Those Mannings Are Going to be Insufferable at their Reunion

Right, it'll be a blow-out. I can catch the commercials on Youtube. No problem. I've got to get that paper, that recommendation, and those grades (oh, and get that Japanese speech written, too) all in on Monday, so go in to the office. You won't be missing much.

Only what looks like one of the best Super Bowls in recent memory.

Crap.

Thanks a whole lot, little ESPN flash updater thingie. It would have been better if I hadn't found out until I got home.

Ah, well, back to work.

Zeros For Everyone!

It is so hard to feel any sense of accomplishment after finishing a marathon session of grading. Why? Because there are another two big stacks over there to get through, oh, yeah, that there's more on the way.

grrr.

Homework Gnomes

The homework gnomes struck repeatedly tonight. I am positive that when I got close to half way through the stack, they came in and added more on the bottom of the stack.

Also, click on this dancing lady. Does she spin clockwise or counter-clockwise? Apparently this somehow tells you if you are right-brained or left-brained. Go figure.

If They Cared, They Wouldn't Turn The Stuff In

In the 'talk to the new TAs' session thingie, one of the other TAs mentioned that it was her policy to work 8-5 and not bring any work home. Does anyone do that? Is that possible? It sound like a wonderful idea.

Today I was going to bring home a pile of grading to take care of and considered if I should or not. It would be very good of me to finish it all and hand it back to the students by tomorrow. It would certainly beat all of my previous records for returning homework. Some students might even look over the homework and end up doing better on the quiz coming up on Monday.

Then again, I would love to just come home and read a book, or play a video game or just zone out and try to make a dent in my netflix queue. That's to say nothing of the work I need to do on my research stuff.

I brought the grading home. Will I grade it?

Ugh

I loath sending the "You didn't get your 'A'" emails. I actually don't mind the "You failed" emails or the "You plagiarized so I'm hoping to get you kicked out of the university emails" nearly as much. It's so hard to explain to students - the ones I respect and know that worked hard - that they did really well, but slipped up on a minor but testable item. I know that so many students at my school just don't get A-s. Their parents are going to freak out. They think their chances for grad/med/law school are completely shot. I hate being the guy that gets to explain it to them.

It would be so much easier if I really didn't like them.

For Crying Out Loud

Mini-rant:

Ok, I know you are terrified of the students coming back to argue grades. I know we must have evidence of all the ways in which we evaluate students despite the fact that we are in a very subjective course. However, I simply do not understand your eldritch tome of GRAADBUK. Seriously. I'm ok in excel, I'm good in all the possible online versions you could be using, I would even be happy with a pen and piece of graph paper, but ye gods, what we use is a monstrosity. I know it was lovingly crafted for you years ago by an OCD TA you must have truly loved, but well, I must simply fall far short of that person.

So after round one going over my grades, I am chastised. I return home to repent and call on the spirits above and percentages below to reform my numbers. I shall return to your office and begin round two.

Honestly?

M

This is post #1000

Woot.

On May 20, 2005, I started the blog with these immortal words:

So I'm grading papers again.

Ah, it seems like yesterday. Actually it seems like my life hasn't moved forward at all, because I've got a monster stack of grading sitting here waiting to be taken care of tonight.

In reality, many things of life-shaking import have happened to me in that time. I've broken up with a very long-term girlfriend. I've decided to attempt to get my PhD and eventually ended up here at USU's PhD program, but I imagine if you were to take anyone's span of nearly two years, you'd get pretty similar stuff. I'm not particularly unique or interesting, and thus my life is the perfect fodder for a blog. In fact, based on that criteria, I should probably start a webcast. Alas, I haven't been writing (or reading) blogs much lately, but I shall endeavor to correct these failings in the future.

So, that's all the navel-gazing I've got time for today. Thanks to all who drop by and double thanks to all who drop by and comment on my ramblings. In some sense, it's odd to be so pleased to get to know so many people who, for all I know, could be very advanced Eliza-bots. If you don't tell me, I'd be shattered. That's not true really. Regardless of who or what you are, I'm extremely happy to host you all here at my little niche of the intertubes.

Ricola!

Right now I'm in the middle of an Apline stack of grading. It's interesting because the class that I'm TAing right now is so different from what I've generally taught in the past in content and methods too. As an example, I used to grade fairly long papers every few weeks and maybe a blue book test at the end. Now I'm grading homework assignments and quizzes and tests and all sorts of things every single frickin' day it seems, including some assignments that are incredibly subjective.

The subjective assignments are very difficult for me. If it's a paper or an exam, I can generally get a good grasp on whether or not the student understands the material or not, but with these, well, I'm going more on how I feel that they did. They're group projects too, so there are students who I know are good and competant but got dragged down by a less-than-stellar partner or two. There are also a couple students that I'm pretty suspicious of, but they didn't really do much, so I'm not sure how to evaluate them. As a student I really dislike those kind of assignments, and I have to say that I like them even less as a grader.

I will say that there are a couple of students who are really making me feel very good about this class. It's been like this every class I guess, but it's just because I'm looking at the gradebook right now, it comes to mind. I can see the grades of one particular student slowly, steadily move up and up. She was convinced that this class was just too complicated for her. Not so, I said, not so. A little while ago, she said she may just change her major.

Several With My Pseudonym on Them

Random bullets o' joy

• >2 grad students in any gathering outside campus = juicy gossip. Seriously, I mean, he did what? I can kind of see why she might be like that, but that person over there has no excuse. Oh, yeah, how did he get accepted? Lastly, it is a bit disillusional that she thinks we all agree with her. I don't think anyone does. Catty, catty, catty.
  
