20150924.0554

Work continues, as ever it must.

Among today's things to do is taking care of a stack of grading. My students got another quiz yesterday, and not because they were less responsive to discussion than ought to have been the case (although that would have been a good reason to offer one). Each should grade quickly, and there were students absent, so I have fewer to grade than would otherwise have been the case. It will still take a bit of doing to plow through the assignments, however--although I can take heart that perhaps one or two will offer answers useful for my research. The last quiz did, after all, and the same students took that one as took the most recent...

That research needs some attention, as well. I have a book chapter in draft at the moment, but I have not worked on it as diligently as I ought to have done. It is a scholarly project, and so it does not pay--directly (it makes me more likely to get jobs)--and I have had paying work on offer. There is not a freelance piece on my docket at the moment, though, so I may have some time to attend to it. I hope I will, at least; I need to get a draft hammered out so that I can look at it and make it better, much as I try to get my students to do with their own writing and do not see happening so much as should be the case.

More grading will be coming up over the weekend as a result of my policies to encourage such work. I have my students turn in three versions of each paper. The first is peer-reviewed. The second receives my attention. The third receives the final grade, accounting for ten percent or more of the course grade. Tomorrow, the second version of the students' second paper comes in, so this weekend will see me doing a fair bit of grading in a hurry. And that means also that I will need to complete the new assignment sheet for the students, as they will begin to move on to the third paper as the second gets wrapped up. Like the book chapter, I have it in draft, but it needs to be completed.

It should be clear from my posts to this webspace that I remain busy, and that I remain busy with things for work more than for recreation (and by a significant margin). In truth, even those things I do for recreation end up becoming work. The trip to ScotFest (¶4), for example, informed some of the scholarly commentary I write elsewhere. My long affinity for role-playing games has led to research presentations and to academic advancement. Other examples are easy to find. In effect, I am never really "off," and it is for that reason I find myself annoyed--or more--by those who will assert that teaching, particularly at the college level, is easy. It is not. In doing it, work continues, as ever it must--and ever means exactly that.