striving for calm

Oh, my friends.

I am trying very hard to hold fast to that good feeling - the thought of all of Creation dancing for joy - but it is hard, sometimes.

It is especially hard when you have assigned a research paper on the 2nd of February, to be due tomorrow, and have three members of a fifteen-person class basically admit to you that they had not begun the paper as of 3 pm yesterday. (I will say, in order to be "fair and balanced," that one student in that class has met with me several times about the paper and has ALREADY HANDED HIS IN.)

I had one person - who apparently slipped through the cracks somehow - call up and leave a message last night asking me "if there were any topics left?" No, I don't think it's my responsibility to make sure everyone has a topic by a certain time. They had the assignment, I told them they needed to choose a topic from my list, I harped on this danged paper at least once a week (as in: "don't forget to be working on it") since I assigned it, it is in the syllabus, blah, blah, blah. They won't get that much warning about deadlines when they're out in the working world.

I called him back this morning (and had to leave a message). I gave him a topic. Oh, yes, I gave him a topic. The very HARDEST of the remaining topics. And the one he's least likely to be able to buy an existing paper on. And you know? I don't care. He had a month. I am busier than most anyone in that class and I manage to find time to get things done, even things I don't want to do. Even things I "have" to do because I'm apparently the responsible person, the "George" of "Let George do it". In fact, when I was in college, I would have been grateful to have had a month's warning about having to write a paper.

I remind myself: you are the only person whose behavior you control.

But I also have to admit I'm not lookin' forward to grading these papers.