As of noon today, I have maintained a perfect record of submitting my grade rolls within 5 minutes of the deadline every semester this year. This may be a good indicator of the level of stress created by my mother/teacher life. Or just a sign that I am as much of a procrastinator as I was when I was a student and sitting on the other end of those grades.
In my own defense, I was pretty busy the week before Christmas and had no time – or desire – to finish grading final exams. So I set them aside and wound up spending most of the day yesterday and well into the wee hours of the morning getting them done. I can tell I’ve aged a bit since my student days because I’m wiped out today from the sleep-deprivation. In my golden years I could have simply downed a Coke and been good to go. But now I’m an old lady and 3 hours of sleep just doesn’t do it for me.
Well at least the grades are done and I can start worrying about next semester, which starts in a week. And I did have a few laughs in the middle of the night when I came across little gems like this one in a student essay: “The turning point was World War I. This was almost the same as the French Revolution but slightly different.”
Maybe it was funnier at 2 am. But since I’m running on fumes today, it still amuses me.
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12 comments:
Slightly different. Hmmm... I so wish I had papers to grade. Next time just send half of em to me.
I'm pretty sure that pair of sentences will stay funny no matter what time of day it is.
That's good.
WWI turned clockwise, while the French Revolution went counter clockwise. That's no "slight" difference in my mind.
This would explain why I keep getting B's in history--if only I'd known there was such a difference between the two wars. I figured one was over hamburgers and the other over French fries. That's enough to send anyone into fightin' mode.
Have you read this blog- Toddled Dredge. I was reading some posts and it reminded me of some of yours. Anyway, I think you two would have much to share.
Here is the address.
http://veronimitch.blogspot.com/
Happy New Years!
Random bloghopping landed me here... and I have to say, I think the student is right. They are slightly different in that there was a lot more "sacre bleu" in the French Revolution.
I haven't had a college course in over a year now. I haven't *quite* reached nostalgia over that yet, which means I'm not ready to go back to teaching. Thus says me.
Nice blog, thanks!
Last year Grace's teacher asked me to help with their classes efforts to write novels. I edited chapters for groups of kids and had a blast reading their stuff. You can really tell who watches too much television and what each child's favorite hobbies are. I had one where it was an epic battle between druids and Persians with a lot of medieval warfare machinery. Kind of Braveheart-meets-Alexander-meets-Lord of the RIngs. I smell Nobel Prize . . .
I'm giving up sugar also, instead I am fasting on water, lemon juice and maple syrup. Which, by the way, is similar to sugar, but slightly different!
One school I taught at kept a book of student comments like that - no names attached of course, it provided great hilarity in times of stress. One of the best was "Mesopotamia is now known as Sweden"...
I'm new to your blog and I love it! Ah the fun of grading. I am ignoring my grading right now. I thought papers would get better after 8th grade, but your example doesn't give me much hope.
Grading papers and giving grades are the parts of teaching that I do not miss.
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