Skip to main content

So close, and yet so far...

Whenever I have large stacks of grading, I find that I can power through for a while but the closer I get to being done, the harder it is to force myself to get the last few papers done. This is true even if I take a big break - for example, I finished grading all but five papers yesterday morning and then I started working on something else, figuring I would start fresh this morning and just finish them off. I did manage to grade a couple this morning but it's now six hours later and I just can't seem to find the mental wherewithal to do the others. I have, however, vacuumed my living room, worked a bit on another project, and done some prepping for next week's classes (and now I'm writing this...). For some reason, I just can't seem to get my brain to focus so I can grade those last few papers, even though I know that it's not going to take all that long and if I can just do it, I will feel incredibly happy to be done with the whole stack. Is it just me, or does this happen to other people?
Labels:

Comments

  1. Ron CronovichJune 9, 2012 at 3:06 PM

    I have that problem at the beginning or during the middle, but not at the end. If the papers/exams are poorer on average than expected, I get depressed and full of self-doubt about my teaching effectiveness, and look for ways to avoid grading and distract myself - like vacuuming, prepping a different class, etc. But when as I get closer to the end, psychological momentum builds and helps me get through the rest.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Comments that contribute to the discussion are always welcome! Please note that spammy comments whose only purpose seems to be to direct traffic to a commercial site will be deleted.

Popular posts from this blog

THE podcast on Implicit Bias

I keep telling myself I need to get back to blogging but, well, it's been a long pandemic... But I guess this is as good an excuse as any to post something: I am Bonni Stachowiak's guest on the latest episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, talking about implicit bias and how it can impact our teaching.  Doing the interview with Bonni (which was actually recorded a couple months ago) was a lot of fun. Listening to it now, I also realize how far I have come from the instructor I was when I started this blog over a decade ago. I've been away from the blog so long that I should probably spell this out: my current title is Associate Vice President for Faculty and Staff Diversity and I have responsibility for all professional learning and development related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as inclusive faculty and staff recruitment, and unit-level diversity planning. But I often say that in a lot of ways, I have no business being in this position - I've ne...
Post a Comment
Read more

When is an exam "too hard"?

By now, you may have heard about the biology professor at Louisiana State (Baton Rouge) who was removed from teaching an intro course where "more than 90 percent of the students... were failing or had dropped the class." The majority of the comments on the Inside Higher Ed story about it are supportive of the professor, particularly given that it seems like the administration did not even talk to her about the situation before acting. I tend to fall in the "there's got to be more to the story so I'll reserve judgment" camp but the story definitely struck a nerve with me, partly because I recently spent 30 minutes "debating" with a student about whether the last midterm was "too hard" and the whole conversation was super-frustrating. To give some background: I give three midterms and a cumulative final, plus have clicker points and Aplia assignments that make up about 20% of the final grade. I do not curve individual exams but will cu...
3 comments
Read more

This is about getting through, not re-inventing your course

As someone who has worked hard to build a lot of interactivity into my courses, I have never been interested in teaching fully online courses, in part because I have felt that the level of engaged interaction could never match that of a face-to-face class (not that there aren't some exceptional online courses out there; I just have a strong preference for the in-person connection). But the current situation is not really about building online courses that are 'just as good' as our face-to-face courses; it is about getting through this particular moment without compromising our students' learning too much. So if you are used to a lot of interaction in your F2F class, here are some options for adapting that interaction for a virtual environment: [NOTE: SDSU is a Zoom/mostly Blackboard campus so that's how I've written this but I am pretty sure that other systems have similar functionality] If you use clickers in class to break up what is otherwise mostly lect...
2 comments
Read more