This semester, my efforts to trust students feel like they’re backfiring. I ungrade, but they don’t take work seriously. I never use plagiarism checkers, but I still have to deal with a last minute case. Not saying I’ll stop effort, but still sucks.

Family has been sick for the last week, and it’s been a struggle to keep up with grading even after cancelling nearly all my other commitments. Thought I was in the clear this morning, only for the first final project I opened to turn into suspected plagiarism. 😩

I feel like I am constantly fine-tuning how I do assessments in my classes. I want to trust students and avoid policing them, but I’m frustrated when they respond to this approach by acting like it exempts them from attending class and participating.

Cet après-midi, je fais des corrections en écoutant ma collection de musique francophone. Après une quinzaine d’années d’effort, je suis bien content de ce que je peux écouter quand je veux.

I know someone who apparently agreed to review three articles the same week as final grading, and boy does he look dumb staring back from the mirror.

One of those afternoons where I’m auditing someone’s analysis code, but it’s an analysis of 4M rows of data, so I’m also doing spurts of grading while I wait for code to execute.

The stress I feel when assigning final grades is compelling evidence that I would never make it as a judge.

Is my brain mush right now because grading is hard? Or is grading hard right now because my brain is mush?

Repeatedly stopping this afternoon to jot down notes for next offering of a particular course. Not sure if this makes me a good prof (thinking ahead) or a bad prof (I’m supposed to be grading)