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When, oh when, will this marking stop?
The answer, of course, is when I stop putting it off. Just as I nearly finish marking a bunch of first-year essays on genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, I get twenty second-year essays on John Stuart Mill (well at least being an English and Academic Skills teacher lets you be eclectic). Nevertheless, I'm still finding lots of things to do other than mark essays. There are all those really important e-mails to read and answer, a new version of KOffice to download (it's stalled at the moment, so I could be here for some time), journal-writing, shopping, martial arts ...
OK, I did actually skip hapkido practice last night, and I did mark some essays in the time that I freed up, but this was co-incidence. I missed hapkido because I was feeling lousy, and I marked essays because I thought that if I was going to feel lousy, I might as well be productively lousy. Then I stopped feeling so bad, so watched techie-type programs on TV and drank raki. Bad boy.
All this means that I'm pretty sympathetic when my students miss deadlines. Some teachers are really strict about this, and in the interests of common standards I do set some deadlines, but honestly, if it all gets in by the end of the semester, I really don't care - if work comes in late, I just write fewer comments on it.
Actually, given my normal behaviour, maybe I should post a deadline as follows:
"By May 18th you should hand in either
(a) your term paper or
(b) a detailed description of all the things you were doing instead of writing it."
The answer, of course, is when I stop putting it off. Just as I nearly finish marking a bunch of first-year essays on genetic engineering and artificial intelligence, I get twenty second-year essays on John Stuart Mill (well at least being an English and Academic Skills teacher lets you be eclectic). Nevertheless, I'm still finding lots of things to do other than mark essays. There are all those really important e-mails to read and answer, a new version of KOffice to download (it's stalled at the moment, so I could be here for some time), journal-writing, shopping, martial arts ...
OK, I did actually skip hapkido practice last night, and I did mark some essays in the time that I freed up, but this was co-incidence. I missed hapkido because I was feeling lousy, and I marked essays because I thought that if I was going to feel lousy, I might as well be productively lousy. Then I stopped feeling so bad, so watched techie-type programs on TV and drank raki. Bad boy.
All this means that I'm pretty sympathetic when my students miss deadlines. Some teachers are really strict about this, and in the interests of common standards I do set some deadlines, but honestly, if it all gets in by the end of the semester, I really don't care - if work comes in late, I just write fewer comments on it.
Actually, given my normal behaviour, maybe I should post a deadline as follows:
"By May 18th you should hand in either
(a) your term paper or
(b) a detailed description of all the things you were doing instead of writing it."
