Wow folks, it's been a week or so right since my last post? It has been a grading tornado here at chez Maude. Okay, not quite like that. More like a controlled fire. Would you like the breakdown of what I've been doing all week?
I offered the students extra credit if they turned their take home exams in early (to make my life easier, but they thought it was for them). Several took me up on the offer. While it has meant that I've been grading since Monday, it also meant that I only had one, just one marathon grading day to deal with.
Monday--I graded 15 lit analyses and 15 take home exams and calculated all the grades thus far.
Tuesday--I graded 15 lit analyses and 9 take home exams and calculated all the grades thus far.
Wednesday--I graded 18 freshman comp essays, calculated all their grades thus far, and graded about 15 more take home exams and dealt with a plagiarizer.
Thursday--I graded all of the MWF in class exams, finished their take home exams (about 5 left for that class), graded the remaining 18 take home exams from the TR class, and then graded their in class exams from yesterday morning. Furthermore, I finished calculating all their grades for both the lit classes.
And then there's today: I have the take home final essay for the comp class coming in. I'm not even going to look at them until 9:30. And I feel quite confident that by about 1 pm, I will have everything graded, calculated, and uploaded. And I may have a plagiarizing student come in, but we'll see if Stu actually shows up.
I should note, too, that grades are not due until next Thursday. Yes, dear friends, I am a whole entire week ahead of schedule.
On Wednesday I also managed to write half a draft of my conference paper.
I should note, too, that I've also been drinking a lot of wine this week, eating dark chocolate, and lots of nighttime fruit (that is, fruit as dessert right before bed because my sugar cravings have been off.the.chart! It's like PMS after the fact, yo). I find that nothing motivates my grading more than not wanting to have to travel knowing that I still have to grade. I have to admit that I feel like I sorta cheat though by spending all of the last week of classes grading and having students turn stuff in early. And unless they are research essays, I am also spending very little time, like embarrassingly little time on the essays I have been getting. If these were upper division majors, yes, I'd spend time commenting on the essays because I'd pick them up a bit earlier so I can give them back. Unless it's something egregious or if the grade is close to the next grade up (because students get picky about "why is this an 69/79/89 and not a 70/80/90?"), I will briefly comment in order to avoid email conversations about this later. But right now, I scan first to make sure they did the assignment correctly and then I go back through and quickly read without commenting unless they've misunderstood something or are off the mark. I don't know. Maybe that's not fair. But shit, by the time the last of the comp essays come in, I will have read/graded 123 essays plus about 65 final exams this week. Whew.
And today I don't have to be on campus until 11:30. Yes!
So I let myself sleep in today. Or rather that was the plan, except my body woke me up at 5:15 anyway. But whatever. I lounged around in bed until about 5:55. I still feel good. I was asleep by about 9:45 last night, too. I will say this, the marathon week of grading has led to some deep, restful sleep.
So this morning I'm enjoying my coffee. I'm still going to work out, but I'm taking my time, enjoying the sunrise, just sort of relaxing. And as far as my grading is concerned, I should be done with everything, including having grades uploaded by about 1 pm today.
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