(Nine! Days! To go!)
There's a flood of forms in my inbox from students requesting an earlier final exam. (But I booked tickets to go on holiday! How dare the exam interfere with my trip! How was I supposed to know there would be a final exam?)
The department is buzzing with the weird sense of camaraderie that results from too many late night marking sessions and dealing with weird student requests.
Every email I send gets pretty much the same reply, "Can you wait two weeks for me to deal with this?"
I'm no longer having the "forgot to go to class" nightmares, but have moved onto the "created an un-answerable exam" set instead.
I burst into tears any time anyone asks me to do anything. (Actually, that's mostly just today, and probably only because I was up all night re-creating the lecture notes and handouts that my computer destroyed yesterday at 11pm).
A research-only job is starting to really appeal.
And, worst of all, my blog posts have become both whiny and infrequent.
(While I was writing this post, I was interrupted three times by students wanting to know if I had marked their assignments yet. The ones they handed in five days ago. The ones that are taking me 30 minutes each to mark. (0.5 hours x 75 assignments = a number bigger than 5 days.) Now if I HAD marked them, and was willing to give them back/release the marks, do they really think I'd be deliberately withholding the grade, only to give in when they knock on my door and hassle me?)
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
How you can tell the semester is nearly over
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3 Comments:
So, I'm just going to tell you ;) that when I ask about grades, it's my way of telling the instructor I think it's been too long. LOL
There are always instructors/professors who get very complicated assignments/exams/projects back very quickly - so quickly, even the students are a little surprised. Therefore, no other prof is permitted to take a reasonable amount of time without inciting our ire. KWIM?
I admit to being extremely impatient waiting for grades.
Actually, it's all part of a plot to see how much they really care about their grades. The first ones to ask get the best grades. I thought everyone knew that.
Jogger
Jen - that's exactly what bothers me about it. I interpret a question about whether I've finished marking as, "You are taking too long to get these back to us", which is just unreasonable after only five days.
And I AM one of those people who get back complicated assignments quickly - often around a week after hand-in, and never more than two, even with 70+ to mark (most of my colleagues take four or five weeks to mark these same assignments when they teach this course). But I do it as soon as they are ready, so if they AREN'T handed back yet, there's no point in asking.
Talk to me! (You know you want to!)