and DONE. for now anyway, with the 150 student papers. i only lost two. (which makes no sense. i have folders. all the papers go in the requisite section folders, from which point they don't get shuffled, blown around, or rearranged, etc. yet two [very nice, honestly] students insist they turned in papers and now they are nowhere to be found. how is this possible?? and one student is saying her hard drive has since crashed and she might not have the original anymore ...?)
sort of DONE ... because i'm all about uh, "learning" or whatever you want to call it these days, i let my students rewrite their papers to get a higher grade. my only requirement is that they meet with me and so we can discuss their analysis and then they look over a couple "model" papers. i say over and over in my classes (because i really don't want to prepare them for the "real world"? what's wrong with me?), "you don't get a lot of second chances in life, but you do in my class. you can rewrite as many times as you need to, seriously." this just means that at the very end of the semester i will be grading MORE OF THE SAME PAPERS, AGAIN. [sigh.] but hopefully they will be a mite smarter.
[aside: i just don't understand how students are supposed to actually IMPROVE at critical thinking/writing if they're not forced to try it again and work through (with guidance) their stumbling blocks. usually students get a paper back, see their grade and sigh "i'm such a bad writer" or whatever, and then what happens?? nothing. exactly. paper goes in the trash. even though i'm not teaching english at the moment, critical analysis is still a key component, right? don't they ever have to write papers for other subjects?? please god, tell me they do ...]
THE POINT OF MY STUPID STORY IS that i'm finally free to enjoy a whole weekend!!!!
no labyrinthine job apps to write and complete, no papers to grade, no pressing curriculum to design (also last weekend, btw). the dogs decided to celebrate this momentous occasion by waking me up first at 5 a.m. today. then after much scratchy grumbling and profanities and yanking of collars ("booker and lulu you stupid fucks i love you but jesus christ get back on the goddamn bed" but in some kind of hoarse witchy voice best reserved for scaring children at halloween. also, i'm pretty sure i added the "i love you" here just to seem like less of a jerk), i managed to get them to let me sleep until 6:47 a.m., at which point i feared i would be mopping up dog urine if i didn't get up and let them outside.
today or this weekend, i will (perhaps not in this order):
- enjoy going grocery shopping
- delight in running errands
- vacuum (maybe. i hate this. but the dog hair on the floor has started clumping and having small rallies. soon the clumps will start demanding rights and when i refuse them, they'll stage little rebellions while i'm sleeping, attaching themselves to my face and the backs of my shirts, burning my books, etc. i can't give them too much control, you see. it's a delicate power balance)
- take neglected dogs for good long walk
- put neglected dogs in their crate (let's be honest: it's a big cage) for a couple hours while i take a sweet nap (they don't "get" naps, i've learned the hard way. which makes no sense because they freaking nap all the damn time)
- go see a play on campus with amigos
- call my wonderful family back in minnesota
- clean out rotten food from fridge (maybe. depends on if i feel like it)
i'm also going to be posting a few other things here and there ...
got a lot of stuff jotted down i've been meaning to ... you know, make public for no reason whatsoever. the blurry dogs-in-motion pic is an old one from last summer. they WERE JUST PLAYING. seriously. they're funny like that. now lulu bites the shit out of booker.
1 comment:
so, what did you end up doing? i would guess it didn't take you all weekend to take your 8th grade science quiz.
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