uh-oh.

Okay, so it is the last week of classes here. The week when everyone has papers due.

I had one due today, I collect another one on Friday.

One of my "A" students from the class today comes in, very apologetic, and says, "My printer at home is broken and I thought I'd be able to print up here in the computer lab. But the printer there is broken; there are a couple of guys from Computer Services beating on it right now."

I was able to print his paper for him from my office computer, but that doesn't bode well. The class is a class of 15 people, and I have 10 papers. I really need to get these graded today.

The worst thing - if they don't adequately fix the printer - is that I have a big-giant-stress-filled (as in it's worth as much as an exam) paper to collect for ecology on Friday. And I really really really do not want folks going "I couldn't print it! Can I give it to you Monday?"

Because Monday is exam week, and that really would not work.

I swear that printers in academic settings are built to sense the end of the semester and break at precisely that time; I've seen it happen to the printer my colleagues and I share on this floor - it goes down right when it is time for us to print our exams. And while most of us have printers at home (and I have even run home to print stuff for people who either lived far away or didn't have a printer), it's still an inconvenience.

And while I sympathize with the students, I think I am going to warn my ecology students today that the printer in the lab is acting up and that they better have a better plan for getting their paper to me than "I will print it at 11:59 am on Friday" (the "hard" deadline for the papers is noon and I've basically told them, "Don't even BOTHER if you're giving it to me after that.)

I know people have lots of stuff going on but they have had like a month to write this - and they've known it was coming all semester. It makes it very hard on me to have that kind of grading bleed over into exam week.