Well, maybe something will.

But I'm feeling pretty good about the semester, so far. I've been managing to keep on top of the workload (which has not been burdensome so far), and I'm getting stuff back to students very quickly, which has many positive benefits. For one thing, it causes most of them to sit up and pay attention. For another, it centers the moral authority squarely on my side. If there's a dispute or an ambiguity, I must be right, because I'm so darned efficient.

Such a shill game, this teaching thing. So much depends on your poker face.

At any rate, we'll see what happens when the papers actually roll in. I'm hoping not to get swamped, and hoping that the quality is at least reasonable enough that they've made a start from which they can go somewhere. I'm not too optimistic, but at least I know it's not my fault . . . I tell them to choose topics about which they feel passionate (or at least severely interested); I tell them they have to establish points of view and specific arguments, I show them readings that do this - but still they struggle. I'm going to get lots of informational papers - lots of reports.

In the amount of time we've got, I can't let them feel their way into this; they wouldn't get there. Dragging them kicking and screaming (in some cases) isn't awfully darned efficient, either, but I have yet to figure out how to create the shortcuts, the props, the scenarios where I can do something else. The schedule is brutal, in some ways; these are not people who have thought analytically about much of anything, and so they don't have the tools at hand, but they have to pump out an essay every three weeks. (At other schools, I had people who thought analytically about something - just usually not the topic in the room.) This is not a matter of getting reticent people to speak up; it's a matter of learning to deal with people who, when I raise analytical questions, think I'm picking on them.

I'm still at the drawing board, in many respects - but at least they recognize that I am the authority in the room, and work is expected of them. That's a big step forward from last year at this time!! And even better, the handful of yahoos aren't getting me down, because I feel that I have the moral authority. I'm keeping my part of the bargain, anyway.

Ah, well. It's very warm and sunny out there, and I'm done for the day, so I think I'll head home. I'm half-tempted to stay in my office and prepare for tomorrow because it's supposed to be 86 degrees today at home, and how I'm supposed to live in that kind of heat if I can't go swimming is just totally beyond me . . . I wish I'd brought a swimsuit because if I had, I would stop at a state park on the way home. But alas. We had to take the new Subaru in to the shop this morning (body work as a result of a petit stau - nothing to write home about, just annoying), which threw my schedule all out of whack, and I didn't Plan Ahead very well.

Pity about the car, too, because the other car doesn't have a hitch to accept our bike rack. A colleague offered to let me park at her house and ride my bike in to campus. She lives right off the Riverfront Trail, a scant 5 miles from downtown. I brought a road bike with me yesterday and had a fantastic ride to campus and back. It was so-oooo nice to bracket the day with some lung-pumping exercise in pleasant surroundings! And to get home with the exercise component already taken care of . . . I can imagine doing this until the snow flies. And maybe beyond, if I put the snow tires on my mountain bike again . . .