I have been up for hours, literally hours, grading. Two of my four online classes are finished, so I decided to get the grading done, since I couldn't fall back asleep after I woke up at 1:30. So, I graded the final research essays, did some checking to make sure that I hadn't overlooked anything in the gradebook, and submitted final grades. Submitting final grades isn't automatic. I have to toggle between 2 tabs and enter in each grade. But I now have submitted final grades for 2 of 4 online classes.
Am I caught up with grading? Goodness gracious no. It's the time of year when I won't really be done for another week and a half. Papers are coming in, day and night. But it does feel good to make progress.
Let me also remember that I continue to try to capture poem ideas. Some have been in my head for months: every time I see a tattoo, I think of a colleague who had a tattoo of a tomato plant on his arm, and I've been trying to capture that tattoo and give it a deeper meaning. One idea came to me in a rush when I saw someone's online outrage post about a recent vote about allowing drilling/mining above the Northern Boundary Waters, which reminded me of a friend who died recently, and I tried to write a poem about both northern and southern waters and boundaries. Neither poem is finished yet--in fact, I have yet to have crafted enough of them to know that I have a poem or just an idea.
Next year when my year-to-year contract converts to a tenure track faculty position, I'll teach one less class each term, and I'm looking forward to seeing if I get more writing done--by which I mean not just writing but actually getting to rough drafts and revised drafts.
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