Here, there, everywhere

The thing about marking student assignments is that as the school year wears on, the task becomes correspondingly more wearisome. The quality of the assignments themselves is a moot point; the mere fact of having to go through the exercise is what saps a teacher's spirit.

Why do we do it, then? Because we don't have the luxury of sitting down for an undisturbed hour with each student to go through his/her work and talk through the soundness of the ideas. I mean, we could offer those Oxbridge-style tutorials, but then we wouldn't have time to do anything else all year.

So this weekend, I dutifully betook myself to various locations in an attempt to keep my spirits going. There was Terz's new office space, there was Sod's at East Coast, there was Book Cafe and finally, there was our couch.

Marking
Originally uploaded by Tym.

(No prizes for guessing what the above is.)

Now I'm all done. This was the last formal set of essay assignments I'll mark for the year, but sentimental? Not I. There are still other assignments to get through over the next few weeks, then one final lot of examination papers in September. Miles to go before I sleep.