Midterm

Dernit, I was halfway through a post about my summer class when Typepad ate it. Maybe it's better that way, though. I wasn't complaining about this class, which is made up of motivated grad students whose midterm feedback suggests that they are surprisingly content, but I was comparing it unfavorably to a different summer online class. Which was a TRAIN WRECK that GODZILLA picked up and munched on for a while before a COMET crashed into it and KRAKATOA covered it in a fine layer of white-hot asphyxiating ash, so maybe I shouldn't blog about it even though it's been a while.

It is much nicer to get results from a midterm survey that mostly says, "Thank you for all of your prompt feedback!" It doesn't say that exclusively, because anonymous student comments are an ongoing life lesson in "you can't please all the people all the time," but the appreciative comments outnumber the grumpy comments by a wide margin.

I am kind of drowning in email. Picture me in a small dinghy with a hole in the bottom, in which I have to row a few miles every day before the sun goes down. But I also have to keep bailing or the boat will sink. That's about the state of my email inbox. But it's only for two more weeks, and then I will finish the grading and go on sabbatical. Maybe I will pronounce it "SABB-a-TICK-le," because that way I can sing it to the tune of the Hallelujah Chorus. I can't think of anything comparably celebratory with iambs in lieu of trochees.

In the next week my students have a bunch of stuff due and it's also the mathiest portion of the class. So...maybe they will be less pleased a week from now than they currently are. But maybe I don't need to borrow trouble just now.