On my lunch hour today I took a much-needed break and went for a hike. At one point I was walking through a fault-block valley with only the footprints of deer and coyote in the snow around me. Horizon to horizon, for several miles, what I could see was not much different from what Jesse James and his teenage buddies saw when they were running through this area a hundred years ago. For a few minutes I could even feel the wind blowing through my head, which maybe doesn't sound pleasant but which is the opposite of stressy-stress regular life (trust me).
Then I got back in my truck and returned to work, where I checked Facebook and noticed a common theme among all my old English-department cronies, most of whom now teach. For example:
"MR was just told by a colleague that has been keeping track of how many essays he's read and graded this semester and it was 379. That's more than one essay a day for an entire year. And this is ONE semester. The punch line? After all of that revision? Still bad essays."
and
"SS is staring at a stack of 50 essays to be graded by Monday at 8:00 a.m. But first, coffee. And maybe, if I can find a random leftover one around here, half a xanax so I don't have the desire to kill the students I know will ignore everything I've said all semester :D."
Etc. Since every so often I feel moody that I don't still teach, so these posts are a nice reminder of why I am so, so, so, so glad that I didn't go that route.
My top five reasons why I'm glad I don't teach:
1. Reading 379 essays (and counting!) a semester.
2. GRADING those 379 essays.
3. Absolutely having to be at work at a specific time several times a week.
4. Having to perform every day.
5. Ugh. MORE grading.
2 comments:
It is shocking to me how the teaching system works. Teachers work full-time for no money, and then have to grade, do lesson plans, etc. on their own time. How does that make ANY sense?
Oh, yes. I, too, am so glad I'm not teaching. I was not cut out for that. Talking in front of big groups every single day? Writing on the chalkboard? Not laughing when someone told me that his grandmother had died for the second time in one semester? Couldn't do it.
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