Well, other than an official grade change form — one of those grade-change requests was actually valid! — and handing in some official forms, I’m done with my work for the semester! I’ll be handing in the last of my paperwork tomorrow, including gradesheets and attendance forms, paperwork to collect my pension money from my last job — apparently you have two years to do it — and a sheet notifying Academic Affairs that I’ll be out of the country for a month this holiday. (Lime can’t travel, so I’m going alone.) I’ll be in Laos for two weeks, and then in Thailand for another two.
The form to get a grade changed, by the way, takes the filling out of some serious forms. The thing is three pages long, with lots of redundancy — you have to write the student’s name and student number three times, the original and new grade twice, and so on. All for a computer error where a grade was truncated instead of rounded off! Lime says the pain-in-the-butt nature of the form is to discourage changing grades, because it’s a “serious” change. The reason that one doesn’t get this impression from students is because, I’m guessing, for one of two reasons:
- Students are afraid to bug some of them about their grades. I know one professor who makes it abundantly clear how annoying she finds grade-grubbing. I don’t think they bug her too much!
- Korean profs know to make sure their grades are entered good and early so that any mistakes can be corrected well ahead of the deadline, thus avoiding the annoyance of this long, complicated form.
But anyway, it’s (mostly) filled out, and tomorrow, I’ll be done with it. I have a little time, but also feel a little out-of-it: maybe it’s a cold? I sometimes get sick after the end of semester. The stress-release gets me every time. (Same thing at the end of a trip, too.)
But hey, I’m going to be in Laos. And then I’m going to be in Thailand. Okay, I’m not crazy about Thailand, but it’s warm, and I’ll mostly be at a beach, I think.