Sunday, September 23, 2012

Real Time Blogging: To Grade Or Not To Grade

It is 9:30 am on the East Coast.  Right now.  That's the actual time.  It is a Sunday morning.  It is beautiful, peaceful, quiet.  Tomorrow, Monday, I will begin my work week, most of which will consist of me holding 40 hours of individualized tutorial support for the students at my university.  Most of those hours are already filled. After tomorrow's 8.5 hours of work--I get 30 minutes a day for lunch--I will travel to one of my university's satellite campuses to teach one of my university's condensed, hybridized 8-week courses.

Right now, I have sitting beside me a brand new stack of student papers that I need to grade as quickly as possible (see the above design of my course for the reason).  I have spent the last six days in a row grading another set of student papers, and I will be doing the same this week, next week, the week after that, and so on until the the course ends.

Sitting on my other side is a copy of this book.  I have never read this book, which is why I purchased a copy of it.  Given my work schedule, it is unlikely that I will read this book anytime soon.  However, I really do want to read this book sometime soon--like right now, for instance.

What do I do?  Do I grade?  Do I not grade?






6 comments:

  1. Read the book. The papers can wait a few hours. (It is a lovely day, isn't it?)

    ReplyDelete
  2. You sound about ready to snap. Take a break. Your sanity is more important than their super-timely receipt of graded work. They will glance at the B-, shrug, and toss it in a pile without reading your feedback on either Tuesday, or Thursday, it does not really matter, as the next paper will make exactly the same mistakes. You will be doing the same thing week after week, and with a handful of exceptions so will they. (feeling cynical today, sorry, under the weather)

    ReplyDelete
  3. I feel your pain. I've been grading all week, and I have just a few more papers to go, but it's Sunday damn it and I don't want to grade.

    I probably will, though, because guilt will get the better of me.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I finished all my grading, and now I'm watching "Terror of Mechagodzilla" like a total uretard, and giggling!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I use that book in a non-Western world lit class. Read the book. Then again, it's now 4:10 p.m. your time. Grade the papers and THEN read the book. :o)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Do both. That's what I do. I read a bit (just finished John Dies at the End), grade a bit. I try to get through two papers and then read for as long as it took me to get through those two.

    Keeps the brain clear.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.