Deja vu all over again

Arrrgh this late start class! Oy. I've been pretty good about not complaining about it too much to people at school so clearly I must vent somewhere.

I can't even keep track of what day it is. And since the other comp classes have already finished their first essay and we are on a totally new discussion topic, I am totally discombobulated when I go to another classroom on a different set of days and start re-teaching something I had put back on the mental shelf a few weeks ago. The other two classes are on a different schedule, so I try to re-use my powerpoints and don't always remember to update the days of the week and the dates things are due. Plus, today I kept telling the students "tomorrow" instead of the day we meet next week and these are the types of students who get really confused and out of it if I mis-speak or correct myself in any way.

This is all leading up to the fact that not only am I very confused, but they are really lost about things like what day it is and how to read the schedule. So I had a student come up wigging out at break today about the thesis and out line of the essay being due next week and not matching something I had just said. Stupidly enough, I believed this student instead of saying, "hey wait, calm down; let's get out my syllabus and read it over together." Nope, I proceeded to wing it and completely change what I was going to have us do for homework on the fly, and that student was wrong about the date. Now I am going to have people be utterly confused: do they follow the syllabus or do they bring in a thesis a week early? What are we actually doing when we next meet in class? FML people! Whatever I plan, half of them, I'm sure, will not be correctly prepared for it. Argh indeed.

Ok, I have also fallen massively behind and so need to grade about 5 more essays to keep roughly on track plus plan for tomorrow's class. And I just realized that I have only a short breather before all my essays are due again and I haven't even really planned what is happening next! I may have to cancel hiking plans and be a grading hermit all weekend. Bleacch!