Grading Does NOT Equal Writing

I am SO sorry I haven't posted in more than a week. Many of you have probably noticed my absence on your own blogs, as well.

Unfortunately, my blog is several items down on my priority list:

1. Getting my kids to/from school (with clothes on, showered, fed, etc.)

2. Grading papers

3. Preparing for class (writing out assignments, rereading, writing quizzes/tests, online discussion)

4. Eating regularly

5. Sleep

6. Cleaning the house to the non-pit level

7. Exercising

8. Writing

Lately, #2 and #3 have taken most of my time. In fact, I've jumped you up momentarily, but in just a few moments I need to finish grading--four more papers to go before classes this morning--so even this entry has to be short. It typically try to return papers the very next day, but always within the week, even if I have several batches of them.

Even worse, writing on this blog is not my first writing priority. I have a staged reading coming up a week from Sunday, and my full-length play needs a few rewrites, which I'm sure the director wants yesterday. I hope to get to these tonight, since this will be the first day in quite some time I do not have 3+ hours of grading to do.

Sorry if I sound like I'm complaining, readers. In reality, I only write this now to explain why--and to let you know (in case you were wondering) that I had not died.

I have not died.

I will be back in full force, I promise, when classes end in June. Until then, I will post as much as I am able, and I will check your blogs with every spare moment I have.

Too bad I don't have more spare moments.

Light is Coming

Two more items to grade for class, both due today, and I will be finished... so happy, I can hardly express it. My students will no doubt find their blood pressure lowers as soon as they have turned in the assignments. They will return home to study for Chemistry or Calculus, and I will tuck myself into the desk chair with some cheese and crackers and get to grading.

Funny to think about the end of term like this. My profession suits me, for it offers me an ending every few months, a moment of change, a chance to do things better. Classes end, and I can choose new textbooks, moved due dates, and modify how I work through an upcoming class.

New students will enter the class next term, if only because those students who do not earn a C or above will not be able to get into my courses to retake them (since mine are filled and have huge waitlists). I love meeting new students, and I love how a class changes because the student body changes. I also love seeing students again, but in a new setting, with different tasks set for them.

Change is probably one of the greatest blessings of my life. I love changing my furniture around (and have since I was very young). I love moving to new places. I love meeting new people. I love the adventure of trying new teaching methods, mixing things up, reading new books. I love the changes my children undergo on a daily basis, the growth my students manage in a single semester.

I love that I'm forty now. It's a nice change, and it seems to whisper that more change is coming.

I can't wait.

Blogging for Fun

I am drowning in essays on Greek myth (why did I choose to be an English teacher?!?), and I have less than forty minutes before I have to pick up my kids, but I just had to blog.

Thanks so much, those of you who read my blog whenever it pops up. Thanks for checking it out even when the title is lame and the subject matter isn't to your taste. And thanks to the BIG THREE responders, who pretty much chime in every single time I write (do I have to list you three out specifically? You know who you are!). Sometimes, in a given day, this blog is the only writing I can count. Sometimes it's the only fun I have. Sometimes it's the one break I get from all the stressful "have-tos"...

And you read it. Bad, good, boring, interesting, off topic, weird--no matter what presents itself here, you check it out. Thanks so much for that.

I wish I had more today. Perhaps I'll have time tomorrow to post about my trip out to Cape Flattery this past weekend. I took some digital video of it--spectacular!

Thanks again.

*hug*

Are We There Yet?

Kids are notoriously incapable of telling time. When my daughter was around three, anything that had once happened to her, including wearing diapers and living in another state, happened "last night." For her favorite friend Dorienne, everything in the past was "yesterday." All past events could be grouped in one single amorphous PAST that floats seamlessly from just a second ago to the very day the child was born.

Children are as time-goofy in the other direction, as well. Just try telling a child he's going to visit his grandma's, but not until next week. Without fail, the child will wake you earlier than normal the next morning, informing you that his bag is all packed for the stay at grandma's, and you need to feed him some toast before both of you leave on the trip. What's a week? Seven days? Is that the same as seven minutes? Oh, longer? More like ten minutes? No? Fifteen? What? How long is that?

The anxiety can be tremendous, for three minutes in time out feels to a three-year-old like a day and a half. Oh, when will the happy moment come when I don't have to sit here on this timeout bench anymore? When is daddy coming home? When is breakfast? Yum. When's lunch? What do you mean I have to wait four hours?!?

Driving trips are the same. Are we there yet? How long is this going to take? What town are we in now? (That last one is my kids' personal favorite, and I name off the towns as we go by... Monroe, Snohomish, Woodinville, Bothell, Bellevue, and so on.)

I could keep on criticizing my kids, but it isn't their fault. They truly cannot grasp the concept of time until their brains develop a bit more. In fact, even as adults we don't grasp time well. My husband, for instance, thinks that time runs more slowly than it actually does (and is therefore nearly always late). A student once tested me with regards to time keeping, and my task was to tell her when I thought 60 seconds had passed. I waited, waited, in silence, stressing out, afraid 60 seconds had long since passed. I finally couldn't take the strain and said, "Now." It turns out 36 seconds had passed. As you might guess, I'm habitually early for everything.

