That Panicky Feeling

I wonder how many students realize that instructors feel the same end-of-the-semester panic as they feel - okay, maybe not the same, but similar.

The final reading-through of student work enables me to see who's taken advice, who's not able to do so (for a variety of reasons), who's needing to take the course again. With writing, because it's a skill, taking the course a couple of times gets students up to where they need to be.

I am plowing through my files, looking at final re-writes, grading revisions, recording scores, calculating attendance, getting reading to do some calculations. Actually, I don't like calculating their final grade until the end of the semester because I don't want to interact with a student in a way that says "Oh, this student isn't ever going to get more than a X grade, so why bother with substantive comments?" I think that ALL of my students deserve to be taught, even those who won't pass my class this semester. They've all paid their tuition, so they all deserve my engaged attention. It's too easy for me to write-off the slackers if I know that they're flunking anyway - that seems unfair to me. So I refrain from doing any math until the end of the semester. But I still feel panicked and pressured about it!