Hmm, I have not really gotten much done today either. I did manage to do yoga. And go to the coffee shop and grade. But I only graded 3 essays instead of 6, disheartened by the quality of the ones I read. Dude, why are my students not improving? Last semester they all bombed the first essay and then were so relieved when our second essay was a compare/contrast --- they all latched onto the very formulaic structure and liked that it required less thinking. This semester, we spent more time on form and structure and I am getting worse essays --- essays that do not, actually, compare or contrast two essays. Oy. It's depressing. It's one thing to be working here temporarily for very low pay when one feels like one is doing a valuable service, but to feel like you're wasting your time and having no effect? Devastating. I need to actually stop listening to all the "crisis in education and/or college" stuff getting published these days because it is too demoralizing.
I also tried to upload the corrections to my proofs but there are major problems going on there, and I will say no more because I am still trying to get that resolved. What else did I do? Um, took a nap. Read a little more of the Garcia Girls novel (I had to backtrack and re-read a section to get all the girls' identities straight). Took a walk a smidge halfway through the day. Hung out outside with my auxiliary cat (he might deserve a separate post for his story). Ooh, and last night after posting I did another job app, so, huzzah. That means I have 7 left, 3 "regular" and 4 community college ones. I don't want to do them though ---- too many supporting documents to put together.
Yes, I am officially boring. And I have not gotten back to my article. I need to do that. And figure out something fun with my life. Because clearly this is sad and depressing.
2 comments:
For what it's worth, I think most of what we do does bear fruit -- just not necessarily immediately. We're talking, in a lot of cases, about students who have been shortchanged all their lives, who have been cheated out of a thousand opportunities to learn to think, and it takes more than a semester or two to change that.
Or so I tell myself. Because otherwise the combo of Basic Writing + freshman comp with all the students who were in Basic last semester would be too frustrating to bear.
What FP said. Also, take heart with this. Thinking is difficult. And so is writing a decent paper that shows that thinking in a proper discipline-specific way. But those are very different things. Perhaps there is thinking going on that's just not manifesting in the papers yet.
But I know what you mean about needing to see the improvement to feel like you're doing something useful. You are. But you're just one cog.
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