Sallyacious

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November 19, 2006

So This Is Hell... Nice View...

I feel like Sisyphus. On Wednesday night, for a few brief, shining seconds of freedom I had no grading. No. Grading. It was all done. All of it.

And then I checked my email, and the stuff due Thursday had started trickling in.

Have I mentioned that I have over 100 students this semester? And that when I am grading their major speeches, my top speed is 6/hour? It's about 18 hours of grading for one round of speeches. And since the end of September, I've had two rounds of speeches. And those 36 hours don't include the grading time for the minor assignments scattered between the major speeches. It took me five hours yesterday to grade two classes' worth of papers and mini-speeches. Five. Hours. I still have two classes of stuff to go.

Of course, since the end of September I've also been rehearsing and performing Death of a Salesman, training the new teaching assistants, shadowing the instructor for the class I'll be teaching next semester and working monologues with students in one of the Acting 105 classes. I've not exactly had what you could call down time.

I remarked to Dave yesterday that I felt like I've been grading stuff forever. And I have. Since the end of September, I have been working on the grading. For a month and a half, I have spent my spare time grading papers and speeches. When I wasn't actually in class, or learning lines or putting together lesson plans or sleeping, I was grading. Except for the stack of papers I'd lost and then rediscovered and the late assignments and speeches that got set aside until I had time to look at them, everything else got back to its owner in a timely fashion.

And they wonder why I am getting more strict about late work. Because I have to grade it. And I would like to have a life too. You have one. That's why your assignment is late. Because you were having a great time doing something else. But I have been grading the work that was turned in on time, and I still don't get a break now? Because I have to get your late shit back to you in a timely fashion just like everybody else's stuff?

I pity the students who get me next semester. No late work at all without an excused absence. I am done with the flexible. Either get it done on time or you don't get credit.

As of this moment, two classes are completely done. I have nothing more to grade until after classes meet again the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. I have to get to the other two today. And then I will have a full eight days of no grading at all.

It will be just like being in heaven.

Which means, of course, that in the highly likely possibility that I end up in hell, it won't be like the interesting, enjoyable hell of Man and Superman. No, it will be a Sisyphean nightmare where I am constantly swimming to the top of a stack of papers, only to be buried underneath more. The Greeks had it right. Hell is not the constant torment. Hell is the hope that the constant torment may end. It's the end of the journey appearing in your vision, only to have it moved back beyond the horizon line.

Again.

Posted by sally at November 19, 2006 11:42 AM

Comments

Posted by: Heather at November 19, 2006 07:42 PM

Posted by: Sallyacious at November 19, 2006 10:54 PM

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