done in two ways.

Good done:

I am done for the day. After this I can power down, go home, put my feet up, and decompress.

Not so good done:

In lab this afternoon - which I set up as a self-paced lab because it does take a bit longer than the prescribed lab time, most of the students are free before the start of lab, and frankly, I'd rather be done before 5 pm as well, so I just told them in lecture, "Here's what you do. I'll be in my office writing an exam if you want some help."

Anyway - most of the students did the lab successfully on their own. A few came with minor questions which were easily taken care of.

One of the chaps, though - someone not known for his attention span or general interest in classes - came in late to lab. I asked him (I was in the room anyway, setting up for Wednesday's lab) if he wanted help. He said no, and then proceeded to wander aimlessly about for 20 minutes.

(this is one of my pet peeves. I realize it is petty and it is very much "my stuff" but it irks me when someone has something to do - especially when other people's time is impinged upon by their not doing the thing promptly - and they lollygag and procrastinate and generally fart around. Though fortunately, I later found out his lab partner - more diligent than he - had come in on his own and done the lab, so he might as well copy the data from him. So what if he doesn't know the procedure for the exam; he was warned.).

Well, next I looked over and I saw the guy copying the introduction and materials and methods - basically the first part of the lab write up - off of another guy. (They do lab books in this class; I have them do it like the standard chem lab book where you write out in your own words what you're doing, collect your data, and then write up the interpretation of the results at a later time)

I didn't say anything. I could have, but I didn't.

Because, you know? I am so done with that attitude. Done, done, done. Done with the "I don't want to work so I'll get someone else to do it" which is almost invariably followed by pouting or confrontation when I call them on it. Done with the "college isn't important, this class isn't important, I'll phone it in and then get a good job in the Real World when I graduate"

I am so done that I'm not going to fight it any more. I'm going to let the people make their own ropes to hang themselves with. (I did note down who it was who was copying; I'll check his book extra carefully when it comes in).

I have decided - I have limited energy. I am going to save it for the people who give a crap. The people who, like my genetics specialist who is taking a conservation class from me, who comes in and asks me questions about conservation genetics and things like genetic drift and I can see he's making the effort to form links between what he's doing in his lab and what he's doing in my class. Those people I have time for (even when I don't really, literally, have time, even when it means I need to take more work home with me because I took 45 minutes to talk with them), because they care. Because they actually want to do something with their lives.

I am not going to beat my head on the brick wall of people who don't give a crap and who wonder why I bother to give a crap (because that's the attitude I get from people: "Geez, it's only a single paper, why do you care so much that I plagiarized it?") Oh, I'll still give them 0s for plagiarizing. But I won't expend any of my limited energy on them.

I hate doing "triage" like that - letting the ones who MIGHT be savable if I expended a lot of effort and maybe somehow broke through the shell to show them that what they're learning really IS important, but it seems my success rate in that instance is SO low, that I'm better off devoting myself to the people who have already decided that what they're learning is important. Or the ones who may be on the fence, that I can pull over to the Light Side of the Force (or how I visualize it) with a little effort on my part. But the ones who have decided not to care - I'm not going to burn myself out over them.

And hell, they're like 20. Maybe I could justify killing myself to try to pull them back if they were, like, 8. But I think by 20 they've kind of made their bed and it's too much work - certainly work for someone more talented than I - to get them to care.