annoyedAh, the end of the semester. Not just the end of the semester--the end of the Spring semester. Good times. Everybody is going nuts, my inbox is full of Very Special Excuses and Panic*
Not, of course, that there are not legitimate excuses. Because of course there are. But, really, day after day after day of panic and illness and family emergencies and car-related emergencies and oversleeping and crazy stress and oops I've lost my computer and oh no my computer died and multiple deadlines.... yeah
This is not helped by the fact that they've started group presentations this week, and many of them seem to be doing amazingly half-baked work. *headdesk* I dunno-- end of the year? Groups not gelling? Not really caring? See, it's not that there haven't been excellent presentations. But.... I'm hoping that things pick up later in the week, because if they're all at the level most of them have been at so far, it's going to be wretched and boring for everybody. And a pain in the tail to grade (not least because, upon careful re-reading of the assignment, it's not that they're getting it completley wrong,, it's just that they're being ridiculously broad and giving no details and just providing a laundry list of "Our topic is X. X is very important. This is what X is. X originated in the following location." And
*Very Special Excuses and Panic are a known academic phenomenon. Seriously; "The Chronicle of Higher Education" has an entire forum dedicated to their
