Today, I handed back the few remaining graded documented essays, managed the semi-organized turning-in of one set of Writer’s Notebook entries, one set of all four paper drafts associated with students’ persuasive Web essays, one set of early drafts of students’ final reflective essays, and one set of written peer responses to those drafts. Beyond that, I briefly summarized next week’s activities, got class publication groups to turn in their Web site files, which I’ve spent the last couple hours putting up online (there are two groups in each section — one group for the interacting with texts essays, and one group for the documented essays — and they compete to see which group can produce the most attractive Web magazine of the group members’ essays; the group that wins gets first pick of times for the final conferences held during exam week), got them working in peer response groups, alternated between checking in on the groups and helping the few students who were behind on the persuasive Web essays to get their publication drafts together, and best of all, managed not to lose my cool when, about a third of the way through, I said in frustration, “OK, show of hands: how many people don’t have their early drafts prepared?” and all but two students raised their hands. In fact, I think that’s the moment in the class that made me grin the most. They’re running just as ragged as I am, God bless the little shits. So we got through the class relatively intact, and I told them at the end of class to have a good weekend and not freak out too much over all their other work, and told them that next week, this class is gonna be easy like Sunday morning. Which it will be: I do my best to front-load the work so first-year writing is a steady, fast pace most of the semester, until we slow down in the final week before exams when everybody’s like spastic suicidal zombies, walking around with shadowed eyes and half-open mouths.
I’ve managed to get my funding situation lined up so I don’t have to teach next semester. Just the dissertation and me, baby. But I’m gonna miss the teaching; I’m gonna miss it like hell.
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