Another stress dream last night, another panic attack over an impending deadline--why am I freaking out over an assignment I don't even have to do? My students should be the ones freaking out! If they're not freaking out by now, they're not trying!
I worry that I haven't impressed upon them just what I expect. "I expect perfection," I told them, but do they know how to achieve perfection of both form and content on an annotated bibliography? This is an upper-level class and many of them are English majors--but some are not. Will they know how to use the online MLA bibliography? Will they know what counts as a "reputable" source in literary analysis? Will they know how to briefly summarize their sources and evaluate their effectiveness without resorting to "I like this article" or "I didn't understand it"?
Who will teach them?
That would be me. And that's why I'm panicking. I've posted samples, talked about expectations, suggested resources, but students who ought to be well on their way to finding sources seem to be stuck in the "I don't know what to write about" stage. This worries me when it ought to be worrying them, and then I worry about why it's not worrying them. Maybe they're confident in their abilities to bring the whole thing together at the last minute. Or maybe they really have no idea what I'm asking them to do.
So I panic. And I worry. And I have stress dreams. And I wonder whether I ought to pass that panic on to my students: "How can you sleep at night? Why aren't you panicking?! Don't you know how important this assignment is?!!!!"
On the other hand, maybe we'll all be better off if I sit back, relax, and expect the best. They're adults. They can manage their own time and tasks. They can do this!
I hope.
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