Huzzah! Friday!

This has really felt like the longest week ever. Between the starting of a new semester and the fact that, unlike normal weeks, we saw our kids every day this week, it just felt tedious and long. Plus, my room is a D-I-ZASTER. It's getting better, slowly but surely: I purged some old assignments today that my students seemed unwilling to claim, I reorganized my front table some, and I was making some progress before I left today, but dang, man. There are stacks of paper EVERYWHERE and it is so frustrating to try to operate on a daily basis not being able to find anything.

Also, starting any semester is challenging for reasons that I always forget. Your class lists keep changing for days after the semester starts, so none of your attendance lists are correct. And trying to make a grade book to keep up with the work you assign? Forget about it. I got overly ambitious and made my gradebook because I have already given two quizzes, assigned vocabulary homework and notes homework, and collected a work packet. But now, those gradebooks are wrong. New kids added, original kids gone ... so everything is incorrect. Bah. So those will need to be redone. I've already learned the new names, which is good, but the biggest wrench in the gears so far is that I have one student in APEL who was gone three of the four days this week, and two students in my sophomore class who missed all week. Which means they're already a week behind. Now, the APEL kid will be fine. But these other two kids? They aren't exactly kids that can afford to miss one day, let alone four days. And four days of a brand new semester. ::facepalm:: Poor kids.

The good news is, though, that my class sizes are down to 39. Woo! 39! So that means that the 42 desks that I have are too many, so I might be able to jettison two of them to the outer realms of campus. (Note: I will only be sending two adrift, as having 39 desks rather than 40 would make my OCD-like tendencies kick into overdrive.) Two desks won't really gain me back a whole ton of space, but it's a start. And you better believe that the two desks that I jettison will be the stupid "small desks" that my kids insist on swapping around the classroom, even though I tell them repeatedly that I keep the small desks on the corners on purpose, so that I can easily maneuver around them, but noooo. They keep swapping. And it drives me absolutely batty.

I didn't leave campus today until about 5:30. ::sigh:: I wish I could say that it was productive time spent, but it wasn't really. I mean, I cleaned off my front table, cleaned off some desks, did some organizing of files on my computer, screened the rest of The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged DVD, and rewrote my agendas for Monday. But other than that, I was distracted by colleagues wanting keys and then returning said keys and then staying to chat. I don't think I'll need to go to school this weekend, but the thought it tempting if only to get some copying done for the week as I move into actually teaching Julius Caesar. But I think I'm going to stick to trying to clean up the mess that is my house. I have some chunks of time this coming week where I'll be able to focus on cleaning up my classroom, so I really do think I can focus on my house. But the overall mess that are the spaces I live in every day is really starting to drive me to distraction in every aspect of my life.

So now I'm home, feet up, watching Gilmore girls and blogging. I thought maybe I might have plans with my mom, but I haven't heard from her yet, so I might set about either cleaning or crocheting. Or a bath. Or just plain ol' bed.