The Final Stretch

[stoutfellow]

Tomorrow, I will go to the office and grade finals.

When I'm done with that, I'll grade finals.

Afterwards, I'll grade finals.

I hate grading. I always have that quasi-parental "Where did I go wrong?" feeling. (But I take no responsibility for calculus students who haven't mastered algebra.)

The only thing good about tomorrow is Thursday.

Comments

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

That's hard to say. Now, I do, from time to time, teach a course on the history of mathematics, and I find it harder to grade the essay questions and the papers in that class, but part of that may simply be that I wasn't trained as a historian.

What makes grading painful for me, really, is confronting the silly errors that students make - errors that I have explicitly and repeatedly warned them against. (I notice that, when the local paper prints corrections to articles, it gives only the corrected version - it does not identify the previous error. I wonder whether there is some psychological legitimacy to that, and whether pointing out specific possible errors actually implants them in my students' heads.)

[hornedhopper.livejournal.com]

Yes, but SF, the errors *belong* to the student; they really do. Not to you (Don't be so selfish, let the students take some credit here!! (g)). You have carefully shepherded them through the maze, pointed out the hazards, done everything but bell the cat (g) - at finals time, it's their turn to do the work, you've done yours! Not that I don't understand the feeling, since I graded finals for a number of years, too, and agonized over whether I could, perhaps, squeeze an extra point here and there for an especially deserving student (i.e., one who tried like h*ll to get it, worked hir tail off during class...). But I don't think that your having pointed out the hazards made them drive directly through them. Teachers who *truly* care are the best teachers; I think you're being too hard on yourself. (pat, pat)

P.S. Why is the best thing about Wednesday Thursday? Aren't Friday and Saturday equally good? (gg)

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

The thing about Thursday is that, when it's Thursday, Wednesday's [I]over[/I]. The claim of other days is rather weaker.