20151004.0719

I feel as if I am behind again. It is perhaps an hour later than I am accustomed to writing my personal blog entry, and it is in part because I slept later than I usually do, striking the "dismiss" button on my alarm rather than the perilous "snooze." (Fortunately, my body, being accustomed to certain things at certain times, decided to wake me not much later, and once up, I find returning to sleep difficult in many instances.) It is also in part because work has already continued, although not the work I would have expected to do. (I completed the freelance reading yesterday, and I mean to push through the write-up today--if I can get myself started. I am somehow reluctant to do so; I do not know why.) I went over a paper for a member of the family, and I did so happily--I am pleased to be of service and valued for it.

As I think on the matter now, I find that the experience of going over papers in such a way is something between the work of teaching and the work of grading. When I make comments on papers I read for family, I make many of the same notes that I do on the papers my students write. That is, I find the same things need attention across the work, and I make much the same comments in response. Perhaps for family, I explain more in the comments--but they do not typically sit in my classrooms, and so I do not have the opportunity to explain to them as I do to my students. Perhaps that is part of why I find the wok of reading and reviewing what my family writes to be less onerous than the work of reading and reviewing what my students write; I have not told my family the things I have told my students, so I am not as vexed at seeing things in my family's writing that I see in my students'. I do not feel as if I am not worthy of attention when I see my family do things I have warned my students against doing.

There is also this to consider: My family appreciates the comments I make when I review what writing I get. They consider what I say seriously and carefully, knowing why I say it and knowing that I need not take the time to say it. Perhaps the last is not applicable with my students; there is an expectation that I will make comments on what they submit to me, and not only on the students' part. The rest, though, should apply. I stress to them that I offer comments as a means to help them improve, that I want them to write well (in part because I have to read what they write, and reading seventy-something good papers is a chore; seventy-something papers that are not all good is far worse), and they do not believe me. It is almost as if they have all read Zawacki and internalized what he says...