I am in the office now at midnight trying to convince myself that it's worth it to grade my students' essay exams, despite the fact that they'll resent the fact that they should be graded at all; they somehow believe that if the question at all asks for an opinion on their part they are entitled to an automatic A. I am trying to convince myself that I should read the articles that were assigned despite the fact that they won't want to talk about them and don't care. I have failed them: I was lazy and arrogant. I didn't put enough work into commenting on their earlier quizzes, I didn't prepare enough for discussion sections to help them interact with the material in a meaningful way, I couldn't answer their questions when they bothered to ask them, they don't care about what I think because they've seen and directly experienced my failure, and many of them judge me for it; I can't really blame them since I do too.

God, do I hate the end of the semester.

About to read

Feel a headache coming on; that generally means that there's something that stresses me, but that I'm not dealing with. Maybe more on this later.

Here's the poem that I'm going to be reading at the Classics Department's Coffee hour this evening. It's a loose translation of Catullus 101. Should I be nervous?

“Translation of Catullus 101”

Hello and goodbye my brother dear,
Silent ashes simply lying there;
Through foreign nations of misery
Across a dark and long and lonely sea
I have come
On this sad funeral night
To celebrate and sacrifice with proper rite,
For there are ancient practices owed the dead –
At least that is what our ancient ancestors said.
This is what I say:
If you wanted a present, you didn't have to die
I fall to my knees, and begin to cry
You are taken forever, and there is no reason why;
And so my dear brother hello and goodbye.