Midterms

I have the best job in the world. This is not debatable. As a teacher, I get paid to spend all day talking to people about books, history, philosophy, and theology. In other words, I get paid to do what I used to get in trouble for doing on the job. Add to this the fact that I have the brightest students in the world, once again not debatable, and the best curriculum in the world, and the fact that I can justify reading books as part of my job, and you’ll see that I’m a pretty lucky guy. However, even the most fortunate among us have to do work every now and then, and I have to do work twice a year…midterms and final exams. It’s not that I don’t assign papers or do grading any other time. It’s the fact that for midterms and finals, all my students turn in their papers on the same day, and I have exactly one week to grade all of them and write a progress report for each student.

This has been my week for grading midterms. A hundred and sixty-one of them. Worked in between my regular teaching, eating, sleeping, and family schedule. The solution to this has involved lots of soda, coffee, and candy, as well as staying up until three in the morning. So, basically, college life again. By the end of the week, I am victorious, but it is a costly victory. Here is a picture of me as of this morning…