the 13th week, and I'm sick

This is the 13th week of classes. There are 16 weeks in the semester, plus the week of finals.

It truly amazes me how few students realize how little time there is left. These are the students who just let classes happen to them. These are also the students who (once they realize how little time there is left and what their grades currently are) expect me to be available for them 24/7 when they haven't been doing what they were supposed to be doing all semester long. I want to look at these students and say, "You do realize there are only 3 weeks left in the semester, right? What do you expect to accomplish in those three weeks that you haven't accomplished in 13? And why do you expect me to be supplying you with a lifeline? Shouldn't you be the one doing all the effort here?" At the same time, any effort that someone can exert should be exerted....but it ought to be student effort, not teacher effort.

It's just that I have no more energy to give to the students. I am sick. I have the kind of cough that keeps going until something is coughed up, and the more I talk, the more something somewhere decides it needs to be coughed up. So I am a coughing, wheezing, head-achy mess. But I am here. I am here so the 005 students can have every possible moment to work on their portfolios before turning them in and I am here so the 102 students can have feedback on their research paper progress. I may cough up a lung while I am giving the feedback, but I am here.

And that is why I am especially crabby about the 13th week of classes. Despite feeling horrible, I still come to work to do my job. I don't just hole up somewhere and pretend the world doesn't exist and then expect to pick up precisely where I left off as if my absence really did stop the world for a moment. Some students seem to think it actually works that way. And then they expect me to do the work of catching them up for them. Where does this come from? Did their high school teachers do this? Do their mothers do this for them? Whose life honestly works that way?

When I'm sick and recuperating in bed, it means I get up to twice the laundry and the dishes and the kids feeling especially needy or the stack of papers to grade is twice as high or whatever. That work doesn't just go away. I don't just buy more towels or underwear or paper plates and hand the kids over to someone else for a week. Granted, the kids have gone two days without baths, but hey, they are fed and in clean clothes, so who's going to notice the linty line in the crease in their necks, right?

I just really hope the 11:00 and 2:00 classes have their homework done today. That's all I'm asking for. I'm here to teach. Just please come prepared, so I don't feel like I am dragging my half-dead body here for no reason at all. If the students are not here to learn, then what do they honestly expect from me?