End of the Semester Slide

About this time in the semester—only two or three weeks to go—I turn into Gollum. I’ve been cloistered in an office, either at home or at school, grading papers pretty much non-stop. My skin is hanging in dehydrated bags and has paled to a milky-grey, my eyes are bugged out, only the muscles in my pen hand are still functioning, and I’m referring to myself in the third-person: “Shall we make a fourth pot of Italian roast, Precious? Those crème brule truffles will keeps us awake, darling.”

By 3 a.m., the comments I make on essays have gone from “I love the way you relate the story’s setting to its exploration of existential angst,” to “No clear connection between this paragraph and your thesis idea” to “verb tenses shift here” to “nice font” to “your paper is a rectangle.” In those wee hours, I can hear my synapses crackling as they sizzle and burst into flame.

In addition to my typical end-of-semester anxiety over the whole idea of judgment (grading), I’m also battling guilt over all that goes undone while I’m sequestered—laundry, dusting, Thanksgiving dinner prep (we’re having 15 for dinner at the Row this year), Christmas decorating, knitting & shopping, a holiday letter, attention to spouse, children, friends, parrots, dogs and peacocks, and my own writing. Imagine June Cleaver (picture Gollum in an apron) at the dining room table, dustballs drifting in the drape-filtered light, s/he’s strung out on coffee, doing Beaver’s and Wally’s homework day & night, with nary a pot roast or game hen in the oven for Ward—that’s me.

This weekend, I have 2 stacks of revised essays and 3 stacks of quizzes to grade, 2 stacks of first drafts to comment on, 2 extremely late papers to comment on (what WAS that assignment again?), 2 databases to retrieve student information from for scoring, and woefully behind gradebooks to update.

So how will I spend this gorgeous November day? Maybe I’ll clean parrot cages while Ray hauls up the Christmas stuff from the basement. Maybe I’ll put up the tree, lights and decorations, so the family (most of whom won’t make it back to SD for Christmas), can share in the cheer. Maybe I’ll blog. Maybe I’ll venture outside into the sunlight (with dark glasses, skin slathered in SPF 150), to see if the world’s still turning. Maybe I’ll bake some ginger cookies. Maybe I’ll rearrange my stacks of papers, sorting them numerically by student ID #. Maybe I’ll dust. Maybe I’ll practice my gee-tar.

At least we’s got our priorities, straight. Hasn’t we, Precious?