Crunch Time

Next week is the last week of classes, and the week after that is finals. It's Crunch Time, and some of my students are getting crunched. It's kind of sad. I'm seeing normally good students fall behind on their work, hand in sloppy assignments (or not hand them in at all), miss class or snooze through it.

To tell the truth, I'm getting a little crunched myself. I've got a big stack of papers to grade this weekend (of course.) I'm giving two exams on Monday. (I hate giving exams the last week of classes. What was I thinking?) I still have two finals to write. At least the committee work has slowed down, since no one else has time for committee meetings, either.

What can we do about it? I don't think there's any good solution. I do try to pace myself, and to pace my students. I try to space assignments out so they are not all due at the end of the semester. But sometimes you just have to. I couldn't assign the paper that asks my stats students to do some statistical inference until we had covered enough inference to make it worth while. And, of course, when stuff gets pushed back, as my Linear Algebra exam did, there's only so far you can push it. I can't put it off another week. And it's too important to just cancel it.

So, it will be a rough couple of weeks on us all. Then I have a very slight breather before the Little Joggers are done with school. I'll probably sleep until noon every day.

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