happy friday?

i've been so sluggish on doing my own work this week... obviously gone up until wednesday night, but then, yesterday, other than tutoring for 2 hours, i spent time playing with CDs and downloading album art into itunes for all my CDs (itunes doesn't automatically put the art in when you copy in a CD you own instead of buying stuff online)... ever so important and productive, i know. :P

today was good... jessica and i spent the day wandering around peddler's village, just over the border into PA. it's a cute collection of small shops with lots of random stuff. i came home with several non-math books for some leisure reading, and some candy. jessica ended up with some cool jewelry. mostly it was nice to have a slow day and to chat for awhile. it made me happy.

now that i'm back home though, i've finally convinced myself to get grading/writing a quiz for my students out of the way. i hate grading workshops. i believe that they're valuable for the students to practice writing technical prose, and that they should get good feedback on them to help them improve their writing, but making worthwhile comments and actually grading prose instead of right or wrong computations takes a lot more energy. so far i've made it through 1 section worth of papers, and have 2 sections to go. i'll be glad when it's done.

periodically i get incredibly frustrated with myself. i put a LOT of energy into doing things well for my students and other people i work with, and i really want them all to do well. i was sad to see the spread on my students' midterms, but some of the mistakes i saw made sense what they were thinking. i just wish that if they're stuck they'd ask questions rather than struggling through on their own. i *want* them to do well, really i do, and i wish i knew what i could do to make things go more smoothly for some of them. i get the class to talk to me a lot during recitations so that they're actually showing me what they know instead of me droning... i send weekly reminder emails to them of what all's going on and always include a plug for office hours. i already hold double the amount of office hours required just to be convenient and i answer emails in detail at all hours of the day and night etc., etc., etc. i'm as available as i can be (and more so than the average TA) and in class i get them to talk to me and be interactive... i'm doing all my energy level can handle to do plus some, and yet many students are really struggling. i know that it's a two way street and they have to put the effort in too, but i really wish there was more i could do to see more universally positive results.

in the same vein, i thought working with my directed reading program mentee was going really well, up until yesterday when he wrote me an essay to cancel our meeting for this week. he basically said he's realized he doesn't think he's quite ready for the competative nature of math and needs time to explore other things and he's dropping the program for now. from what all he wrote, there are bigger things going on than our meetings that he's processing and deciding what's best for him, which is good. just his essay came as a complete surprise to me, and i wish we could have at least discussed to see if we could format our meetings differently to be more helpful to him or something first. i was kinda sad when i read all he had to say, even though i completely respect it.

summary: i've had a great week of escape, but now i'm getting back to work. i hate grading workshops, and although i'd like to think i'm good at teaching/mentoring, other circumstances (blant lies about math and unclear writing on workshops... my mentee dropping the reading program without warning) make me question myself, and it's frustrating.

hopefully i'll get over myself and cheer up by monday... we'll see... in the meantime, back to grading for me. woohoo?

night y'all.