Wednesday, October 7, 2015

Bad Habits. This is No Way to Grade.

I just finished grading a large pile of essay exams. It feels good, except I've been grading since 4:30 this morning and I have three classes to teach today. I told myself to spread out my grading. I didn't. I I graded all day yesterday and finished grading this morning. The process would have been smoother had I graded throughout the weekend but my preference and choice was to do other things during the weekend, like remembering I have two children and that it might be nice to go outside. Much of Saturday was spent with the kids at soccer, and Sunday involved a little bit of football and time spent with relatives.

The habit of working in the early hours of the morning goes back to college. I would spend normal hours studying in the library but run out of time and mental gas and shut it down to toss and turn in bed and have a pitiful night of sleep, only to get back up before the sun and resume studying. I was rewarded for doing so in the form of good grades and academic success. So, in a way, it works. But what a lousy habit. Surely there has to be some other way to find proper hours in the day to get done what needs to get done. Or maybe not.

I'll end this now that I'm probably in the realm of self-pity but really it's just a journal entry in the form of a blog that says to myself, "Get your shit together." I need to develop better habits because my habits around grading are in desperate need of improvement. Okay, I'm off to teach my three classes and they'll probably be good ones because I'm happy that the grading is done and I'll probably be loose in the classroom and manage to find my A or A minus game. Should that happen, it will further reinforce how I tend to go about my work.


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