The Marathon Resumes

Last semester–and yes, I still think in terms of semesters, despite having been out of school more than six months–I marked an astouding 143 essays for a couple of professors at Ryerson University. It was a grueling, soul-sucking experience, made bearable only because a, it earned me close to $3,000 (every penny of which went straight to my credit card), and b, it allowed me to nail some eleven-odd plagiarists, which may or may not have resulted in them being kicked out of university. My vindictiveness hasn’t died down–but my desire (and most likely my ability) to plough through a mountain of papers has certainly subsided. This semester I’ve only got thirty papers to mark. At one point I was going to have a lot more, but then one of the professors lost a bunch (i.e., more than 100) of students, and thus the need to hire more than one marking assistant (although bless him, it took a whole two months for him to give me the official word). Thirty is a comfortable number; naturally, having had them for two weeks, I’ve only gotten through five.

Thus begins marking marathon #2 of the year (again, it’s a skewed concept of “year”). If you don’t hear from me in the next week or so, it’s probably because I’m holed up inside a Starbucks and marvelling at the standards of university education these days. Naturally, Toronto is due for an utterly glorious week of weather; alas, the closest I’ll likely get to experiencing it will be with a grande latte in hand and with a room full of Beach yummy mummy types nattering in the background. Do you envy me? I know you do.