The downside

I am thrilled to be heading to chilly Minnesota this weekend to visit with my brother and SIL. They are consummate hosts and I always leave there feeling (besides full, and a little hung over) very loved.

There is a stack of lab reports on the arm of my couch that are staring at me right now. I have 23 to finish before I go out of town Friday afternoon. These are the first ones they've written, so each one takes 10-15 minutes to grade. I'm heading over to try to knock out a couple before Mr W gets up, and don't want to find myself at midnight on Thursday with "just a few more" to do.

I'm proctoring an exam for another instructor on Wednesday, so that will get me some grading time, but otherwise it's going to happen in the evenings. This is my least favorite part of teaching. On many of these, the writing is OK, it's just too flowery for scientific writing. I try to cross out what doesn't belong, and rewrite some sentences to give them an idea of what to say.

Others, and I've gotten one already from a student that is going to be a problem child this semester, are so poorly written they have too many grammar and spelling mistakes for me to correct. For this one, I'm recommending she go to the Writing Lab on campus for help. It's not my job to teach her how to make a sentence, right? I wonder how she got this far.

OK, 23 more to go.