Last week was filled with student conferences, which are, outside of grading papers, the profession’s biggest brain-crushing activity. It amounts to sitting in the office for hours on end while students stream steadily in and out with their sad, pathetic papers and you have to repeat, almost word for word, the same suggestions to each of them. Fifteen times a day it’s “So, may I respectfully suggest you make your argument suck slightly less? I think shifting the balance more toward logic and away from stank, steaming poo would really strengthen your essay.”
This week, on the other hand, must be spent in grading, a prospect so dire and depressing that all through the halls of the English department professors are hiding in their offices alphabetizing their bookshelves, organizing their different sizes of paper clips, studying their benefits policies, maintaining their cuticles, braiding their leg hair, counting floor tiles, writing on websites, or even just staring vacantly into space — anything to avoid facing the leaden piles of essays stacked up on the corners of their desks. Those who are actually grading must reward themselves every hour with a trip downstairs to the Starbucks. When they return to their desks, they don’t so much sit down to work but rather hover slightly above the chair, twitching and flapping through the pages with a maniacal, caffeinated glint in their dangerous eyes.
I am particularly dreading looking at the Freshman Composition papers, as my freshmen are the ones who seem constitutionally least able to follow simple directions. How does a person get into a college like Wordsmith without being able to comprehend basic instructions? When I think about the extent to which a certain segment of my Freshmen Composition kids are, to all appearances, medically brain dead, my blood starts to boil. There’s a whole crew of them, all in almost-matching striped rugby shirts and khakis and Topsiders, who sit in the back of the room and grunt indistinctly at me and their peers — when they can bother, that is, to lift their heads from the position of permanent slouch and engage in the world around them at all. Seriously, blood is boiling. It is in no way hyperbole when I tell you I wish I were allowed to punch their slack, spiritless faces right off their heads.
Okay, I am going to go fix myself a vodka and Fresca and work on writing an unnecessarily brutal midterm. In the meanwhile, wish me luck on both finishing my depressertation on time and managing not to murder anyone.
So, how is your job going?
Posts like this one are the reason I keep coming back here. Well, that and the fact that you like whiskey and Tool.
My “job” (”job, ha!) is on hold at the moment. In the latest news surrounding my “French adventure”, I am being sued by my landlord for libel (or I think that’s what the French translation equates to - he’s suing me anyways). The reason being is that the state-run electrical company put in their inspection report that the electrical system in the apartment “presents a grave risk of electrocution” yet he claims it is safe and that I am slandering his good reputation!
Libert?, ?galit?, fraternit? and deadbeat landlords!
I will grade them for you. My comments will not be constructive, however, but on the plus side I’ll do it for free. Is “mouth-breathing troglodyte” or “illiterate fuckwit” a more damning insult?
On the job front, I am looking for a new one.
I just got back from overseas. I was up for 45+ hours straight before collapsing on a delayed Chicago to Portland flight last night for a few hours. After another 4 hours of sleep, I’m at work now, completely disoriented and with a limited mental grasp on what I should be doing. It’s going to be a great day.
One of the departments that I’m doing tech support for is being transfered over to the ownership of another company. I’m assisting the other company’s tech person in making sure everyone’s e-mail, files, backups, etc. is transfered over into the other company’s possession and that things like e-mail get transferred between different operating systems (Mac to Windows) and different e-mail clients. Let me tell you now that Apple Mail, Eudora, and Outlook DO NOT PLAY WELL TOGETHER.
The secret to grading survival is to run competitions between the essays. It’s like racing crabs, only kinder. I have seven contenders for Best Dangling Modifier ‘07. I’d get prizes for the winners, only I don’t want to be held responsible for the consequences.
My “job” is going rather well once I decided not to care so much. Sounds callous? Well it is. But in addition to my teaching, I’m working another 20 hrs as a programmer for a company 50 mins away in the suburbs of Springfield (because I can’t pay my rent). So what I do is get my students to do the work.
Peer Reviews on their various drafts, for instance, relieve me of the tiresome chore of telling them they suck. Then having them keep writer’s notebooks which I grade in class while they do their Peer Reviews gives them the illusion I’m working hard on grading them on various aspects of the course. Which I guess I am doing. But in ways that don’t intrude on my time.
I also hold office hours when none of them can actually make the time. Is this bad of me? Am I wrong? Otherwise, I’m a good teacher. i put my heart into the lectures, guiding the group work and everything else. Just because they are stunted, well, I figure I’m just one of many people here….
Yay for apathy I guess….
Job? Which one? The one that pays the bills is going fine. Except I’m about 2 hours away from having to sleep there in order to get everything done. And by ‘get everything done’ I mean find menial tasks to keep me busy enough to warrant being there so I can be at my bosses’ beck and call, yet not important enough that constant interuption will cause me to make a mistake because God forbid someone’s name is spelled wrong in our database.
The fantasy job that I’ve dreamed of all my life is also going well. And by ‘well’ I mean I’m spending 6 times more money ‘training’ for the job than I am actually making at the job.
Who knew when Al Gore invented the internet that it would become such a great outlet to vent everyone’s frustrations with work/working?
Work is good - interesting, challenging, useful (for me).
The stack of 3rd year (that’d be junior, yes?) assignments that I’m supposed to finish marking by Monday is however a different story. Couple that with a weekend of well-planned and catered-for debauchery means I have 3 hours in which to mark them.
And to top it all off, I have to explain to them what the hell they’re supposed to be doing on Monday with what’s planned to be one of the most amazing hangovers in the history of my postgrad career, when I don’t actually understand the topic.
How you actually manage to teach as a proper job (rather than to pay for the drinking habit), I’ll never understand.
Greetings! :)