I honestly don’t think I’ve ever made a grading goal in my life: I usually get tired and quit with a few left. I thought I was going to do that again tonight, because I got tired and my brain started wandering around looking for distractions pretty early. I took a break, then went back to it. In the end, finished two whole classes of essays today.

It is important that I got all of these done because this is the last week of the trimester and I’m getting final projects from three of my classes, which means I’m going to be reading a lot more this week and weekend. It means I can go back to school and feel better about starting the week fresh. It means that the students will get feedback that they can use to finish this final paper.

It also means I stayed up too late tonight and tomorrow will be tough, but not as tough as it could be if I had the essays still hanging over me. The excitement of actually finishing gave me a second wind, so I feel more awake than I should, especially given the rough weekend we had here.

I don’t have a whole lot more to say, since I pretty much spent the entire day reading and grading essays. Thank god for Dak, who made food and took care of pretty much everything around here. He’s amazing. Thanks also to my sister and brother in law, who invited Annika to hang out yesterday and today. Thanks to my friend Lora, who kept me company for part of the time while I was grading. I have a lot to be thankful for this weekend.

Tomorrow, back to the grind.