Grading denial

There's an excellent post at Not That Kind of Doctor on the Five Stages of Grading which begins:

Everyone is familiar with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her stage model of coping with grief popularly known as the five stages of grief. What you may not know is that Kübler-Ross actually developed her theory as a graduate student, basing her conception of the process of loss on the experiences one goes through over a grading weekend.

I laughed at the post, especially one of the comments that attempts to explain how one might assess the Staircase Method scientifically.

Unfortunately, that's the only laughing I'll be doing in regards to grading anytime soon. I'll be struggling to get through the grading that I have this weekend, which is frustrating since I'd worked hard this term to avoid grading jail.

For the first time ever, I created my course schedules - including due dates - all at the same time before the term began. I lined them all up side by side and adjusted assignment due dates so that I had no more than two things due each week for the four classes I'm teaching. This meant that starting at week 3, I had 1-2 assignments coming in every week except for the one after Remembrance day where nothing is due.

I was staying on top of the marking too, handing back assignments either the following class or within a week.

Except for this week.

I had intended to hand back one set of assignments yesterday (Thursday) after getting them in the Thursday before. I marked a midterm that also came in last week over the weekend and was ready to start marking the assignments on Tuesday. But on that day I started feeling terribly dizzy so went to bed after only marking a couple. Then I spent most of Wednesday undergoing tests to figure out why the vertigo was getting worse (I couldn't see straight at that point), which meant I missed two classes, one of which was to hand in yet more assignments.

On Thursday, I could see straighter, but couldn't read for more than five minutes before starting to get dizzy again and lose my ability to focus on the page. Even today, although I can read for a little longer, I need to take long breaks on a regular basis in order to let the dizziness dissipate.

So I've got a stack of papers that should and would have gone back already that have yet to be marked, and a blizzard of additional marking coming in next week because the regular marking will come in as well as another assignment that the students would have handed in had I been able to see straight enough to go to work on Wednesday.

It's a bit frustrating since I'd planned to avoid this weekend grading marathon until the last couple of weeks (when it's inevitable because those big research papers come in at that point). It's even more disappointing since I'd been very disciplined in staying on top of it and was feeling really good about how things were going up until this week. Now it's falling apart because I lost a couple of days of work.

I think I'll start the five stages with depression...

What's up, doc?

What's up, is that this semester is kicking my ass.

It's hard to believe that we're barely at the halfway mark of the semester. It sure feels like it's been going on for a very, very long time. So the thought that there's just as much of it still to complete as I've already done, is making the semester stretch in that weird way that film makers do when they zoom in/pull back at the same time. It's an eerie feeling that almost makes it seem the world is no longer obeying the rules of physics.

Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying a lot of it. The Cultural Perspectives on Science course is developing pretty nicely. We've had the usual drop-off of students who've decided they no longer want to attend, but the ones who are regularly coming to class have been participating in some really interesting discussions, which regularly leave me satisfied and occasionally exhilarated. And the other classes are interesting too - there have been some really eager and productive discussion and some interesting assignments too.

But I do have to admit I'm finding it a bit of a rough haul right now.

Brilliant! but oh, so hard!

So, I'm teaching this poetry class. That's the first of the brilliant-but-oh-so-hard parts of this story.

I don't study poetry. I have one publication about a poem, but it's a long poem, and my work on it was in identifying its connection to the poet's biography and to the myths that are invoked in the imagery of the poem. So that's the first problem - I'm working outside of my comfort zone.

I'm teaching a second year poetry course. It's actually the first half of our university transfer course, leftover from the days (just over a year ago, in fact!) when we weren't offering degrees ourselves, only university transfer. Because our students can stay with us now, this is the last semester it'll be offered. (It is also the equivalent of the poetry class I took as an undergrad since my alma mater is where most of our students transferred to.) But since it's my first time teaching it, and the last time it'll be offered, I figured I had nothing to lose.

That's where the second brilliant-but-oh-so-hard part comes in. In considering how to teach this course, I figured a topical approach might be more interesting than a simple chronological one. I do find as I'm teaching the course, that a lack of chronological structure is difficult for me because we are bouncing around the anthology quite a bit, but I still think it's pedagogically sound, so we've been troopering along fairly successfully I think.

This means we have four units: "sound and structure" where we attend to alliteration, rhythm, meter and such, "forms and figures" where we examine sonnets, villanelles etc. as well as satire, monologues and figures of speech (yes, it's a bit of a hodgepodge), "periods" where we'll touch on some major periods and examine their features e.g. metaphysical and modernist poets, and finally a "poet study" where we'll examine the work of one poet for the last two weeks of class.

This is where my biggest brilliant-but-oh-so-hard part comes in. I decided that one of the assessment pieces would involve having the students propose who that final poet will be. They will need to write a proposal, which will need to include some information about the poet, which poems we should read, and a rationale for why we should study this poet's work. The class will vote on which proposal they want to adopt (I'll retain veto power if it seems that the vote is going in a really bad direction for whatever myriad of reasons it could). Then we'll study the poet in the last two weeks.

Yeah, I know. I'm not exactly making this easy on myself. I will have to generate two weeks of lectures based on the recommendation of a student, and in short order. But the assignment is due in mid-November, so we'll have almost three weeks before we will start studying that poet. Which should be enough time. (At least, I hope.)

But right now, I feel like I'm writing some kind of huge legal document in trying to describe this assignment to the students, since it is so different than anything I've done before and I'm certain very different from anything they've been asked to do before. There's logistics of access to the poet's works that we have to wade through, not to mention the politics of the class voting and trying to reassure students that votes don't correlate with grades (though in reality, they certainly could!) I am requiring them to provide scholarly criticism on the poet and/or his/her works, so they should still have to do some research in order to complete the assignment. And in order to really be persuasive, I think they'll have to develop a good rationale for the study as well as read a good deal of poetry.

I really like the idea of this assignment. It's just that it's looking like there's a lot of explanation that's going to have to go into the assignment sheet, and it's a bit overwhelming right now.

So I guess I oughtta get back at it instead of whining on the interwebs.

I may be insane

Given the heavy teaching load (and I mean heavy... some days it feels downright unmanageable), my intention to present at three conferences over this year, and the need to take the dissertation material in an entirely new direction in order to make it into a workable book, I'm insane to have agreed to join our re-started fiction writing group.

Insane.

And yet.

I'm buying myself a little time by sending off material that's already been roughly drafted (though not completed by a long shot). Which means that I spent some of the last part of this week running through a first chapter draft, trying to eliminate the most awkward prose (not worrying so much about story at this point - that will have to come later).

Weird thing is, I really, really enjoyed it.

I also found myself becoming interested in the story again. I had started it quite a while ago, but got stuck after the fourth chapter (they're long, so it's about 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through a book-length manuscript). And so I left it. And left it.

But I'm actually getting interested in it again. I still don't know how to get out of the fourth chapter and into the final one(s). But I'm beginning to suspect that in the process of editing what I've already got, I'll figure it out. And that feels pretty good.

Now to get back to the conference paper that has a real and hard deadline that's rapidly approaching, rather than the agreed-upon deadline of the writing group!