I am trying to be cheerful. Really, I am.

But: I am still messed up from the time change. I did not really see the sun yesterday; I went to work before it was up and got home after it had set.

And it is super foggy this morning. I cannot breathe and it felt very hazardous driving in.

But the big thing is this: in one of my classes, I assigned a research paper. I assigned it over a month ago. It is due tomorrow. I have had three people ask me - the last one calling and leaving a message last night while I was at German class - if there are still topics available. (I'd be tempted to call him back NOW, but I am very sure he's not up yet).

I'd like to say, "Don't even bother. Don't write the paper. You're doing it in less than a day; it will not be worth my reading it." I'm also going to check these EXTRA hard for plagiarism (although I check ALL the papers these days), because in my experience, it's the people who do things at the last minute who tend to get tempted by the lures of Copy+Paste.

The thing that gets me is: if I waited to assign these things until closer before the due date, people would bitch (yes, I'm using that word in this case) on evaluations that I didn't give them enough time. (Often, when you're an educator, you can't win.)

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And that is part of my, I guess you'd say, feeling of the grass being greener on the other side. I look at people (like the woman who writes little birds) who do art more or less for a living, who spend their time making whimiscal appealing things. Or I look at the bloggers who get book contracts.

And, I know. It's hard work. And there's a lot of uncertainty involved. And I'm sure I wouldn't deal well with the "well, am I going to make any money this month?" question.

But you know? Sometimes I think about how nice it would be to be in a career where you got a lot of positive feedback - where you got lots of comments on your blog going "Oh, so cute!" or "congratulations on your new book contract; I'm buying it as soon as it comes out!"

Much of the feedback I get in my career is honestly, negative. I only hear when people DON'T like something - when a grant proposal isn't good enough, when something needs to be changed, when students are upset. And one thing I am not good at is "filtering" - I can't read my student evaluations and go, "Well, he has a point there, but she's just griping." I take everything that's said to heart...and it's kind of like that old bit on the Simpsons, where Lisa explains to Bart, after he's broken something or stolen something, "Her [Marge's] heart won't just wipe clean like this bathroom countertop: it absorbs everything that touches it, like this bathroom rug." I tend to internalize criticism whether it's warranted or not. And I know I'm going to catch crap when I grade these upcoming papers harshly...even though I would think any student would know that waiting until there's less than 24 hours left to do a paper is a bad option.

So I don't know. Sometimes I wonder...do I still want to be doing this when I'm 60? Do I still want to be doing this when the current crop of narcissistic, self-esteem-infused grade schoolers hits college? Do I still want to be here when books have been entirely replaced by mp3 versions of the "texts"? Do I still want to be here when "content delivery" is 100% online and people who used to be professors are now basically webmasters, troubleshooters, and people who spend their time "unlocking" tests and quizzes for students who couldn't take them during the appointed times?

I don't know. Suddenly I feel very old and obsolete.