"You go, girl!" and more

Ha, I can't believe I just wrote the words "You go, girl!" at the end of one of my students' papers. I guess that's what comes of grading at 3:30 a.m. Still, I'm getting a little misty eyed when I think of the end of the semester and saying goodbye to two classes that I've really enjoyed. My students last semester made me question whether or not I really wanted to be in this field, whereas the ones I have now are amazing. I'm feeling very thankful to have them and I am certainly going to miss them. The discussions in the junior level class have approached a level worthy of graduate school, and the presentations have been very polished. And my prisoners' plays have continually astonished me. There's something to be said for the amount of time the prison students have on their hands.

Keith didn't win the competition, but he's happy to have made that final twelve. I told all of the playwriting students that they need to submit to the PEN/Prison competition, because I think if they all did, we would have a chance to sweep the drama category. Of course, I think this every year, and only one or two place, but this year we really have a shot. Besides, even if only one person places in each category, that would still be awesome.

Well, I should write more, but I'm tired, and I have to get up at a semi-reasonable hour tomorrow to finish grading before I pick up Morgan and Lisa and take them to my afternoon class. Lisa and I have decided that Morgan needs to see some college classes so that he will realize that college is not like high school. So I picked them up last week (they don't have a car and she has disabilities) and took them with me to campus. They sat in on my class and loved it; most importantly, Morgan loved it. He wanted to stop going to his last four weeks of high school and dive right into college. Of course, this is a problem for Morgan, because he does not have the best track record of high school attendance, and he has been skipping a lot lately due to senioritis as well as to problems with his health and at home. So I'm going to tell him that he needs to put in all four weeks if he wants to have a chance to go to a decent college. I just wish there was more I could do for him; he was labeled special ed. at a very early age, but he's recently had an IQ test that showed he is borderline genius level. He's clearly been bored throughout high school, and because of that boredom hasn't applied himself very well, which means he doesn't have the best grades. I don't know where he'll end up going to school when he goes, but Lisa is just tickled to death that he at least wants to go to college now. He'd been planning to take a year or two off and get a job, but now he says he wants to go as early as spring semester next year, if not before. Of course he has to apply . . .

Okay, I'm feeling dippy, and the cats are purring me to sleep. I need to crawl into bed and slip off into those good dreams I've been having lately.