External studies papers today. Limit: three hours.

In the last couple of days four people who I play golf with occasionally have either recommended to me that I give up the game or asked me why I don't give it up. They refer, I know, to the splendidly poor quality of play I exhibit. These people aren't being mean; it puzzles them to see someone who has played so many years (eight) so earnestly and so badly continue to go out and stink up the course. They feel bad for me.

It's difficult for them to accept my explanation, because these are people who compete with other people. I have very little competition in me. What I do like is to work on self-improvement, which I suppose could be seen as a kind of competition with self but doesn't feel that way to me. Instead, I see opportunity and possibility. I have a chance to work toward getting better; it is possible that I will do so. Perhaps this improvement will be only for one stroke or one hole or one round, but it is possible. And it happens. Others see the overall awfulness of my game. So do I, but I also see the moments that shine.

Here I find a parallel with teaching. I view learning as self-improvement; when I teach I attempt to do so in ways that set up students to improve themselves. Improve their knowledge, improve their processes, improve their self-knowledge; improve their contributions to society. As teacher, I see it as my duty and pleasure to improve my teaching. Teaching and learning are connected and reflexive. I watch student results and attempt to adjust my next efforts based on the results I see. The parallel there with golf is that I watch the result of a swing or I notice the sensations of it and attempt to adjust my next one. This is a process I enjoy.

Of course, topping the ball seven times in a row gets tedious, but then one shot soars and the student is engaged again. Hope continues to burn.

So I decided it was time to get out of school mode. Since my last post I've played golf three times, hit balls at the driving range two times, ridden my bike several times, including one effort that left me gasping and my legs rubbery, gotten my boat out of storage and hauled to the lake, gotten my motorhome parked, leveled, vacuumed, and hooked up, cleaned my flower garden, mowed my lawn and...

come back to school for papers, late papers, new assignments from my department chair, a meeting with three faculty members about new curriculum for next year, and two walk-in meetings with students I didn't know and didn't expect, each of which has left me with new projects to do for them.

After the first of June I'll be starting my swimming again. I can't until then, as the university has no hot water until new equipment is installed. That means the pool is cold, as well as the showers. Cold showers I can deal with; a pool that cold is just too likely to lead to cramps. So, ten days of biking and walking ahead as I move toward getting back into healthy condition. The swimming is what will really get that done, though.

Meanwhile, I'm understandably sore. Not as bad as sitting at a desk for days a time will cause, but sore just the same. This kind of sore is easier to deal with. It's earned by doing things, rather than by sitting motionlessly.

Yesterday I played golf. While I played I was thinking about a message I got from a teacher I know and love who relayed the terrible news that one of her students was killed in a car crash. She had to face grieving students, while dealing with her own grief, as I played golf. I didn't feel guilty, but I didn't gripe about any of many lousy shots either.

A few things matter; the rest are important only when the few are in good order.

The deadline for turning in grades is Monday at 9:30. Today, Monday, at 9:30 I turned in the last of the grades. The effect of the last several days' work is that my body aches and I'm so stiff that moving is painful. A reader, Sherman, asked if I found any parts of my work tedious. I love teaching; I don't love having a body so locked up from many days of many hours of sitting at a desk reading papers that I can hardly walk. It will take days to get my body broken loose again.

I don't much notice my own aging. I tend to do anything I did at twenty. Today I'm aware that my body doesn't recover as quickly as it once did.

I'm going to spend four hours this afternoon advising at registration. Interacting with seventeen and eighteen year olds will get the juices flowing again. Teenagers are good for me.

Sunday. Still reading papers.

I'm supposed to be at the Elks Youth Camp helping to get it ready to open for the summer. I'm in my office reading a foot and a half of paper, instead. Sometimes one duty conflicts with another. The camp will open whether I'm there this year or not. Grades won't get turned in on Monday morning if I don't get them done.

That distinction makes clear which responsibility I must meet.

It's the morning of commencement, and I am suddenly up to my, um, ears in senior projects and honors theses. I will have to miss the ceremony to work on all this paper.

So many people who work on independent projects wait until the deadline is upon them to do the work. Now I'm stuck with the results.

Poor me.

For some reason blogger has not been allowing me to post the past couple of days, though it has permitted me to publish comments. It has been cranky about letting me comment on other people's posts, too.

End of the term: papers, portfolios, theses. Late papers, portfolios, theses. Whole sets of papers that come in on an afternoon during finals week and are accompanied by requests both that the grade be turned in the same afternoon and that letters to that effect be sent to employers and other schools. Same day, please.

Yesterday one set came in four years late, with a demand that they be done and people in Korea notified that same afternoon.

Korea is waiting.

For some reason blogger has not been allowing me to post the past couple of days, though it has permitted me to publish comments. It has been cranky about letting me comment on other people's posts, too.

End of the term: papers, portfolios, theses. Late papers, portfolios, theses. Whole sets of papers that come in on an afternoon during finals week and are accompanied by requests both that the grade be turned in the same afternoon and that letters to that effect be sent to employers and other schools. Same day, please.

Yesterday one set came in four years late, with a demand that they be done and people in Korea notified that same afternoon.

Korea is waiting.

I've invited the methods class to my home for our final. My Mom took advantage of the opportunity to make many kinds of treats, which she likes doing but is a waste to do when I'm the only one around, since I don't eat sweets very much. Well, peppermint, but who bakes peppermint?

We'll have a good time and share final collections of thinking--I have something prepared myself--and they will leave.

Then I will go to the choir end-of-year party. I will cook a brat (that's bratwurst to any worriers in cyber-land--real brats probably won't attend) and share triumphs--and I will leave.

Hereafter the school year is endless hours bent over my desk with collections of papers.

I just had my final class meeting for the year. At noon I'll have my final choir rehearsal. At 7:30 I'll have my final choir performance. A lot of endings.

I wrote a journal entry about the end of the school year and shared it with my methods class. They both liked it and found it depressing. Here it is:

May 2, 2006

My fountain pen's ink is now a mix of the former blue and the imminent black--becoming mostly black. It reminds me that my day is blue--the sun is finally out after five days of unremitting rain--and yet has the feel of imminent black. The school year is ending and so my annual regrets are upon me.

Teaching is such joy and fascination that the thought of waiting three months to resume the engagement is hard on me. This is heightened always by my sense of loss. Ever since I started teaching the end of the school year has hurt because it means the end of relationships with people I have come to care for. That's what teaching , in its essense, is about. People. Getting to know them. Wanting good things to happen for them. Hoping for their good fortune and watching them work toward their own improvement.

I get to see a lot of that. Self improvement. This is a teacher's great satisfaction: to watch students do their work toward bettering themselves is to want to work toward improving my work, my teaching.

At the end of the year I can no longer do better for those who leave. This means, always, I end with dissatisfaction with myself. This is the black. September is the blue.

The Mozart Requiem performance was yesterday. Very exciting. The performers got together afterward and shared the afterglow. The singers were talking very loudly.

I'm sorry it's over. Doing it was marvelous.

I notice these young people who were been hired only a short time ago and note with surprise that they've gone gray and think how can that be they are only about 35, right, I mean they were 32 when they were hired and that was what 3 or 4 or, come to think of it that was 12, no, 15 years ago and they have a right to be gray because they are almost fifty. Weird how these people who were younger than I was have gotten older than I am.