Reflections On My Career Choice

I'm aborting the whole summer-summary thing I had going in the last post. Just too effing daunting, especially for my fragile mental state right now.

Why fragile? Because I'm grading again. And grading amps me up in a way that I can't really describe. I'm usually OK once I get going with it, but there are frequent periods of hyperventilation before I begin and much gnashing of the teeth as I read the first few students essays. Part of this can probably be chalked up to the fact that I'm still very unconvinced of my authority to evaluate anybody's work. And part of this can also be attributed to the fact that, despite having graded close to 300 student papers in the past year--thank you intro-level teaching assignments--I'm still slow as hell in my grading.

That last bit is mostly because I type up comments for all my students' papers. Like, right now, I'm typing close to a page of single-spaced comments for a two-page assignment. The conscious part of my brain screams, "No no no no stop spending so long you douchenozzle," but unfortunately for me, I grade with my hindbrain. And so I end up writing more than the students submitted to begin with. And that's just plain fucked up.

I set my timer and everything, but I just can't stop myself. It's infuriating. I got a good response from a few of my students last semester, but by and large I think my comments go largely unappreciated. So that's my personal goal for the semester: trimming down my grading time. Significantly.

I'm also freaking out right now because James just left this morning, and all the work that Mr. Fun-Pants-O'Leary made me forget about in a drunken haze is now hurtling towards me with the force of those tiny particles being swung around the Large Hadron Collider. And, similar to that contraption, there's a chance a black hole might spontaneously appear and suck me into oblivion. God, that would be fucking sweet.