• This three day weekend is brought to you by the letter 'G.' G as in grading until my eyes pop out because I haven't been grading in daily steady chunks like I should have been.
• I took an incomplete on a paper in the fall, and I need to get it in in the next few weeks. It's not anywhere closer than it was at the beginning of winter break. Also, whatever enthusiasm I had for the topic is completely gone. That's a job for tomorrow-me.
  
• The marathon may be off. I tweaked my leg a little bit and am not able to put in the mileage I need to. I feel a bit disappointed, since I did buy the 'In Training' T-shirt, but I guess that's not a lie really. I am in training. I just might not run it.

Feh - that's all for now. Time to make the donuts. er.. Time to get back to grading.

Fascinating....

Is there anything more fascinating then the internets when there is work to be done? As in work that needs to be done tomorrow? Stumbleupon is an evil evil creation. It just sits there on the toolbar begging to be clicked. What will it bring? Pretty pictures? Funny stories? Outrage of the day? Wacky Japanese porn? There's no telling! Big money, big money, big money.... STOP!

Also - new record. My first grade complaint within hours of the grades being posted. USU students seem to be quite focused on the numbers. Sigh...

Sooooo tired.

Another Oopsie Nominee

Best description of someone who went mad:

"She became mentally absent."

The Oopsies

Final Exam Oopsies*

Best spelling error that spell check isn't going to get you out of:

Nominee #1
The nation was run by technicians and bearcats.**


* In the best tradition of the Oscars, Tonies and Razzies, the Oopsies are the awards given to outstanding achievement in inadvertently making the instructor laugh.

** Original sentence altered to protect those who don't proofread.

The University is Gone! Long Live the University!

I finally made it to New to You U. That's not going to be the name, by the way. As proof of my move, I give you a photo of my new neighbor:



Look at those teeth! Big sharp pointy teeth! But, he (she?) could probably use some of those whitening strips. I thought about photoshopping them white so that they poor dude wouldn't be embarrassed, but in the end I didn't.

The move went surprisingly well considering all the trip-ups and silly mistakes I made. That's a story for another day. On the completely cool upside of things, there was a massive blogger meeting (which also happened to be a family gathering) and much fun was had by all. Again, I'll post more about the move itself later

The campus here is very nice. We've got the 'old and ivy-covered' niche pretty well taken care of with a healthy dose of 'holy crap where do they get the money to buy the new buildings' sprinkled in to taste. There was a mild aggravation when I tried to access the internet from my new place. It seems that they need you to install a piece of spyware that monitors your computer to make sure your anti-virus software is up-to-date. That's evil, but understandable. problem is that their spyware doesn't support Windows Vista. hehe advanced spyware protection, wot?

Aside from that hiccup, things have gone pretty smoothly. I've wondered around quite a bit and taken a few pictures. I think I need to block out a good long photo-tour though. Of course, most of you folks wont get to see that 'cause you'd figure out where I am and come stalk me. :)

So now I'm off to try and get some grading done. I've escaped the old place, but not the old place's work. Sigh.

Cafe Snippit Coda

Is it simply impossible for a cafe to be run at a comfortable temperature? Are there laws that require either icicles or heatstroke?

For the record, I am a very un-skinny man with a deep and abiding love of wintry climes and a rich shiny coat of fur (raw eggs in the kibble, doncha know?), and I am shivering like Rush Limbaugh when his maid is on vacation.

On the plus side, grading is nearly done and as soon as I email these back I'm getting out of here. Either I'm going soft (probable) or the papers are getting better. It's probably the exhaustion. These student's don't know how good they've got it.

[edited to change Bill O'Reilly to Rush Limbaugh. I can't keep my wackos straight]

Antsy and Anxious

Smell that? I think it's my impending doom. See, karma's like that (even when she's a chameleon). When you call doom down upon others, more likely than not, doom shall fall upon you. And that's a good enough saying to stitch on a pillow.

So, I think I've set my bright young scholars up for failure with a rather weak paper prompt. I basically let them choose their own topic, but I gave them suggestions if they wanted, because heaven knows that some folks simply demand to be told what to write.

The thing is that the ideas that people seem to be wanting to write about are, well... bad. This isn't a world where 'there are no know answers.' There are bad paper theses, and I'm seeing a bit too many. The paper is due on Friday and I think I'm in for a looong weekend of grading.

Also, I retwisted my ankle last weekend, so I'm not running until it's absolutely happy with me. If felt fine this morning, but I'm demanding a full day's worth of tweaklessness before I start running again. So I'm antsy. And I have no energy. And I want to eat a lot and do nothing but watch CSI reruns - and that's no way to meet and frolic with the runners-up from the Brilliant and Beautiful competition*. I'm pretty sure that's all connected to my ankle.

* I should note that the vast majority of blogs I read are written by bloggers, both brilliant and beautiful (and I bet they all appreciate alliteration as well), at least as near as I can tell :)

Update:
Zerodoll's right, NC's no good as a pseudonym. I would hate for someone to think I lived in North Carolina (eh, John?)
I figure I'll have to wait until I get there before picking a good name. It's just like you should always wait until your child is 3 or 4 years old before giving them a permanent name - how do you know whether or not they'll end up to be a good fit for the name 'Brandon' until you see if they look good in a polo shirt and feathered hair?

Also noted: 'runs' is a perfectly good label, but perhaps not for what I meant it to be. 'Running' will suit a bit better, I think.