All the ways I'm being horrible today (or most of them, anyway)

First, I'm making my first-year composition students find books--actual books!--to use as sources for their problem papers, and I'm even requiring that they find at least one book published by a University Press, and when they asked why, I told them about previous students who used children's books written on a third-grade level as sources in a college research paper, and when my current students pointed out that they would never do such a thing and it's not fair to make them suffer because of bad acts by past students, I said I know it's not fair--but you'll have to do it anyway.

And if that's not bad enough, I'm making them find--and read!--articles from peer-reviewed academic journals, and I even devoted time in class to showing them how to use our library research databases to find articles, and then I gave them 20 minutes of class time  to find academic journal articles, during which time I walked around the room answering questions and offering guidance--even to the student who had kept her hood pulled up earlier in class to hide the fact that she had earbuds in and therefore didn't have the first clue what she was supposed to be doing--and before the end of the hour I made each student show me a peer-reviewed academic journal article relevant to their topic, so that when their annotation and citation are due on Friday, they can't claim that they couldn't find any articles. 

And then when I received an email from a student wanting to schedule time to make up a midterm from two weeks ago, I agreed to do so provided that the student could provide some documentation excusing the absence, because the class attendance policy clearly states that while I do not take roll in that class or penalize students for absences, I also do not permit make-ups without an acceptable excuse, and I forgot that there was a midterm is not an acceptable excuse even in the current environment when we are being encouraged to cut students some slack because life is so darned difficult right now, and every time I hear that I have to bite my tongue to prevent myself from growling You want to talk about difficult? I taught a full semester while undergoing chemotherapy and radiation! If I could do that, you can remember to check the syllabus once in a while.

And the day isn't even half over! Who knows how horrible I'll manage to be by the end of the afternoon?