I'm 42 minutes away from giving a final exam in one of the classes I teach. Should have that one graded and the grades recorded by 6 pm tomorrow.
Two classes where all I have to do is listen to/watch/grade presentations. One class I have to teach. Three more weeks... I do have 8 senior projects (~100 pages a piece) to read though.
June 9th...start of the World Cup! I'll get to watch the opener in the morning, but I'll have to tape Poland v. Ecuador, because I'll be in class then. But then the very first class I'll be teaching--not TAing, this is my baby--starts at the end of June.
AP exams over the next two weeks, and then the majority of my classes are essentially blow-offs until the end of the year.
26 hours away for me. Although I will be going to school all Summer with a total of 2 weeks break. yippee
Just finished my last final! Sure feels great to be done, but at the same time this means that I'm a senior now, which is almost more scary than exciting. Either way, no more school! In July I'm going to Geneva for a study abroad program - I'm most excited about just being in Europe during the World Cup semifinals/finals.
Tonight is the last ever class for my masters coursework. Graduation is not until May 24th, but after 8:15 tonight I am DONE! Done done done done done! I'm a little giddy.
two finals left to do before Friday @ 5 I can get them done whenever and I really want to go out tomm. night- what are the chances??? Damn Valuation
I submitted final grades fifteen minutes ago. I'm tired enough to offer a "whew" rather than a "yay." There were sure times this semester when I wasn't sure that I could make it. And now I have less than a month to wait for the World Cup - suddenly things are looking up!
One more day. One more day. One more day. __ Then one week off, and then a weeks worth of Curriculum Mapping from 9 to 4 at the new school I am getting transferred to next year.
DONE! Other than the large stack of papers to grade. Let's see what's first up... "Social Responsibility: An Issue of Growing Concern" Oy.
I'm feeling you. This semester I got stuck teaching a class that used to be frickin' awesome: Intro to Hispanic Lit., but the lead prof got a hair up his butt and decided to require 7 essays along w/ 4 exams. So for the last 11 weeks, I've had 25 new essays or exams to correct. The last round of essays is pure, unadulterated crap. Only 2-4 decent ones, whereas in the past, when we weren't micromanaged... the 3rd and last essay was stellar: 15-18 A/A- (first round usually had 2-3). This semester, out of the 130+ essays I've had to grade so far, maybe 10 could compete w/ the last round of essays the last time I taught the same course. My students are smart and do the math: it doesn't compensate to put too much effort into an essay that's only worth a small % of the grade. 40 more essays and 24 finals to go.
I do not miss my days of TA'ing. That's a ridiculous workload, totally counterproductive. I so much favor having them do real rewrites rather than just a bunch of crap essays they'll never think about again. I'm so convinced that the liberal arts college provides a better education than large public or private institutions for the majority of students. There's no way you can give fair attention to that many essays. The sizes for my 3 classes are 12, 16, 17. Of course, the students think that I'm at their beck and call, but I know whether the silent ones are just quiet or completely lost.
The problem w/ 2nd and 3rd tier small liberal arts colleges (both studying there and teaching there) is that a lot of the rich kids just don't appreciate what they're getting. So it's great to have small classes, but if they're not really taking advantage of the feedback in order to improve themselves academically, then it's a waste of money. One of my friends went to one, and she actually regretted it precisely b/c she was one of only a handful of students that really took advantage of the resources there.
Yeah, I don't have that problem (the school I teach at is ranked ~30th of liberal arts colleges). I can imagine how having consistently unprepared, uninterested students in a primarily seminar setting would be frustrating. But in my experience, it's far more difficult for students to be disengaged in liberal arts colleges than big state schools. I don't feel much hesitation to call students out when they don't do the work, and its easy to tell. But you're right on with the waste of money thing, they're ungodly expensive. In terms of the prof-student relationship, I'd think having a number of uninterested classmates would only lead to more interest on the part of professors, but I could be wrong.