bittersweet end

I'm so sad that my authorship course is over. We had our last class meeting tonight, and everyone read from drafts of their final papers. As they read, I felt as though I might cry. Really. I was so damn proud of the work they've done this semester. Smart, smart stuff that matters to them and to composition/authorship studies. I've written in other media about writing teachers' tendencies to take credit for the work their students have done, and I guess I'd never thought about it in terms of graduate teaching. Well, duh, that's because I hadn't taught grad courses before. But it's different. It's not as though I write about their work here because I want to somehow take some pedagogical credit for what they've done but to acknowledge how much I've learned from the work we've done together.

I just felt this enormous pride that I had a part in the work these smart people are doing. Pride's physical reaction: not sure how to describe it except to say I wanted to cry at the same time I wanted to jump up and down and hug them. Don't worry, I didn't.

Many of them proposed papers for the Michigan conference, so I'm hoping they'll get in. How could they not?

Then we all went to dinner at a Mexican place in town. Yum. Great margaritas.

Now what am I gonna do with my Monday nights?