Why do I do this? Why do I arrange my syllabi so students turn things in just BEFORE Spring Break? Am I really trying to clear their schedules for them? I know I hated having school work to do over holidays, but why do I care now?
And why has this unconscious largesse made my week such a shitty one?
There on the edge of my desk at the office - I can almost feel them vibrating - are 76 different pieces of things to be graded. Most are long. Most are big chunks of the final grade. Most need hand written comments.
And where am I? At home. Sipping coffee, hating myself.
Part of me wants to take the whole week off. Can they not wait an extra week? No, because like a stooge I said, "I'll have your projects graded right after Spring Break? Why? Why am I so stupid? Why can't I just ease these thoughts from my mind?
Why do we have Daylight Savings Time? Why is my neighbor making that noise? Why didn't I go somewhere for Spring Break? Why don't I ever go anywhere? Why can't I make that appointment for that colonoscopy? Do I need a haircut? Do I dare eat a peach?
I have to get out of town or something. Anything but grading. Dear God, don't let me go to the office.
I'm Hiram!
ReplyDeleteOh, Hiram, I feel your pain. I did exactly the same thing. I've been trying to knock it out, a little at a time, just so it doesn't feel like the snowball racing down the mountain.
ReplyDeleteAt least you don't have one of my students: Ridiculous Randall. He flunked out last semester and is well on his way to a repeat. He proudly told me last week that he planned to sacrifice his break and get caught up. I was pleased.
I was not so pleased when he asked if I would be working in my office. I gave him the death stare and said, "I NEED a break." He mumbled something about not knowing whether profs get spring break, as if it is some special treat holiday just for students.
Sigh.
Go out and enjoy the great weather for an afternoon. The grading will still be there when you return.
Good luck, and know you are not alone in your misery.
Hiram, I feel your pain. Don't grade. Give them a lame excuse like they give you - "Sorry, I got the flu over the break and didn't want to puke/shit on your papers." Then go watch some reality TV reruns and have a bourbon.
ReplyDeleteThis is why, when people say, "Oh, I envy you professors with your many breaks," I want to punch them in the nose.
ReplyDeleteYES! YES! YES, and when they don't fall down from my weak Humanities punch, I will kick them in the shin.
DeleteMe too! All of these emails, " sorry to disrupt your break". I'm not on a F'ing break you self entitled twit. I'm here grading your terrible papers!
DeleteHiram, I'll be there next week. I've got a stack of comp papers I'm dreading, and today's the midterm for my lit course. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteIf the weather's good where you are, either take a nice break and sit somewhere in the sun, or take some of the grading outside with you--I find it goes faster when I'm not sitting in my office wishing I was outside. (I even have a camp chair in the corner of my office for just such occasions).
I made the same mistake -- and compounded it by agreeing to write a grant application.
ReplyDeleteI spent part of winter break writing a fellowship application, then made the mistake of checking my email over spring break, only to find that I've been turned down. I thought I had a good chance, but the rejection letter tells me that the applicant pool was up and the funding pool considerably down this year. So I won't say "don't do it" (especially if writing the grant application, whether or not you get the grant, counts for something in your world), but maybe think about exactly how good a job you really need to do, especially if getting the grant is not really your own highest priority?
DeleteI procrastinated through most of my break and then had to mark for 12 hours on Sunday. It sucked. Then I had a lot of vodka.
ReplyDeleteI almost did the same thing, but then extended the deadline to the week right after break. Somehow almost half of my students still didn't turn in their paper. SIGH
ReplyDeleteI went out of town on my break and the papers were still there when I got back. I still have a stack but Friday is the last day to take a W. Is it wrong that I'm delaying marking with the hope that many withdraw?
ReplyDeleteSympathies! Sympathies!
ReplyDeleteOur break isn't for another two weeks. And we're on quarters, so I'll be going until mid-June, but we always grade over Spring Break because that's when final grades are due for Winter Quarter.
"Why do I arrange my syllabi so students turn things in just BEFORE Spring Break?"
ReplyDeleteI ask professors the same thing. If students don't want 4 midterms before break and profs don't want to grade all these midterms...then who's the one that decided to put everything before the break?
Wow, this comment works well to make Hiram feel even shittier about his scheduling.
