Get up eight...

There's an old Japanese (or so I was told) saying that goes something like, "Fall down seven times; get up eight."

Back in the days when we had .sig lines on our e-mails, I had that as mine for a while. It seemed to confuse people but I always took it to mean that you need to get back up (or whatever that represents: persisting, trying again, girding your loins for yet another week) at least one more time than life manages to knock you down.

I'm feeling some better this morning. (TChem, your comment in particular helped. You are probably right. It's just it's harder for me to believe it when I say it to myself).

I also think that it's just THAT time of the semester. I have had several e-mails from students apologizing for being absent or whatever, and then saying, "Passing this class is very important to me."

And on the one hand, that just makes me sad. Yes, I know, they're trying to make me feel guilty or compassionate or some such thing. But the cynical side of me wants to go, "O RLY? And you handed in only half the assignments because it's so important?"

Yes, I'd like to see everyone pass. But I refuse to lower my standards to make that happen.

I'm also dealing with a Snowflake who is being, well a Snowflake.

Nine days. Nine days and I get a break.

****

Charlotte, the Aysen has 191 yards a skein and the mitts took maybe 2/3 of the skein, if that helps. They don't take much yardage at all. (Fingerless mitts seem not to. For the sockweight ones, I can easily get a pair out of one fifty-gram skein of sockyarn. Even the Snow on Cedars mitts, which are longer than most - I still had a good 10 or 15 yards left from a 215-yard skein of Wildfoote.)

I'm on the last pair of gift-mitts right now - the ones for the AAUW gift exchange. I brought them as I invigilate a test this morning. Unless I feel all guilt-ridden and like I have to start reading the student papers that are due in that class this morning while they take the test. (It is an open-notes test so I don't have to check quite so closely for cheating).