I should be grading right now, but I just don't wanna. There's just too damn much of it to do. And I'm exhausted. Just plain, flat out, tired. I need another snow day to sleep and do nothing. Yeah, yeah, we had MLK day, but the J and I spent that together. That was nice. We went to lunch, saw a movie, came home and vegged for a bit. It was relaxing.
But oh those midterms hang over head. I am having a hell of a time getting through my terrible class's essays. They're just awful. And I'm going to have to spend part of tomorrow grading if I expect to get this all done by Monday. And I need to. Because a) I don't want them any longer, and b) I need to just finish them. I may have to cancel on the g'parents' this weekend in order to get everything done on top of the reading I need to do. Ahhh, it's that time of the quarter again. Midterm to the end. Thankfully in a couple of weeks is another break, and I just looked, and I actually only have nine teaching days left for this class. There are two group work days and then the final in there, so I only have to teach this 11 am abomination, well, ten more days including tomorrow.
The exams are just awful. The essay exam was in two parts (and this was take home, too. They had an entire week to work on this). Part 1: define Romanticism in your own words based on the power points, the extended definition we went over in class, and class discussion. Then using two texts from the unit, support your definition with the texts to argue that these are Romantic texts. Part 2 was to do the same thing with Realism. A tough but simple assignment. Here's what I got for a definition: "Authors used symbolism, images, and characterization to prove their points." Really? I also got a paper that gave me lots of Civil War history. One of a mini biography of Stowe. A handful of plot summaries. A student who turned in hir exam seven, that's right, SEVEN days late. (I guess a 19 is better than a zero). 7 students who haven't dropped who haven't turned in exams. 25 of the remaining 30 showed up for the exam, and of the remaining 25 in the class, 17 showed up yesterday. Most of whom slept or texted throughout the lecture. I only called attention to it when one student dozed off, almost fell out of his chair, and knocked all of his books of his desk causing a clamor that was hard to ignore. I started out with 35, btw. This is what I'm dealing with in this class. The 12:30? Maybe 1-3 students miss a class on any given day. No one with extreme absences. And only 2 drops. The 11 am is just full of duds, with maybe 5 who are attentive and are trying, and I'm trying to teach to them because they deserve it. They're putting in the effort. But the whole dynamic is just making it hard for me to maintain my smile and my energy. Sigh.
And I'm trying my best to balance my pregnancy stuff with all of this. On a good night, I get about 6-6.5 hours of sleep. It's hard for me to really function if I go multiple nights without 8 hours. I have one or two bad nights a week where I get maybe 2-4 hours. And it's not like I can pump myself full of caffeine either. I have backaches, stomach aches (morning sickness/nausea still), headaches. I have trouble focusing. On top of that a class that takes all of my energy and I'm just done with this quarter.
I think one of my problems is just the schedule I have. Anticipating being pregnant, I thought that I would want the later classes because I thought I'd be tired and want to sleep in. I didn't anticipate NOT being able to sleep in (go back to sleep after waking up mid night), so I'd be better off if I just started my day sooner. But right now, say I'm up at 2:30 and can't get back to sleep and my first class isn't until 11 am, well, I've been up for almost 9 hours already. It's at that point that I'd like to go back to bed. So by the time I'm done with my second class, I've been up for 12 hours already, generally that's when most days end or when people settle down to dinner or something. Then I have office hours after that. And do the same thing every day. So my thinking for spring was that if this continues, then I should just start my day sooner. If I'm up at 2 or 3, then why not teach the 8 am class and the 9:30? At least that way I won't be totally exhausted yet and 2/3 of my classes will be done. Then I'll have a break and teach at 12:30. I'll still be in my office until about 4:30 on MW, but the trade off is having TR off to recover, rest, read, and write (and cook). I'm hoping this works out better next quarter.
I suppose I should get myself together here and get to campus to knock out some more grading. Ugh. But the faster I get it done, the faster I don't have to think about any of this shit any more.
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