Comments on: no one can say i do not have a winning attitude

By: pea

pea — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 19:59:54 +0000

Greetings! :)

By: jair

jair — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 03:55:22 +0000

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.

By: Lori

Lori — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 01:18:25 +0000

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?

By: Oedipa

Oedipa — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 05:36:40 +0000

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….

By: Alexis

Alexis — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:02:04 +0000

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.