I just came to the realization the other day that I have committed myself to producing three pieces of academic writing by the middle of April. That's only five weeks away! Eek! I committed to two of them several months ago, but the third I committed to this week without thinking about the timing of the other two. I've done this before, but not quite this badly - it will be difficult to get all this done (I do still have to teach during this time... oh, and my taxes will be due before then, won't they?)
When I saw this article: Academic AWOL it struck a chord because I've done the same thing - in committing myself to these three projects that will be difficult to complete in the given time frame, I'm running the risk of being on an academic AWOL. I'll either have to reschedule one of them, or I'll discover that I'm smarter than I think I am by getting them done in time. I kinda hope it's the latter - it would be nice to discover I'm more capable than I think!
Note to self: stop saying yes!
Right now though, it was one of the comments about marking that caught my attention today. Mostly because I'm wading through a huge pile of marking. This term, the students seem to be worse than I've ever had before. I don't think it's necessarily a trend to poorer students but just the luck of the draw that I got two classes with a high proportion of poor or underprepared writers. They aren't bad enough to have to be in some kind of remedial class - not that we have those for this course - but so many of them have absolutely no idea how to incorporate material from other sources, the conventions of academic writing, or even what some very simple everyday words mean!
The comment that caught my attention was about how to avoid procrastinating marking. I know I procrastinate because it's painful and monotonous. It's painful to see how poorly prepared for writing some of my students are, how difficult it is for some of them to follow instructions (really, in this course, if you follow the instructions there's no way you can get lower than a B, yet students fail it all the time!). It's monotonous to tell student after student the same thing... especially if I've already said it in class!
If anyone out there does have a method for making marking easy, please let me know. Otherwise, I'll just have to keep procrastinating about it...
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1 comment:
Oh! Piece of cake. Simply throw the papers into the air, and mark them as you pick them up. First paper = 100%; second = 98%; third paper = 96%... and so on, until you're done.
Of course, this only works if you staple them first... otherwise, you'll have quite a mess to clean up. You might also want to have a set of stamps made that say things like "tell me more" or "Did you actually read the book?" that way you can simply use the stamp, rather than tire your wrist writing it over and over...
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