Waiting for VD to end.

I spent the weekend at Bockfest, having the time of my life, freezing and buzzing and drinking and laughing at drunk people who have fallen in the snow after saying to others shhh! You guys. Don't laugh.

And today, after the awesome people left, I tried to work off some of the 200 pounds I've gained in the last weekend--burgers, Bockfest cake, danish, pizza and pizza and pizza. So I moved up a level on my 30 day shred. (I've shredded nothing, but I'm amazing at crunches and "knee push-ups.") And then I started to grade some of the Crucible papers that my freshmen gave me on Friday.

And they make me want to die.

I can't believe it. Not any "stupidity," not any "lack of skill." But once again, with the classes I have this semester, the amount of fucking laziness. I gave them a near-hour to do peer review, I even tried to monitor and help them as they worked. Half of them didn't fill out their sheets. The same half didn't make any changes to a final draft--even after direct comments about fixing the papers were included on the peer review sheets. And explained by me about 700 times. Over half of the kids forgot a Work Cited page. A fucking significant amount just decided not to directly quote anything in their papers, even though I said: how many quotes do you need in this paper? And they repeated THREE! back to me every day.

I don't even know what to do anymore. I read the instructions to them, we go over it in class, we practice with it, we look at student examples, they have the assignment sheet in front of them at home, and they don't do it. They just don't. They don't even follow the outlines that I've given them, that they've taken their own time to fill out. In class. Not even as homework. We did it in class, and they obviously and quite literally ignore it as they go home and write their paper.

I can't fucking go home with them and watch them over their shoulders. But with these kids, it seems like it's the only thing that will work. I cannot, cannot take this "entitlement generation" any fucking more. The blatant, goddamned laziness is beyond my patience. They're smart. They're lazy. Revision? Too much work. Having to do something again once I've done it once? No fucking way, they say. Wait. You're saying you're only giving me the formula for the Work Cited and not the actual citation? Guess I'm just not going to do it since you won't hand it over to me.

One kid printed off a ridiculously horrible paper and tried to pass it off as his own. Not only plagiarized, but stupidly. I saw his friends laughing about it during peer review day, but I figured I'd wait until he handed in his actual paper to see if he'd still keep the decision to plagiarize.

He did, it seems. I want to write on his paper: Well, it's quite obvious that you printed this off the internet. That's why some of the font is blue and in headers, which I never told you to do, and why this doesn't even come close to what the assignment is. Not only that, it seems to me that your fucking CAT could've written a better paper than this. Did you plagiarize this from your cat? Oh, no, I'm sure you didn't, because even a CAT knows that THE NAMES OF PEOPLE SHOULD BE CAPITALIZED. Your CAT learned this in 1st grade.

At least 25% of my students did not capitalize the names of people in their papers. Well. Sometimes they capitalized the first name, but not that last. Others spelled character's names wrong even though their books were write in front of them. One student spelled her own first name wrong.

That same girl and another handed in papers in which the last two paragraphs were exactly the same. They're in the same class. Somehow, some-fucking-how, they thought I wouldn't notice this. I should find a way not to be offended by this, but I can't.

Normally, I can deal with this. I can say okay. This kid doesn't get it. There must be something going on at home, something that's holding them back. But this trimester it's just so many kids. So many kids that you just have to blame the teacher. So many kids don't get it.

I guess I am an idiot. I guess there is something wrong with what I'm doing this time around--because when I taught the same exact thing first trimester, none of this happened--because how consistent is this shittiness.

I don't even want to teach them writing anymore. It seems, that if I want them to get anything, it's this: READ THE FUCKING DIRECTIONS ON AN ASSIGNMENT SHEET. READ THE GODDAMNED RUBRIC. HAVE THE BOOK OPEN WHEN YOU WRITE A PAPER ABOUT THAT PIECE OF LITERATURE. WHERE DID YOU EVER LEARN THAT YOU CAN BE SUCCESSFUL AT SOMETHING WITHOUT READING DIRECTIONS.

And. Christ. At least learn how to cheat. Handing in the same paper in the same class? Is this a fucking joke?

Is. This. A. Fucking. Joke.

*

Happy Valentine's Day, then. I don't know how much more of this I can take. I don't know if I'm more upset with myself, or with them, or with society, or with their generation.

I guess it's the apathy and the laziness. I guess it's that I feel that I'm working incredibly hard to make this work, to make this interesting, to help them learn how to do something rather than just shoving the information down their throats without practicing. I care about teaching. I want them to be successful. I want them to impress me. At least follow a direction. But nothing is working. They just sit there and expect something to happen, expect learning to occur, when they won't even attempt a homework assignment where they just need to look up three words in the dictionary. Yes--that's their assignment. 10 out of 25 kids won't do it. I'm out of my mind. I don't know what to do anymore. I just want to cry, freshmen class. You just make me want to fucking cry. I see how teachers quit so early on. I can handle a lot, I think I truly can, but I can't handle kids who don't fucking try. They are the ones who will break me.

What a fun day to spend at a coffee shop, listening to a couple look through baby names and decide when they were going to tell everyone "they" were pregnant. What a fun fucking day.

I feel like I haven't been happy in months. It's only been a couple of weeks since I felt that pinch of happy, but the snow, the wind, the kids, all at once, the medication that I've been taken off of. I'm trapped in my head, in my body. I'm fucking trapped.

*

But hey! I have a date on Friday. I refuse to let myself get over-excited about it; I don't think I truly could if I tried. It must be too good to be true. After a day like today, anyway.