Grading Days and Mondays Always Get Me Down

It's as though Scotland has moved in next door. Outside it's gray, rainy, and foggy, and I heard thunder through the roof of the building this morning. Eeesh. Not that I'm complaining, really. Rain, at this point, is infinitely better than snow. It means spring is coming and that, my friends, is a train I can board.

I just handed back a big ol' stack of papers to my 1001 students this morning and it's nice to be free of that particular burden - for a couple of days at least. I'm collecting another assignment from them on Monday. Sigh. If there is one thing about my job that is kind of a chore, it's grading papers. I love being in class, love meeting with students individually, and even find value in the administrative stuff I'm called on to do like staff meetings and orientations. But paper grading can just be kind of punishing sometimes.

It's not that it's hard because it's not. I'm a fast reader and have gotten to the point where I can identify and articulate problems in an essay pretty quickly. It's just a matter of getting in the mood to do it. Fast reader or not, it's always time consuming and I have to be in a certain mood to sit down, concentrate, block out everything else, and get my read on.

I think part of the problem is the fact that most students at age 18 don't have really spectacular writing skills nor do they have really original ideas. I'm not criticizing them. I'm sure part of the problem is my teaching. I'm just saying that most 18-21 year olds that were raised in the same area in basically the same way are going write largely the same essay. Out of one class of 20 something students, four of them wrote about their barn when asked to write about an important place. Again, I'm not saying they're bad students for having a similar place in common. I'm just saying that it's partly the lack of variety that can make grading papers a little tiresome.

I could say more about the lack of specifics, the seeming unwillingness to acknowledge that there is a piece of punctuation known as a comma, the insistence on stopping at 3 pages whether the essay is done or not - but I won't. I won't because, #1 - I'm really grateful to have this job and it's too good to complain about and #2 because all of those problems are part of my job. I'm here to help fix those things. If they could already write with perfect clarity, what would they need me for? So, really in a way, I should be grateful for those absent commas and those botched thesis statements. Without them, I probably wouldn't have a paycheck.

I have a stack of 1002 papers that need to be graded but those will be a little more interesting because they're based on some terrific short stories and it's interesting to read what other people think of them.

I'll get to them soon enough though. For now, it's about time for me to go home. I think I'll take it easy this afternoon. Help the girls with their homework, maybe watch a movie, maybe bake some cookies or something like that. I'll let you know.