Argh!

I am a grumpy grumperson today!

I've been up since about 1:30 am. I just couldn't get back to sleep. Our air conditioner is on the fritz, which at least thankfully it's winter, although it's been in the god awful 70s here*, at least it's not June that it went out. And at least since we're renting, it's not an unexpected expense for us. I feel bad that it's an unexpected expense for my landlord during the holidays because we really like him, but what can you do? But again, at least it's not summertime.

One of my classes is decidedly a class full of duds. Only about 3 are reading consistently. One for sure. And I feel bad for him because I feel like he's being short changed here, because it's become clear that they expect me to just point out the "important things" and that they can just mark the passages we talk about in class and not actually do the reading. I don't want to give quizzes because a) I don't want to have to go through the trouble of making quizzes for each class period, and b) I don't want to have to grade all those quizzes either. And I feel like it's senseless to create more work for myself when even with a basic quiz, it's still extra work for me for students who should be keeping up with the reading and not just for the sake of the quiz. So instead, I warned them that for most of them the midterm is royally going to suck and some of them will be in for a rude awakening. And on any given day, 1/3 to 1/2 the students don't show up. Already. We've had nine class periods. I have some who have missed 5, 6, 7 days thus far. So it's possible that they will already most likely fail the class.

Not to mention that I have two super annoying students in that class, too. One of whom has only been there twice, thank god. The other is a nice guy, but jeeeeeeeeeeeesus! He's one of those who has an opinion on everything, which is always contrary to what I say, and HAS to talk to me after every.single.class period. I can't just go to my office for 15 minutes of peace. He.has.to.follow. For example, he argued with me in class and then afterwards about how Poe MUST HAVE been stoned while he was writing. No. And I went over some very specific reasons in class why one cannot dismiss Poe's writings as such. And that I've never read anything by legit scholars (or anyone really other than students) that claimed that Poe was indeed under the influence at the time of his compositions or revisions. His argument for why over 100 years of Poe scholarship is incorrect? He writes under the influence and recognizes ALL of the signs, at which point he told me I should try it, that it would make my writing better. Uh, so yeah, in all of that, you insulted Poe, insulted me, and informed me of your habitual drug usage. Thank you. By the way, in case I'm interested, he's written over 10 novels that if I'd like to read them, he'd be more than happy to make them available to me. Some of which are 600 pages. Yes, indeed, in all of my spare time I have, I'd like to read 600 pages of what I am now sure are novels of your stoner delusions. Sheesh. He also tried to tell me that I was wrong about the Native Americans not being one of the 12 lost tribes of Israel. That he had evidence to the contrary.

Good god it's going to be a looooooooooooooooong ass quarter.

And then the one student in the class who is keeping up with the work emailed me to apologize for his classmates sucking and to thank me for still being able to do a good job and keep it interesting despite the class sucking, which has never happened to me before and which was really nice of him. So I thanked him for keeping up with the work and for doing great work and told him that I hoped he wasn't being short changed because of his classmates.

This is really the first shitty class I've had here, and honestly, I just don't have the energy right now to pull teeth. Perhaps if it were another quarter, yes. But, they need to take some responsibility and do the fucking readings. However, I suspect that many of them are not going to do well on their midterms, which is not my problem, really if they're not reading. Fortunately, the 12:30 class is the total opposite, so my mood  and my faith in my students is always redeemed after that class.

Ack, yeah, so anyway. Only two days left. I have a ton of grading to do, but I really don't think any of it's going to get done until the quarter starts back up. I know that's kinda shady, but honestly, I don't want to spend my break grading. I had thought I'd have the energy to get it done by Friday, but I wasn't expecting to be as sick as I've been. I wasn't expecting James to take as much time as he did. And I wasn't expecting the husband's work party to include families (which is this afternoon), so meh. Some of them probably don't want their grade anyway. I guess it depends on how many students actually turned in their first assignment.

Enough of them! It's making me more sour.

So today I'll finish up James. Tomorrow we're watching a movie, so it's a no brainer for me at least. I should consider working out tomorrow. I intended to go today, but not on 4 hours of sleep, not pregnant anyway. So yes, I'm a giant ball of sourness. But whatever. Only two days. Only three more class periods. No more office hours.

I will try to find the positive for something today--ooooh, yes, I get a nice tasty lunch that I don't have to fix. I don't have to have office hours today. I get to do more Christmas shopping. And I only need to show a movie tomorrow. There. There's my ray of light in this right before break darkness.

*look, I know last year I was all "yay for being able to run out doors all year long without wearing 50 layers of clothes!" but this year I am very nostalgic for snow. I want colder weather. I wants hats and mittens and scarves and sweaters, boots, not flip-flops. A roaring fire. Not mosquitoes (still!) and fire ants. No. It's times like this that I deeply long for Grad City, believe it or not.