But it isn't just deadlines that have us mixed up. We still so often get caught up in what is coming in the future, so much so that we forget to look around and enjoy what is happening right now. I have done this countless semesters (as have my students), telling myself that once I get my grades all turned in I can relax. Or I say, this semester was awful, but next semester is going to be great. Or, I don't like where I live now, but the next place I live will be perfect. My next job will be ideal. My next house will be exactly what I want. My child's next teacher will be better.

But is anything as spectacular as we imagine, when we bank our soul's happiness on it to that extent? 

I just turned in my grades today (yahoo!), but even before this milestone, my life's been pretty good, including the finals to grade and underachieving students to reprimand. My daughter turns nine in two days, and I don't have any expectations about what that will mean for her. I just want to enjoy her now, at this very moment. Right now I am enjoying watching her sleep with the little Christmas tree in her room at this very moment. 

I hope she's not dreaming about someday. I hope she's dreaming about now.

Feeling Lazy...

Remember the Simon & Garfunkel song, "Feeling Groovy?" Okay, so I'm too stressed to feel groovy, but with two new classes looming in front of me (they start tomorrow), I have no choice. Yes, I'm prepared. Yes, I've taught them before. Yes, the syllabi are turned in and probably copied by now (I hope), and yes, the first class is merely me up at the front scaring the pants off all the students by telling them all the course requirements.

But I'm still tense. Instead of singing, "Feeling Groovy," I'm humming "Feeling Lazy." I have two more syllabi to create, for two classes beginning in October, and I really need to have the courses completely set up this week, before the rest of my classes get out of hand. 

But each time I get online, I balk. "I don't want to!" the baby voice inside me whines. "It's Sunday!" she continues, "Why can't I rest on a Sunday, just one day per week?"

Unfortunately, the truth is, I can't. I need to get this done. So even this blog entry, yet another attempt to stall, must end. I need to get to work. No lazy days for me!

Reading and Grading

I am just about to start my last reading "assignment"--my last promised read-thru of another writer's work--and I hope to be able to spend most of the weekend on it. 

Unfortunately, I also have to grade papers (yes, more reading, but with the added plus of giving a grade (yick). Fortunately, the assignment I'm grading seems pretty straightforward, and my comments do not need to be extensive. Still, I imagine grading will take most of the morning--after which I'll be walking in a parade, and then back here by noon to grade again (and hopefully FINISH). 

Interestingly, both of these tasks feed one into the other. Certainly, I enjoy reading fiction more than an assignment (with some exceptions, if the fiction is ghastly), but with both I am, in a way, grading. I'm offering grammatical feedback, making notes throughout, explaining my own expectations (whether I am patting on the back for meeting these expectations or telling the writer I want more), and my goals are pretty much the same, as well. 

In fact, my main goal with each activity is to make someone else's work better.

And that, my friends, is what has kept me teaching for the last 16 years. And it's why I am usually willing to read other writers' rough drafts, too.

It's Pouring!!!

The last few weeks of summer were just sliding along, peacefully. And then I began class. Okay, two classes. A wonderful set of classes, a little grading here and there, some new things to learn.... It wouldn't be too hard, I thought to myself. No more than 3 classes at a time. 

But I had made the mistake of applying for a bunch of jobs last year. And now that they are almost ALL panning out, I am up to my eyeballs in classes. I have two online classes right now, which end in October, I pick up two more (perhaps THREE) starting in mid-September, and then will likely pick up FOUR more in October, on an 8-9 week schedule. WOW!

I'm hiring a maid. In fact, I'm probably going to pay for an hour or two of babysitting a few days a week, right after school, just so I can get all the grading done. Can I pay someone to sleep for me, and transfer it? Who needs sleep anyway?

It's not like I'm an art teacher, who gets to play soft music in class while everybody sits around and paints a vase of flowers. Grading papers takes a while. I have to grade hundreds of papers in a single class--and to have 1-2-3-4-... oh, my God, EIGHT classes in a single semester (maybe NINE), well, I must be insane.

If one of my future blogs ends with gibberish at the end and trails off to nothing, you'll know I've gone off the deep end. Please look for signs I've lost it, and call the authorities. 

Busy, Busy, Busy

I'm so busy, 

My head is spinnin'

Like a whirlpool

It never ends...

I just received official notification of my workload. Starting in mid-August, I'll begin FOUR (yes, I said four) online courses, all with new preparations (none that I've taught before), and I'll pick up another course (one I've taught MANY times at the same campus) in late September. Everything is a bit staggered once it gets going, though, for two of the online courses will end in late October, and the other two (plus the later face-to-face class) will end in December. 

Lots of work. But it's all good news, all of it. My kids will start school after Labor Day (yes, here in Washington schools actually wait until then), and I'll spend my days working on the classes so that I can spend my evenings working with them on homework, playing games, reading, and other fun stuff. I'm even considering waiting to do Zumba until the evenings so that my kiddoes can come with me and exercise, too. (This past year, I went to the YMCA in the mornings, after my daughter was in school, so she hardly ever got to go).

But, at last, my semester is defining itself. No more limbo for me! 

Now if I can just get one college to send me my textbooks, I will be ecstatic! I'm going to e-mail them again, right now!