Anticipation

"...is making me late. Is keeping me waiting."

I used to love the J Mascis cover of this song. And, 15 years later, it's back in my head, mutated (lyrics not head) to be: "Procrastination...is making me hate...is keeping me crazy."

Yup, 200 exams graded already and staring down at the last 100. It's brutal. It really IS making me hate, crazy-person style. I'm taking too many breaks in between grading too few exam papers. I'm finding myself scribbling words like, "What?!" or "Huh?" or "This makes no sense!" in big, red letters as I grade. I actually don't have to write anything on their exams except their scores. But I can't control myself. It's as if my students have formed an anti-learning cabal and decided to try to get me to quit my job by pretending to have learned absolutely nothing during the entire year.

Am I exaggerating? I mean, sure I love some hyperbole every now and then (I will admit that just a few weeks ago, I stated that one of my financially successful friends was a 'billionaire' which is quite a leap of, oh, nearly a billion dollars). However, this time, I'm not going off on the deep end of dramatics. Part of the exam, for example, was to measure how well I had taught my students how to integrate quotes into their writing. I gave them a mock essay and three short sources that they had to use to integrate into the mock essay. One very obvious habit of using quotes in any context is to put quotation marks at the start and end of the quote, right? Two very simple marks. Not much. Doesn't even take a lot of ink. Really important, though, in terms of not plagiarizing which is what I spent way too much class time on, in my opinion. However, I assumed that of all the things I taught, integrating quotes -- or at the very least, not plagiarizing -- was the one thing my students were bound to know for their exam. SURPRISE! So many students not only did not cite at all (I think I spent weeks on this) but decided that quotation marks weren't necessary either.  And to be 'lenient' in my grading of this section, I was giving 3 points to students just for using quote marks. I honestly thought that was a give-away. I'm wrong so often...

Now do you see why I'm procrastinating so much? But it's a terrible feeling. The knowledge that I still have 100 exams to grade -- and within an ever-decreasing amount of time -- gnaws at me. It makes everything else I do slightly un-enjoyable. Anyone who has procrastinated knows this. And I'm assuming that means everyone. Some people, I think, are just better at procrastinating than I am. I need to learn from them. Maybe that will end the song in my head too.

"It's making me cray-ay-zy...it's keeping me hay-ay-ting..."