update

For all the cursing I did about having committed myself to organize a panel with students and present a paper at this conference, it was actually quite quite fun. I finished writing my paper after 1 am this morning and did some more revisions on it when I woke up at 6. Met my students, drove them to the conference, ran a red light along the way and endured much teasing about it. We got seven or eight people in the audience which was more than I was expecting. The students shined-- they came across as the brilliant, brilliant young women that they are, both in their delivery and in their responses to questions and comments from the floor. Folks in the audience were impressed and said so. One suggested these undergrad essays could compete with those of some of her graduate students. I beamed. The students had a good time and received what I think is some helpful external validation on their writing, and they said nice things about me and my teaching. They said my class changed the way they think about lit. and (in a few cases) their own future teaching careers. This was so worth it.

And I have no idea how I did this on so little sleep, but somehow I managed to have a pretty darn good Shakespeare class this afternoon, too.

It's been a good day.