54 in 3

I wish that "54 in 3" was a special knitting term, but unfortunately, the only way that it's linked to knitting is that it is exactly what KEPT me from really doing any knitting this week.




"54 in 3" refers to the fact that this here pile of papers was the 54 Grade 11 essays that I marked in 3 days.... 3 days where I still taught three classes a day, ran an English department and commuted a total of 100 kms per day to get to/ from my job. I'm not bragging, I'm just amazed that I managed to pull it off. It's not like I was facing an external deadline, it was more of an internal deadline that sounded something like, "I have to finish those essays this week because if I trip over this pile of papers one more time, I'm sure to break my neck." That, and the fact that if one more student implied I should have marked the essays over March Break because I "had the time" (unlike having a holiday like the rest of the damn province), I was sure to break their neck instead of my own.


And I wish I could say that the "muted lighting" and "interesting angles and shadows" of this picture were due to some artistic finagling (sp?) on my part, but the reality is, it's muted because it was 6:10 a.m. and I had been up since 5 to finish marking and it's an interesting angle because I was sitting on the floor getting organized and didn't have the energy to stand up and take the picture from another perspective. All the same, I'm happy that the general mood of what the picture turned out to be is exactly the way I was feeling - shadowy and crooked!




All the same, last night while I was trying to slog through those last few papers, I decided I would treat myself to some knitting along the way (mark 3 essays, knit 3 rows). Something simple, something mindless, yet something workable.... so out came the MDK Log Cabin baby blanket. Voila:


It really doesn't look any different than the last time I posted it because I'm still on the fourth block, but it was still a nice diversion from the somewhat mindless, yet endlessly frustrating, task of marking Grade 11 essays.

Besides, the Argosy scarf has been officially renamed "ARGHHHH-osy" because I had to frog it yet again. And as much as I love that scarf, I can't be bothered to knit something so frustrating at the same time that I'm trying to restrain myself from picking out my eyeballs because yet another student wrote a sentence like, "Homework is so retarded and teachers should stop assigning it because I have enough going on in my life, like, work and stuff."


You might think I'm joking about picking out my eyeballs, but when there are 2.5 mm double pointed needles within arm's reach and I've just read the 50th comma splice in a row on page 3 of a six page essay, the necessity of eyeballs really becomes a debatable point.

And as much as I will circle those errors and indicate how to fix them, it's not like any student is going to take my feedback seriously, or really make an effort to take my feedback and apply it to the next assignment. I'm sorry, they just won't, because today's students believe that if they do so much as put a freaking "x" in the top right hand corner of a blank sheet of paper, then it is my job to "give" them 100% because they "made an honest effort to do the work." News flash: poor quality work earns a poor mark, I don't care how much effort you put into that stupid "x" that's in the corner of the paper. If you didn't do what I asked you to do and you made up new rules for the assignment, well, you get what you deserve: a crappy ass mark.


Returning marked assignments is, by far, the most stressful part of my job. ON ANY GIVEN DAY, I will take the kid who tells me to f**k off over the kid who earned 65% but who thinks that everything he/she does is worth 90%. This sense of entitlement with which our students cloak themselves eats away at any kind of positivity you might attempt to instill in the classroom. Gone are the days when a bad mark meant that you had to work hard the next time, or just meant that it was time to work hard, period. Students want good marks for a minimal amount of poor quality work. How is this logical... or even fair?


ARGH... I think it's time to hide the 2.5 mm dpns.