The Long Eighteenth

We’re well into the fun part of the semester right now, when you are sliding down a chute and getting ready for that little bump at the end.  In my case, that little bump is end-of-term grading.

As I sit by my desk, I’m surrounded by little piles of papers: papers to be graded, papers already graded, committee work, random stuff, etc. etc. 

There is a peculiar rhythm to the end of semester.  A final week of desperate calls, emails, and conferences, a strange in-between calm when people are off obsessing by themselves, followed by a rush of papers to grade.  There are always a few stragglers to track down, too, and the feeling that time has run out, and I need to make some final decisions about their work and my own this term. 

As I surf the internet, trying to google what seems like a potential plagiarism case, I come upon an excellent Foucault course website here, created by John Protevi, a French prof at LSU.  And, I think, well, at least someone is teaching this stuff well.  And, with the site tagged, I can thank my student (perhaps not a plagiarist, after all) for leading me back into what interested me in teaching in the first place.  But first I have to finish grading these papers.

DM