Tuesday 23 November 2010

Marking Hell

Poor blog. I wanted to tell you all about my new bike, my new job, and the metamorphosis of Miffy – but it will all have to wait. I'm in marking hell.

This is a twice a year phenomenon. Exams must be written and marked, reports must be written, deadlines must be met, nervous breakdowns must be had. At the moment I'm still in the exam phase. Over the next two weeks the rest of the process will be gone through, by hook or by crook. Holy crap, there aren't enough hours in the day (or night!) and I'm sooo tired already. Remind me why I wanted to be a teacher again? Clearly I have a masochistic streak a mile wide.

This is the time of year when, theoretically, all my hard work comes to fruition and my lovely students prove what a wonderful teacher I've been. This is when they make me proud by doing so very well in their end of year exams, and I head into the holidays basking in the rosy glow of accomplishment. As I said, that's the theory.

Sadly, in reality, my fruit crop this year is a little bruised and full of fruit-fly. Sigh. Bad apples and too-cool bananas abound. Some are just immature and unripe by exam time. Peaches and star-fruits, bless 'em, are few and far between. My rosy glow is more of an embarrassed blush as I read some of the young scholars' answers ('Where did they pull THAT one from?')and I am more likely to limp into the holidays shattered, battered and broken.

And I'll go back for more of the same next year. What was that I said about masochism?

See you next time I surface!.

1 comment:

lemmiwinks said...

New bike?!!!! New job?! (Exciting, but based on information available a new bike is much more exciting and therefore worthy of more exclamation marks. If the new job turns out to be Lion Tamer, Bomb Technician, Ambassador to the Ukraine or Captain of Red October I stand to be corrected).

The suspense is killing me!