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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Thursday, March 06, 2008

entry arrow10:46 AM | Things You Do While Trapped Under a Heap of Student Papers

Take a series of deep breaths, a prayer embedded in between. Listen to classical music, or some other form of relaxing muzak. Make coffee. Steal away a few minutes from checking all those papers, to blog.

The things you do to ward off madness...

Oh, wait. It's Thursday already? I have no conception of days this week, or the past week for that matter. This is, after all, the final week of school, with all its attendant madness. The final exams start next week, and guess what that means to the lives of every teacher on the face of the earth: gearing up to do battle with all sort of student papers and exams -- a heap of thankless work that rewards you with the occasional gems that take our breath away (always mitigated by this doubt: "I hope this is not plagiarized"), and ultimately breaks your soul down with the ubiquitous bombs that have us wailing between hysteria and exasperation. Right now, most of the research papers I am reading for all three sections I am handling are so inept, I'm actually angry: all that work I've done on these classes for the past semester, only to be given papers of utter cluelessness?

I used to be a one-night commando, piling up all papers to be checked with the "plan" to demolish them in two brave days and one sleepless night. But I always come away from that process very much demolished myself that it takes me at least two weeks to recover. This year, I've learned to space out the work over the entire semester, but I've since found out that the work, although significantly bearable now, is not any less hard -- the pain just becomes a more constant reality in one's life.

So do check up on me in a few more days. I'll be blogging more when this grading season passes. Till then, here's wishing you all happiness from my end of the zombie zone.

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