This is me, in bed, marking student papers. It's difficult to tell if the sun is setting or rising. On the other hand, it is evident that my work has turned me into a no-life zombie. This week mea culpa was scheduling all three writing courses to turn in first drafts of their 5-page essay assignments on Monday. Mea maxima culpa, however, was scheduling writing conferences with students from all three classes for Wednesday through Friday. It has been a relatively mind-numbing experience to read and comment coherently on 20 (generally incoherent) papers per day and then to meet with the students who committed these works of art and try to genially talk them into their various tailored revision plans.I am surviving. Though I confess that I might skip my daily Visine and hair-straightening routine tomorrow morning and wear my purple pajamas in to work just to scare my students. And now I can proudly say that I know even more intimately the powers of stubborn fortitude and assiduous stupidity (er, stupid assiduity?) of that mysterious creature the writing adjunct. My main concern is this: is it weird, or somehow creepy, to grade papers in bed?
3 comments:
I do a lot of work in bed (my bed, formerly your bed) (have I mentioned recently how comfortable it is?) so, no, I don't think it's weird. But we'll have to see what your *normal* friends say.
Being in able to work from bed is pretty much about the only good thing about this field. And conferencing.... wow. They don't pay us enough for that, and that might go against my policy of being unintentionally terrifying so I can focus on more important things during office hours, like the crossword puzzle.re
Wow - I can't believe you graded all of those papers in such a short time. I have tried that in the past and after a while, all the papers just run together and grades seem more arbitrary than ever. You'll have to pass along your survival secrets to me. And, I do a lot of work in bed too. =o)
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