Counting down

The last week of classes is over, and all that's left is finals week.

The first half of the semester was brutal, you guys, and I was calculating the ratio of days completed/days remaining pretty much every other day. Somewhere around the middle of the semester, I finished most of the writing tasks that spilled over from my sabbatical due to the combination of my own ambition and COVID weirdness in academic publishing. Also around the middle of the semester I was able to start using previously recorded content for one of my classes, and the weekly to-do list became less overwhelming. This is all that remains:

• I have some minor admin tasks for my grad class, but all the hard stuff, including all the grading, is DONE.
• I have to do some easy last-week-of-classes grading for one of my undergrad classes, get their final cleaned up and ready to give in both online and in-person versions, and then grade it afterward.
• I have to grade 38 student writing assignments. This will be hard and painful and also temporary.

You know how I was just posting about the value of cultivating optimism? I have a student in danger of failing, who will not graduate if she does not pass. In the pessimist approach I would waste time and mental energy imagining the post-failing-grade meetings with the student and the department chair in which there is gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands and pressure to change a well-deserved F to a passing grade. What would an optimist think about instead? How about this: Maybe she will take my most recent warning to heart! Maybe the next two things I grade will be vastly better than the last thing! (Maybe I can email her a concrete suggestion tomorrow to ensure that she gets some last-minute input. I just have to think about how to do that without throwing her most recent peer reviewer under the bus.) And probably, even if this course doesn't work out for her, it will be mildly, temporarily sad and uncomfortable and then it will be over. Probably. 

I'll let you know how Operation Glass Half-Full works out.