Yesterday, between 11AM and 5PM, I graded through about twenty-ish papers. Yes, they took that long. And that was me grading them quickly, as I told them I would do -- grading for content and effective writing, not so much for any errors. I told them that while they'd lose points for errors, I wasn't going to mark them because, well, it's pointless; they can't fix them or do a rewrite on them anyhow, and if they don't know they're making mistakes at this point after me beating into their heads that they're doing things wrong, and showing them how to not do things wrong over and over, it's not going to help them anyway. It would be a waste of calories, time, and ink in my fabulous red pen of doom. The grades they get are the grades they get.
At the end of the semester, I always try to do something fun with the grading of their final papers; last semester, as you may recall, I played "paper grading bingo" with their papers, and was appalled with how many of them popped up:
This semester, I've taken a different approach -- I've instead made a list of "things I've learned while grading final papers" or something along those lines. At this point it has eleven items on it, and I'm only about halfway done with my grading. Once I'm completely done, I'll make a post out of it here.
I told Daisy earlier that I am already sick of grading, even though most of the papers aren't particularly bad. It's the thought of it, though. Again, I checked out, mentally, from all this shit once I got my passing comps results back. I'm not physically exhausted, just mentally exhausted. Translation: I don't want to do this. I realize that yes, it's the last time I'll have to grade actual papers for the foreseeable future, but still -- I don't want to do it.
People who aren't in the field of academia (and some who are) will be like "Well just give them all A's then!"
I can't tell you how many times I've heard that at this point, really. I wish I could. But my sense of honor, duty, and responsibility won't let me. No, as much of a tightass as it may make me sound, I really have to give them the honest grades they deserve, whether those be A's or F's. I don't care if it's an unpleasant, time-sucking exercise in futility during my last few days as a professor -- I have a responsibility to myself and to the department until all of those final grades are entered into the Banner system and submitted to the department office. And so, because of that, I will be once more slogging through the other half of those papers today, once I get up in the morning.
I say "once I get up in the morning" because I tried to go to bed earlier. I really did. I ate dinner and went downstairs a little after 7PM. I was just dozing off when apparently everyone in every house around me in the neighborhood decided it was time to act like damned fools (again, over the past few months I have been surrounded on three sides by white trash with uncontrollable, screaming children). This ruckus consisted of doors slamming, cars coming in and out honking horns, multiple adult party screams of "wooooooooo!" and a cacophony of laughter and redneck yelling so loud that the cats, who were on the bed with me, began defensively growling, as they do whenever someone knocks on the door or gets too close to the house. What. the everliving. fuck.
By the time it finally died down and stopped around 9:30 or so, I was staring at the ceiling, wide awake, with what I can only assume were bloodshot eyes. Y'know, I used to like this neighborhood. I used to love living here because it was super, incredibly quiet, and I was surrounded by senior citizens instead of white trash with screaming children, the kind who have loud and rowdy visitors all the time, blast their redneck music loudly, and let their kids ride their bikes weaving in and out of the neighborhood traffic. I am not becoming a get-off-my-lawn crotchety old man; I just don't like this kind of people. They severely irritate me. The kids have to be at least eight or nine years old, but apparently they're never in school -- I've seen them running around the neighborhood at all hours of the morning, day, and afternoon when they should be in school.
Anyway, since I could no longer sleep, I came back upstairs for a while. I am now ludicrously tired, but cannot force myself to to to bed because I know I will, again, just lay there. I'm trying to burn myself out; I've been awake since 7AM yesterday, and as all I have to do the rest of the weekend is finish my grading, I've got a bit of time on my hands; I can sleep as long or as late as I want, well into the afternoon if necessary. I have to go cash my tax refund check at some point and get some groceries over the weekend, but that's about it. I also get paid today, so I can now mail out the two bills I have without worrying about any sort of temporary shortage to my bank account (in reality, I've either just been sleeping, grading, or have plain forgotten to write them out, though neither of them is due for almost two more weeks). My dehydrator should arrive today via UPS, as well, at some point, and the Mother's Day present for Daisy's mother should arrive in Omaha today as well.
When I do go take care of my shopping, I'll have to do it either in the daytime (ugh) or early evening, as I need to stop at the Dollar Tree and get some stuff as well -- something I have once more been putting off for several weeks. I normally take Daisy with me when I go to the Dollar Tree because it's really fun, but as we won't have time to do that next weekend when she's here, I need to do it now. I also have to go to Walmart during the day or early evening because I don't think they'll cash a tax refund check in the middle of the night; generally they don't do that sort of stuff after the customer service counter closes down. Right now, though, even the thought of all of this moving around and running errands sounds tiring.
Daisy told me that she got her new schedule tonight at work and that she's scheduled to work during my graduation weekend as per the usual -- which is inaccurate, and something that she's had to readdress with the administration there at least three times at this point.
"So, uh...what does this mean, babe?" I asked.
"I sent an email to [supervisor] to remind him of the days I'm working. It's just frustrating that I have to keep readdressing this point."
Daisy told her company when she was hired that it was a condition of her employment there that she get my graduation weekend off; it was non-negotiable and plans couldn't be changed. They agreed and made a note of it. Well, apparently they didn't make a big enough note of it, as this is at least the third time it's come up that they're expecting her to work those days -- even though she's working for the next seven days straight.
"If something happens and you can't get those days off, love, you need to tell me immediately so that I can cancel my RSVP and plans to walk in the ceremony," I told her. "The only reason I'm walking is because of you."
"Don't you dare," she said. "I will be there."
"I'm just saying, hon. If you can't make it you have to let me know ASAP, because I don't know if there's a cutoff date before I can no longer go back into the system and change my reservation to say that I won't be there."
This is true; I had to "register" a while back to attend graduation; it sets up who they're going to call up to walk across the stage and all that, and I had to confirm how many guests I would have attending the ceremony with me (read: one, Daisy). I don't know if I can go back in and change that, even now, since the ceremony is one week from today.
Fuck, I'm graduating a week from today? A week from today? Wow.
I know a large number of my family members have gotten graduation announcements from me already; my mother told me my grandmother and some of my aunts and uncles had gotten them, but they (meaning, my parents) hadn't yet received theirs in the mail. This is curious, as I sent them out well over a week ago -- actually, probably closer to two weeks now.
Edit: I just checked; I began mailing them on April 27, which is two weeks ago tomorrow.
My parents' announcement was in the last batch of them (as it's not like they don't know I'm graduating), but even with that they should've received it at least a week ago now. I kept track of the dates of when I mailed out the batches of them, obviously -- they went out in three different groups, with the last batch going out on May 2. My grandmother is apparently sending me a card, though she doesn't need to be wasting money on a card for me or anything like that. The woman's on a fixed income, yet she always stuffs money into my hand every time I come visit her for some reason. I have no doubt that she'll put something in the card as well, which is wholly unnecessary. My wealthier relatives, however, who make close to ten times what I make in any given year as a teacher? Let them send as much cash as they choose; believe me, I won't mind.
Of course, this more than likely won't happen. A high school graduation, to country folk, is a big deal. A college graduation -- for some reason -- seemed to be a slightly less-important occurrence to them when I graduated from WVU in 2005. A Master's degree? I'm not even sure half of my extended family, who grew up working on farms, coal mines, or in menial retail/service jobs fully grasp what a Master's degree really is, especially not one like the MFA I'm receiving -- a terminal degree in my field.
Mind you, in most families or circles, the proudness/let's-send-congrats-and-money scale would go up, not down or level off with each next level of degree-dom. As cynical as it sounds (even if it's true), by the third level I think a lot of people in my family stop caring. Oh, Brandon got another degree. That's nice. That may sound peculiar or even a bit cold, but honestly, I've been living out here since 2006, and very few of them have seen me since then. There's a certain level of detachment, of distance and aloofness, that comes with living halfway across the country for the better part of a decade -- and I understand that. It really doesn't bother me if I don't hear back from half or more of my relatives -- I don't necessarily expect to. I've not been a part of their lives since I was, basically, a child. I'll turn 31 this year. Most of my generation has married and/or already have kids (or, conversely, have kids on the way). Aside from only one other cousin I can think of offhand, I'm the only one who hasn't married or had kids yet, actually -- aside from my gay cousin, anyway. Mind you, that's not too far off for me (the marriage and kids, I mean), but still. Living in the midwest away from everyone has sort of made me the de facto black sheep of the family. And really, I'm sort of okay with this.
So that's all I have for this very early morning -- now I'm going to try to go back to sleep, and will sleep until I wake up naturally...or until the neighbors start making all sorts of noise and ruckus again.
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