DeleteWhen given a choice, would you rather spend Spring Break relaxing, or working on a project/writing a paper (or, more realistically, procrastinating until the night before)?
If it comes down to having an ultra-stressed week leading up to Spring Break then I'd rather cut into my break a bit to have a more consistent workload.
DeleteI'm with StockStalker on this one, since I had the exact same thought reading the post. As for making Hiram feel shittier...I'd see it more as constructive criticism. So this year, you're miserable, and you think you did it to make the students' lives easier. But upon knowing that the students' lives are actually harder, not easier, when you schedule things to be due right before break, shouldn't that actually make you feel relieved, like, "Oh, good, next year I don't have to do this to any of us again!"?
DeletePersonally, I don't think either option is a good one. Make it due the week before, and you're just piling up the work with everyone else. Make it due the week after, and it becomes a huge stress over break. I'm not sure how much work regularly gets assigned in your courses; would it be convenient to make the majority of the large assignments due over this two week period due instead either two weeks before or two weeks after break?
Runner: You must be kidding. Schedule the class and its assignments so as to not inconvenience students, leaving 4 weeks AROUND Spring Break clear of work?
DeleteOnly a student would suggest something so ridiculous.
Snowflake alert.
Heck no! I meant it as a way of helping Hiram, who said that he felt stressed grading over break and wanted a way to make himself happy without hurting the students. I also never said anything about scheduling NO work during the breaks- just scheduling the LARGER works away from break times. Ie schedule reading assignments and whatever goes with them during the weeks before and after break and huge papers/midterms during the other two weeks. Also, if Hiram had said, "fuck the students, I love being able to grade [insert time here]," I would gladly suggest he go with that. I was just offering a possible suggestion to get rid of both guilt and unhappiness.
DeleteAlternatively, if your class meets, say, Tuesdays and Thursdays, why not make major papers due the Thursday after break? That way, students have a choice whether to work during break or not, and you don't have to grade during your break.
I've finally learned to construct course calendars with the aim of actually taking a break during spring break (or at least concentrating on some combination of research and writing, housekeeping, and taxes) in mind. The problem is that, in order to construct a grading schedule for my four writing-intensive sections that allows for that possibility, I have to make unrealistic assumptions about how much grading I will get done during the other weeks of the semester.
ReplyDeleteSo, yes, despite my best-laid plans, I am grading during spring break -- and mostly things I'd planned to get back to students *before* break.
If anybody comes up with a better solution, please let me know.
Oh shit... I was gonna do taxes this week...
Deleteat least I'm 3/4 of the way through the exams...
Spring break. How quaint. And deciding when you will return their work. Ahh, the good ol' days. Here at Enormous Corporate Online University, classes run all the time, no breaks, and all work must be returned to the students within five days. Not five working days. Five days. All days are working days. You can remember the "respond to e-mail within 36 hours" rule and respond to e-mail in the evening and take the next day off. That can work.
ReplyDeleteUgh. My sympathies. It sounds like the 36-hour rule allows for observance of a sabbath, so you can't make a religious objection (if you were so inclined), but still, such a schedule cannot be good for man nor beast.
DeleteHiram, if it makes you feel any better, I'm on an overseas trip (work related) over break, and my bag has both blue-books and papers in it. I did the blue books on the outbound flight. I'm hoping to get the papers done on the homeward bound flight, but I suspect I'll have to do some of them before I leave if the stack is going to be done by the time I touch down.
ReplyDeleteI try to situate the midterm at the midpoint on the semester. This year that happened to be the Thursday before break. It doesn't always work out that way.
@Archie: how do you find/create enough elbow-room to grade papers on a flight? The last time I flew, I could barely muster enough room to flip the pages of a paperback book. I'm seriously considering a transcontinental train the next time I need to visit the other coast.
DeleteHiram, thank you for writing this post. I have been having the same experience exactly. I have fifty exams to correct, and fifty papers. I was going to do a little each day, to keep from pulling all nighters over the weekend. Instead I am drinking wine starting at 11am and watching the early seasons for Law and Order SVU on Netflix. And going on long walks with the dog. And wondering what the hell is wrong with me.
ReplyDelete