I made a nice little effort to blog more, and then a week of radio silence. Mostly because I have been sitting on a mountain of grading and have been pushing through it only because there is even more grading coming in. Why did I give so many written assignments?!

I also have a real problem with grading things immediately. Or rather, not grading things immediately. Frequently something due on Monday doesn't even get looked at until the next Monday. I tell my students to expect 2 weeks to get something back. For some reason, I need that first week to stare at it and contemplate how to avoid grading.

Then when I start grading, I read a few good papers and think "wow, these are good, why did I wait, I should finish in no time." Then it all goes down hill. A few progressively worse papers and my mind turns to mush. I can grade a 7 page good paper in less than 10 minutes, but a 4 page bad paper can take an hour (and that's with only circling grammar/typo errors).

Of course, others have stated all of this more eloquently than me... The Five Stages of Grading. Today was spent in a combination of 3 and 5.

Of course, I have 18 other papers that I promised the students they would get back tomorrow. And I'm in stage 1... my plan is to grade them all in the morning tomorrow before class. Hahahahaha!! I'm insane.