As it turns out, time not only travels with a one-way ticket, but it takes the Concord. It seems like just yesterday that I was lamenting the end of summer vacation, and now here we are at the end of the first six-weeks grading period. How is that possible? Once again, in spite of my best intentions, I find myself swamped with papers to grade. And yet, I am oh so easily distracted from that task. Because I don't want to do it.
Not only am I swamped with this week's workload, but I'm already dreading the supremely dreadable Research Paper grading. I figured out last year that if I spent just five minutes grading each paper, I would spend 14 hours on them. And that's optimistic, because I tend to spend ten minutes on each one. Now to make matters worse, the department has decided, in spite of my dissent, that senior papers should be a minimum of seven pages for the regular classes and ten for honors. TEN! That's five pages of reasonably reasonable text, and five pages of slaw. When I discussed this with my students today, they laughingly promised to blend the slaw in rather than stacking it five-on-five. Very reassuring.
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7 comments:
and we all know how much you love slaw!
I do NOT miss grading essays! Good luck getting through it.
It could be good practice for college though, huh? To make it high grade slaw instead of dog food slaw. There is a learning opportunity here! I always used Bob Dylan quotes when I was at a loss. My college professors were just at the right age to truly appreciate that, and recognize the uniqueness of someone my age who knew enough Dylan to quote him approrpiately as filler in psych papers. I got better grades with Dylan quotes than without.
Sadly, my students are more likely to quote Fifty Cent, a man with a grammar error right there in his name.
I think it only took The Admiral half a semester to realize that assigning papers is for suckers.
Yet hard to avoid in an English class. My principal also requires us to do it.
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