It is remarkable to me how many ways I can find to avoid grading essays when it certainly would be better to simply do it and get it over with. I meant to grade four yesterday, four today, and four tomorrow and be done with it.
I graded zero yesterday, four today--so now I have eight still to do, and I highly doubt I'll be able to get them all done tomorrow. I'll be pretty danged happy if I manage to get four done and finish the remaining four on Saturday.
Meanwhile, there is at least one quiz and several discussion boards I could/should be grading, but am I? Hell no.
But I think about the fact that for me, this is all pretty much "situation normal"--except I'm physically far from campus--whereas for many of my colleagues, this is a time of crumbling crisis: quickly switching to FTF classes to online, which even for teachers versed in online teaching would be a nightmare, while coping with all the psychological, social, and pragmatic problems of life during a pandemic: grocery stores empty of basic necessities, medical facilities already strained close to breaking point and the numbers of confirmed cases still climbing, people trying to balance maintaining lives while remaining as isolated or "distanced" as possible.... Out here in the sticks, we are in a much better situation: not very many people and a whole lot of space, and we started putting all the precautions in place before things were already getting ahead of us. And apart from the need to get to a store from time to time, and the absolute lack of toilet paper anywhere in the state, it seems, I can toodle along just fine for a good long while just me in my little house, bitching about my students as if life were normal.
I have to remind myself how challenging things are for everyone back "home." Today, for instance, I started to feel impatient that I haven't gotten an answer about a payroll issue--but then I thought, "I have no idea what kind of insanity they're dealing with that's a whole lot more important than my question; I can follow up in a week or so. This is not 'house on fire' urgent." Ditto an issue with my vision coverage; it seems I've been paying COBRA payments but my coverage won't work out here. I've asked my Human Resources contact about it, but I don't expect an answer any time soon.
This is such a completely weird time in history--as one friend said, living it is a bear. Things to be grateful for: that the internet still works, that my computer and internet connection still work, that most of my friends and relatives are accessible through the internet one way or another. Strange, strange days.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment