Albatross

This has been my life all weekend, long, and continuing into this week. 

Research paper grading. EIghty of them. While I do pride myself on not complaining much about work, I can't help but whine this time of the year. I've been carrying around folders of research papers wherever I go. I grade while I'm in the car at carpool; I grade sitting on the curb in the sun at walk-up at L.'s school. I grade in snatches while the pasta pot boils on the stove, or the kids are busy with something for a few precious minutes. Armed with my rubric extraordinaire, I can get a competent student's paper graded in under ten minutes, a mess of a paper in under twenty. But as the evening wears on my patience wears thin and when I find myself reading the same lines over and over again, I have to give up and put the folders away until the next day. The papers have turned me into a cranky, impatient mama, too--I rush dinner, and after-dinner time, and I rush the kids to bed, knowing I only have a short window of time to work again, before I get too sleepy.

This is the first semester in my fourteen-year teaching career that I've taught four sections of a second semester composition class and with it, four sections worth of two rounds of paper drafts for this final research project. Back when I was slogging though Round One in March I wondered why on earth it felt so hard and unmanageable this time around. Then I realized: FOUR SECTIONS--of course!

After I gave my 10:00 am exam this morning, and I was rushing back to my office, folders in tow, I nearly ran into a former student of mine: a gentle, smart, soft-spoken older woman who had been in my composition class a few years ago. She'll be graduating this May, and I'm so thrilled for her. When I told her I was working on grading the research projects she told me that she remembered working on that same project for me. 

I held my breath a little, wondering what she would say. I know that my project is a love it or hate it proposition--students either get it and love it, or don't get it and hate it. What would she say?

As it turned out, she had loved it. And it had the impact on her that I always hope it will on all my students: that they will discover their own voices through the writing process, and unlock a part of themselves. That short encounter was fuel for my flagging morale, and I'll try and remember it when the urge to whine sets in--no doubt later this week.

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I had just set up my folders on the kitchen table and was sitting down to a stint of grading while the kids had their "rest-time" when the phone rang. It was T.'s BFF S. from around the corner, wanting to know if T. could play. 

Of course!

And while a playdate would have been a great chance for me to get some grading done while T. was busy crafting it up with S. on the screened-in porch, I decided to make muffins instead. These amazing muffins.* I should have been grading, and I knew I would regret it later, but it  was good to mix up a bowl of batter again--to do mama things in the kitchen while my kids played, and the papers stayed, just out of sight on the table, behind a gigantic plastic tub of crayons and markers.

 

* This recipe was  a cinch to veganize: I substituted Ener-G egg replacer for the two eggs, and Earth Balance for the butter. I also used pumpkin pie spice instead of the assortment of spices mentioned.

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