grading blogging

I hate grading. To motivate getting through this stack of papers, I’m going to reward myself by writing a blog post every time I get to a milestone. My first milestone is fairly pathetic. I have successfully graded a paper.

This isn’t quite as pathetic as it sounds, though, because I grade *very* thoroughly. I wrote 770 words of comments on a 2,317 word paper. I have always written a lot of comments, and for a long time considered it a great flaw. When I was teaching 120-150 students a semester, it meant that grading sucked away most of my life. It is, I’m sure, part of the reason why I am 6 years out of grad school, and have only two publications to speak of.

Now that I am teaching 45-60 students a semester, I have let myself totally indulge in extensive commenting. I almost can afford the time, and the university I’m at seems to appreciate it.

Now if only the students would actually learn something.