Beginning of the end...

So, today, I picked up the last paper from the students handing in a physical copy (few enough that I'll get them graded tonight).  The electronic copies are due in my email or through the course site by midnight tonight.

And today's assignment is setting up a blog and posting the address on the discussion board.  Tomorrow, their first post is due.  They've got four posts, total, and I'm assuming this week is going to be a shakedown week for getting it going, and will be lenient on grading the blog posts. 

We have five class days left for the semester, since today's are over.  And final exam time (which is going to be thus: they email any revised papers to me, since it doesn't make sense to hold a final exam for a skills-based class). 

Teaching, actually standing up and teaching the class, is now done.  For the rest of the semester, I'm doing nothing but grading, and perhaps answering questions for students who need a bit of help.  I hate setting it up like this, but I know how my university's professors work: they all, each and every one of them, wait until the last two weeks to either assign big projects due the last day of class, or have more than one major project (that they assigned within the last week or two) due during the last two weeks of class...or else they're cramming three more tests that they'd planned into the last two weeks.  My students do not need to be stressing about my writing course when everything else is being dumped in their laps at once. 

So, for the last two weeks, they're blogging.  And actually physically being in class is optional, since they've got more stressful classes all dumping on them at once, and there are only so many hours in a day for homework. 

When I'm not grading, I plan to be writing.  I got on a roll during the last half hour of office hours today, and managed to transcribe a bit of Detritus, bringing the wc total on that one up to 21,500--which is fast typing, for me.

And then...then, after May 1, I'm done with campus.  I'll be picking the girl-child up from preschool on the next Monday, while Odysseus is taking his final in one of his classes, but that's about it.  The kids will have school until May 22, so Odysseus and I will have four hours, three days a week, for two weeks with no kids underfoot.

It's the beginning of the end of the school year.  And while I'm done with the part of class I enjoy, it won't be long until I'm done with the part I hate, until the last of August or the first of September, whenever the first paper of the next semester is due.