Having envigilated the final exam for my first summer session students last Thursday, I now only need their electronic submissions of a case study and an opinion paper before course grades can be computed. The deadline for these documents is close of business tomorrow, leaving me a leisurely three days to evaluate their work and enter the grades.
The low enrollment numbers this session, combined with office hours that I kept just before each class without ever seeing a single student, allowed more than a few days of last-minute grading, a luxury that probably won't extend to summer session II, with twice as many students and a start time almost two hours earlier in the day. Meeting with twice as many students in summer session II, only half as many hours each week, forces me to be that much more deliberate in learning their names and getting to know their strengths and weaknesses. It will be interesting to see the different dynamic that emerges when my second summer course starts next week.
Although my commute to work in summer session II will never require that I ride the bus, the death of my Sansa Clip media player this past weekend reminds me of all the trips I took to Rockville this past year without ever bringing along a source of music. I've had the Clip since 2010, a year in which long commutes by bus between Prince George's and Montgomery Counties for my job with MMYC were often accompanied by music from the diminutive media player. Since then the Clip has joined me on long airplane flights and train trips as well, most recently the winter vacation in Singapore, the summer 2013 visit to Michigan, and the winter 2013 trip to Connecticut for my grandmother's funeral. The loss of this long-serving piece of hardware signals the passing of an era. Thankfully the past year of commuting to Rockville without background music has made it easier to let go of the Clip and not immediately seek a replacement, even though an alternative already exists in the still-functioning Optimus CD player that I bought at a North Carolina Radio Shack in 1998.