This is the end, beautiful friends, the end.

Of portfolio responding, of course. For now, anyway.

I am a tad exhausted, what with the early rising and the lightning-fast typing of comments. Over the past couple of weeks, I have composed, I think, about 120 pages of comments. That's probably more impressive than it sounds--about half of those pages have a table in which I insert comments correlated with outcomes. And there's a certain amount of recursivity in writing comments correlated with outcomes. It's shocking, for instance, how many students should strive to be "meticulous" when it comes to citation, using the "As Author X says in Source Y, 'blah blah blah'" method of attribution." Even so: whew.

In a half hour, I have a class in which there are exactly no structured activities happening--a class in which I had forgotten I would be observed (post-tenure review). I can, of course, defend this unstructured day pedagogically, but just didn't think about being observed amidst the unstructure. And how many students will there be, exactly, two days before Thanksgiving (which, as we all know, is a major national holiday and therefore students can't be expected to attend class two days before it)? Will anyone be prepared to do their genre presentations? Not that they have to, but will they be?

All these questions will be answered in the Lord's own time. Or by 2:30 p.m. today, whichever comes first. In the meantime: no more portfolios until December whatever. Tenth.