Awww, man.

I teach journalism part-time at my alma mater. We are now in week 6, I believe, of 16.

My dept. chair refuses to let me out of my little box, even though I'm capable of teaching other classes, so every freakin' semester I get stuck with the intro course. On the one hand, it's great, because there's very little preparation for each semester -- just some tweaking of the readings and assignments. On the other hand, just how many times can you teach freshmen and sophomores how to write ledes without going mad?

I am so sick my boss actually sent me home today. I have almost no voice, and am sneezing and hacking to death. But, I had two things to do for work anyway, and now I'm up grading papers, and their work just completely sucks rotten eggs.

All I asked for was a short, 3-paragraph news story. I gave them ALL the facts they needed. Soooo, NATURALLY they went and made things up, and tossed in their opinions on the matter, and misspelled the country name (the event took place in Colombia) when I had it spelled right on the fact sheet I gave them.

Somebody please tell me it's not me, it's them, because this is a real confidence killer. I mean, I had grades of 2 and 4 out of 10. Am I expecting too much? Am I not getting through? Does it have anything at all to do with me, or are they just irretrievably stupid?

I dunno. I used to feel a lot worse about stuff like this, and then I decided they were adults, responsible for their own work -- but to see it this bad this far in makes me doubt myself. I usually get at least one freelancer candidate out of my classes, and so far there isn't a one I would recommend to my boss or former boss to write stories for them.

Worst of all, it's almost 11:30 and I can't even go to bed yet -- I have to write a current events quiz!

I used to want to be a professor, but I'm strongly rethinking that!

Candy