Finally getting in gear

This weekend I have a handful of papers to grade. (Will I get them done? Who knows?) Finally I'm getting out of the phase of doing continual overhead and setting up, so I can actually teach courses. Over the last two or three weeks, I have averaged something like 15 hours a week on plain old "overhead" tasks. (Making copies, trying to figure out the latest software glitch, revising courses to conform to the boss's last-second changes, etc.) That's, of course, in addition to 18 hours of actual in-class time per week.

My most vivid task at NCSC appears to be dealing now with all the students who approach me in a breathless panic:

• "MY CAR DIDN'T START THIS MORNING!!! ARE YOU GOING TO KICK ME OUT OF CLASS???"
• The assignment said to write about my reaction to the essay and I used "I" and "me" but the writing center said I did that all wrong. Am I going to fail the course?

I guess I should welcome this. It's quite a contrast to the football players' attitude that all they have to do is sign up for the class, look bored, and occasionally turn in a late paper and — because they are so incredibly valuable to the team — they will pass and get a diploma that will make them rich.

Still, it just wears me out. Apparently these students had teachers who didn't know how to teach or grade, so they picked on the most trivial secondary issues (The printer printed this on both sides of the paper. Will it fail?) instead of trying to actually teach content. Once again, I find that my main task is dealing with the psychological damage. And that's not even taking into account the bias in Freshman English courses toward course designs that flunk people. (Yes, I failed two last semester because they couldn't figure out the software necessary to submit an electronic portfolio. That's the way the course was written by my superiors.)