A Crazy Cat's Life

In a journal entry about how Senator Barack Obama said that President Bush has fallen short in his role as leader of the free world... "...the President reportedly said that it was the nicest thing anybody's ever said to him and then resumed eating his graham crackers and apple juice." Sometimes I need a good laugh. LOL.

As you can tell from my last post, all that grading just really had me losing my mind. The e-mail I got today, just made it all worth it: "Prof., I just wanted to thank you for an awesome class, i learned alot and really enjoyed how u kept everything so real. So thank you, and have a wonderful summer! " Dammit. How can I stay mad at the kids for their awful papers when I get stuff like this?

And I quote (spelling mistakes are the student's, not mine): "Befor WWII the United State choose to be kept alone and not get involved with any affairs of the world and during those time the U.S. economy seem to be doing just fine." Um. Just fine? We were in the midst of the Great Depression. That's not "just fine." The worst part? We covered this in class. The future is not looking so bright.

Ugh. Has it really been close to a month since I've written? It's been a long week. Heck, a long month. At one of the colleges I teach at, the semester ends in two weeks. We're in what I call "Last Month of the Semester Syndrome" ( LMSS ). It's a panic/fatigue state that both students and teachers go through. Students are crazily writing papers and studying for numerous tests. Teachers are crazily trying to get all the required tests done, the finals written, and grading all the crap the students are handing in. When I say "crap," I mean crap. Last weekend I plowed through 70 3-5 page papers that were the worst drivel I have ever seen. What's worse? It got more painful the more I read. It was a simple "write about something you found interesting sort of paper." It's not like it had a complicated theme or I took off points for grammar. I just wanted them to read more about something that interested them. Well, it seems not a single o...