Those who have made a habit of glancing at the progress bars in my sidebar will note that I am nearly done grading my midterm essays for this semester. I love teaching writing, but the grading, that’s the rub. It kills me every time, and for some reason, I always forget about this fact and take on too many writing classes. Well, two writing classes would be okay, if only I were wise enough to get the midterms desynchronized enough to give myself two weeks of reasonable marking work, instead of one week of insanely intense grading. Anyway, I’m halfway …
Month: November 2006
Jazz Winds
On the way home from class tonight, I heard a jazz drummer practicing up in one of the practice rooms somewhere in a nearby building. It’s terribly windy tonight, and he (I think I glimpsed him through a window, and it was indeed a ‘he’) was burning his way through a fast post-boppish cycle, and the sound of the crashing cymbals and off-kilter rhythm seemed to match the low-roaring wind just perfectly. If I weren’t feeling sniffly and sick, I might have gone looking for him, to see if he was good as he sounded from far away. It’d be …
Dammed Flue
Er, damned flu, I mean. Been sneezing like mad. Talked with one of the two plagiarists in class tonight, was was very contrite and in tears. (She settled for a C and a horrible assignment involving multiple paraphrases of what she plagiarized, but was mostly just embarrassed and felt awful about “quoting information” without actually quoting it.) The other, who basically just copied and pasted Dokdo rants, fled from the room at the end of class. Sniffle. I hope to be feeling better tomorrow, so I can hit the gym, but I have six more essays to mark, and then …
Balance
Between hearing snippets of a supposedly excellent book Lime’s reading, containing a Chinese student’s reflections on University life in Korea, and one of my student’s essays on the education system here, I realized something else about why so many Freshmen are so whacked out and extreme in their socializing and drinking and everything else when they first start University. It’s not just the group thing — you know, the having to follow along, and “because everyone else is doing it”, which is so widespread here. And it’s not just the relief of finally being finished with college entrance exams, either, …
My Own Thank Goodness!
No eye pain, no major strain, Essays: only sixteen remain. Thumbed through the pile too, Looked interesting, save a few. Two comp courses is easier than three, If I had but one, I’d be madly happy. So and so on the world shall turn, I think I shall make it so next term.