Midterm Madness and The Art of Following Directions

          My very special kind of insanity reveals itself at midterm time, when I want to tell the students more than they want to hear, and like them, I'm not very good about following directions.  Like them, I like the oral tradition, where I get instructions and ask the person next to me, "What does this say?"  But I'm seriously considering having another category for my grades.  Along with oral would be aural, best exemplified by following directions.  Of course, I was spending much too much time finding and copying my notes on the leaving-a-message assignments of 50+ students, but it didn't help when they left their names off papers.  I had to send out a message to all ESL 142 003 students to find the owner of the interview with Brain Tan. (I think she mean Brian, but I might be wrong.)  Someone came through. 
       One thing I did NOT do this time is type up midterm comments to each and every student.  I did that for ESL 132, and I'm doing it for anyone in ESL 140 who contacts me.  But for the 50+ students of ESL 142, I'm just writng their midterm grade and occasionally a one-sentence comment.
          Directions to self:  Don't obsess.  Get on with other things like the new and improved essays on the verdict in the Hermansons murder case...the reports on the visitor from personal counseling...things NOT related to school like Alex Capus' Skidoo...deleting some of the 1117 unread messages in my Outlook inbox...seeing John Whitehead's Sculpture exhibit...visiting with Betsy...going to Pacific Grove with Javier to join Kathy in remembering Mom...

      Let's see how well I follow these directions.