I've got a few minutes before my class, and I need to clear my brain out a bit. I'm exhausted, again. I've been grading, I feel like, non-stop for the last 36 hours. Now, it's my own fault. I got these essays 2 weeks ago, but had the misfortune of getting them while I was sick, so I had prep to catch up on first, these got shoved to the back burner, and damn, it's been painful! Most of them are awful. There are lots of reasons why they are awful, and mostly not a result of the students being dumb or lazy. I've got a bunch of students who want to sound smart and who wrote obnoxiously abstract papers that are just abysmal. I addressed this in one class today. Tomorrow we'll talk about it in the other class.

I've got about 22 left. That means I've done roughly 50. I've been grading since 5:30 this morning. I'm moving through them slowly, so I think it's time to step away from them and take the rest of the day off from the grading.

There's nothing really exciting going on except that the last week I've just been really down in the dumps. I'm back to feeling overwhelmed again. A large part of this is because I've not carved out time for myself for my research. And I truly hate that. But I still haven't found my rhythm at all. And I need to. Part of it is that I don't have to as long as my parents are here to pick up the slack, which means I don't have to be too organized and should have all this time to get my own stuff done, but here's the problem. If I want to work, I have to do it in my room or at the office or the coffee house. I can't just sit in my den in my reading chair and read. Not even at 5 am. Someone is always awake. But sometimes at 5, the J is still sleeping, so I can't read or work that early in the bedroom. I think I'm just running out of space and it's getting to me. And I'm stressed about that when I do find my rhythm, they'll be back for two more months and then I'll be right back here. I don't want to sound ungrateful, but I'm just not functioning as optimally as I could.

And it's time for class. Have a good one everyone.