Mid-semester gripes

As you might have guessed from my earlier post, it's reached that time of the semester where the students are starting to drive me crazy. Of course, this would have happened weeks ago if I were teaching my freshmen course this semester. Instead of obnoxious 18-year-olds, I have lazy seniors this semester. The same group who asked for extensions on the already extended deadline demonstrated their lack of motivation a couple weeks ago, too. I had to miss class at the last minute and when my friend forgot to go in my place, nobody even bothered to check in the department office (which is just down the hall from where the class meets) to see where I was. Yesterday, I received about five assignments by email, some assignments completely forgotten, and had almost one-third of the class missing. What a bunch of slackers! I'm not too excited to grade what they submitted, either. I'm starting to wonder if this unusually warm weather we've been having is affecting them in a way that they think it's still summer (and this week marks the semester's half-way point!) Damn. Still, I can't complain about my teaching load this semester. But, damn.