"Stop Mocking Me..."
Sorry for the lack of updates all week. It's just one of those weeks leading to one of those months. When I realized how much has to get done in October.... Well, let's just not go there.

But things are moving along. My mother did not even get one drop of rain from the hurricane. At one point, they had mapped the hurricane to go directly over their house, which is why they evacuated. But it shifted, thankfully for them. And, as you may have read, Trixie's house only suffered a few problems but is pretty much fine and more than livable. Whew.

Now, as many have noted, it's paper grading time. I'm just about done with round one from one class, which is good because round one from the second class came in yesterday, and round one from the third class is a week from Monday. New Kid pointed out that she is grading with Word's commenting function, and I gave my students the option of turning in a hard copy or emailing me. Most emailed, and I have to say that I really liked grading them with the commenting feature. I seemed to be grading faster and felt I was able to explain myself a bit more. I went to a presentation once arguing that instructors often type three times as much as they write, and that students are overwhelmed by the amount. I think there's some validity there, so I did watch myself. I typed a bit more, but I think it's better to type "The phrasing in this sentence throws me" than to write "AWK" in the margins. We'll see how they respond.

And has anyone ever had the feeling that you have students who write better than you do? I've shown some of my students papers written in the past to show what good work looks like (sometimes, if I can, I'll show an "average" essay, too, always with permission, of course). And looking back at some of the best work I've received in response to these prompts, I am really impressed. I've had some students who really know how to put sentences and paragraphs together. I'm downright jealous when I look at my own writing with which I'm struggling right now.

Speaking of good writing, I bought Best American Essays 2005 today. I'm just reading the introductions and I love what I'm reading. I'm glad that there are so many volumes being published now, on travel writing and science writing. I want to get more, but I'm going to wait until I've read this one. I don't want a huge pile of unread books mocking me.
- posted by Nels @ 9:46 PM | | | Link |