This seemed like a more laid-back week. Peer review and conferences with my students. Less reading for my own classes for next week. I was even able to get to the gym today and run 6.2 miles! Dare I tempt fate and say that I feel like I found a balance this week?

I might be pushing it with that. After all, I still have a lot to do. Those WRIT Journal submissions aren’t going to review themselves. But overall, I didn’t feel as stressed this week as the first few weeks. Conferences went well with my students. I also had them do an anonymous survey. Most of them hated writing at the beginning of the semester. The consensus on the survey is that they are liking my class, and writing may not be so bad after all. Many of them are so happy to not have to write in the 5 paragraph model anymore. I’m so happy to not have to grade it! Most of them said they wanted to play it safe with the first project and just write it as an essay. I get that. They want to get their feet wet first before jumping straight in to a new way of writing. But, a few were excited to explore new ways of writing. One wrote a song, one is doing Instagram posts, another is making a video. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the semester to see how many of the others will start to branch out.