I don't know how I'm going to do this. I'm tired enough that it's hard to see, literally/physically, and frustrated enough that it's hard to see metaphorically. I have encountered the same problems over and over and over and over, and I cannot bear it any more. I'm also deeply disappointed that one of the students whose paper I was counting on to be good has apparently not come through: I just glanced at his opening paragraph, and it's personal anecdote, nothing about the literature at all. I've been wading through vague thesis after platitude after hackneyed phrase after mindless bilge, and I just don't know how to face any more. And yet I have eight more papers that need to be done for tomorrow morning, another by 1:00 tomorrow (a late submission), and another five that need to be done for Wednesday morning. Plus there may be one more late submission from a student whose conference is also tomorrow. And there are only so many hours between now and then. Even if I call some students and let them know their papers won't be ready until later, I still have to deal with the papers I've promised for Wednesday morning: the domino effect may make that plan a less than viable solution.
Of course, a good amount of the time I'm spending is because the papers are so dreadful. Or dreadfully mediocre. Trite, banal, hackneyed, lacking in anything approaching actual thought, certainly of the sustained variety. They even stick to a platitudinous thesis when it is flatly contradicted by the evidence they present, apparently utterly unaware of the problem.
I want to scream and cry and throw things--preferably at the students. I want to give up, go home and go to bed--and let the students try to revise without any written feedback at all. Paul even gave me a dose of chocolate to help: it was utterly delicious chocolate, but it didn't carry me through the next paper.
Sufficient whining. The point is that I need to strategize: what can I do that will make it possible for me to get through at least a few more papers tonight? Blogging is helping; I've blown off some steam--and taken a break, so for at least a few minutes I've not been wallowing in their turgid little minds (as Paul is wont to say). I'm now going to sit at my desk until I figure out what I need in order to keep going. I won't mark another paper or leave this room until I have a strategy. I will breathe deeply and evenly and let my eyes rest. And when I have sufficiently fortified myself in whatever way I determine necessary, I will launch myself again into the fray, bloodied but unbowed.
It will all be worth it, however, if their revisions show even a modicum of improvement. Shall I hold my breath?
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Glad to see I'm not the only one who would like to throw things. Please tell me you also yell at the papers and start to make bigger, angrier, darker edits as you go through the stack. I think English teachers have a weird, unwarranted sense of eternal optimism. Or we're masochists.
ReplyDeleteWe are deluded, have that eternal optimism AND are masochists. I do yell at the papers. I do make bigger, angrier, darker comments. (I'm more likely to just write "NO! See me.") It's nice to know that at least we are among a collegial group of people who do the same thing.
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