision would give them the experience of talking to me about their papers, give them the idea that revision is desirable, that sort of thing. That's about as close as I can come to doing what I really want to do, which is to teach the lit courses almost like I teach 101: read a little, then write a lot.

This is also probably the first time I have ever said out loud that I wish the semester were a few weeks longer. I really wanted to get a lot of semester prep done before the break--and I at least got a little bit of a start on the poetry class today--but I'm not going to have things anywhere near as nailed down as I'd hoped. Thursday I have to start work on the spring adjunct schedules for Bruce, so I'll be in here on Friday, either grading papers or working on semester prep or a little of both. I don't quite know what happened to the assignment schedule that the second papers for the lit courses came right on top of the final papers like this, but that's what's screwed me up: I'd usually have two weeks in here when I'd have nothing to do but semester prep, and instead I've spent it frantically grading papers.

Well, pretty soon it will all be over but the shouting.

And holy God I just realized that it's almost 9 p.m. Where has the day gone? I have to get out of here. Gone gone gone....

Another quickie

I'm trying to get a bunch of stuff marked to return to the lit electives tomorrow--but of course I ended up having a wonderful talk with Paul instead of just putting my head down, ignoring him, and cranking away. Still, I'm hopeful that I can get through a bunch of it in the morning--especially if I can get my fanny out of bed and here to campus without dawdling.

I had a brief moment of excitement when I walked into Advisement to find it empty--Oh, heavenly day, you mean I can get my own work done?--but by the time I sat down, there were students to be seen, and although it wasn't packed, there was a steady stream, so, well, there went that plan.

Class was fine. They're just churning through the process.

The main thing I want to record is that this weekend I got an e-mail from a former student from way back: she was in a section of Nature in Lit somewhere back between 2007 and 2009 (her years at NCC; I haven't been able to track down exactly when). She is about to graduate from Adelphi with a master's in social work, and she wanted to thank me for teaching her writing skills that she's used all the way through her academic career to this point. I wrote a rather babbling and incoherent reply, but it is hard to convey the combination of gratification, gratitude, honor, and humility one feels at receiving that kind of thanks, especially so long after the fact.

This is why I do what I do. This is why I fight the rear-guard action from the trenches. This.

And now I have to dash off--but I'm actually looking forward to tomorrow, not just because I'm hopeful about getting those assignments back to the students but also because I'm looking forward to talking with them about the end of the readings for both classes. It should be grand.