Different tools for different messes

This morning I squeezed a week's quota of tact into one email message, but it got the job done. If a boulder is already teetering on the edge of a cliff, sometimes all it takes is a gentle nudge to send it over the edge. I nudged, the boulder toppled, and now I can get on with the massive cleanup effort. And that's all I'm planning to say about that delicate situation.

It's amazing, though, how much of adult life amounts to cleaning up various types of messes. I started the day trying to fix a mess of my own creation--I forgot to click on a certain box in our course management system, which then refused to allow my students to upload their drafts--but a zillion students helpfully emailed about the problem so I could repair the dropbox in my pajamas. Meaning I was in pajamas. Why would a dropbox need pajamas?

Next I need to respond to all those drafts, offering students specific suggestions on cleaning up their prose and reasoning. Since I'm all out of tact, I'm being blunt. "You need a comma here" is easy enough to fix, but at this point in the semester I'm stymied on what to do with students who don't understand the difference between stories and poems or between summary and analysis. A few marginal comments aren't going to fix that kind of mess.

Now I have to fix the scheduling problem arising from the fact that no one wants to take an exam on April 8, Eclipse Day. We're about an hour's drive from the Zone of Totality, but my students will miss it if they're stuck in my classroom taking an exam. I had already planned to be out of town (because my grandkids live in the Zone of Totality, and how many more times will I be able to experience a total eclipse with my grandkids?), but by making one small adjustment to the course schedule, I can eliminate the need for an exam proctor and allow my students to gape at the eclipse as well. 

With proper eye protection, of course. I do not want to be responsible for blinding the entire population of my American Lit Survey class. That's not the kind of mess I'm equipped to clean up.