Tuesday, December 15, 2009

The Grrrrr in Grading

Why is grading so hard? Correction: why is getting myself to grade so hard? Probably like most people (except some lucky ducks who are already done), I'm grading myself into a frenzy this week. I knew when I went to bed Sunday night that I just have to hunker down this week and get some serious grading done. The projects I need to grade aren't the biggest baddest projects in the world either. Yet, I'm having trouble getting myself to do them. Yesterday between classes and meetings, I knew I should be grading. And I did, but to a limited extent. Now today when AL is taking care of Tot so I can get this grading week out of the way, I'm checking facebook, email, my favorite blogs (which of course don't have updates -- why? because they are grading too). Bad.

I'm also thinking about what's happening next quarter. For reasons that are unbloggable, I'm not teaching next quarter. I have daydreams about getting massive amounts of work done. I have nightmares that I'll fritter the time away and still not catch up on sleep and doctor's appointments. Clearly I need a goal and a plan. And thinking up goals and plans and what's reasonable and what's not is much more fun than grading. But before any of that can begin, I've got to put this quarter to bed. I really want to have all this done by the end of the week, even though grades aren't actually due until January. But I've got to give myself the gift of finishing them by end of day Friday. Which means using the time I have well instead of procrastinating and procrastiblogging. I think I'm going to have to accountablog and report my progress.

***7:30pm***

15 projects later -- and I'm beat. I've got something like 8 more tomorrow, then a bunch of other stuff. It's really great progress actually. What exciting blogging. Sorry, everyone.

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