3 to go, and 4 nights of fun ahead.

Just three more exams to grade. And then it's all over. Thank goodness.

Thursday: dinner with some friends, then No Shame at the Drake.
Friday: maybe a show, and probably a party too.
Saturday: Goin' Steady at the Boat.
Sunday: Dinner and then Wavelength at Sneaks.

So much fun times ahead. I can hardly wait!

Grading is making me stoopit.

I have about 20 more final exams to grade. They are absolutely dreadful. The worst I've ever seen. I blame the kids for not coming prepared, but I also blame the professor for clearly not teaching them a damn thing and writing an exam question that makes it easy for students to not do the right thing. I have been doing this for a day, and I just don't know what else to say. Terrible.

Headache.

I've had a low-level headache for the past day and a half. It's no good. I can't shake it. I think I just need to go back to Toronto and start eating properly again. Too much fat and salt and sugar here. And the water is horrible and I don't want to drink it. (Yeesh, you'd think I was really hard up, eh?) I'm complaining, but really it's a bit difficult being home. The bed is hard, the house is cold, everything is dusty, and my family stresses me out. Everyone is mostly awesome, of course; still. It doesn't help matters that I still haven't marked those last 10 essays. That's probably what's keeping my headache from going away. I'm going to get on that right now. Promise.

Grading. Ugh.

The good news is that my new roommate moved in yesterday!
The bad news is that I haven't left the apartment since Monday night. I've gotta go run errands this afternoon, though.
And I'm ever so slowly making my way through the essays I have to grade. Pain.

Happy Hallowe[']en!

Why do people not put the apostrophe in that word anymore? I was brought up spelling it with the punctuation mark, but it seems like it's perfectly correctly to leave it out nowadays.

Speaking of punctuation and all things writing, I finished grading yesterday and the papers got handed back in class this evening. I wasn't there---was at home, asleep---so I missed the crestfallen faces.

I am feeling better today than I have been the past few days. I am not over this nasty cold yet, but at least I can function again. This afternoon I went to school for a quick lunch at Massey and then after dropping the papers off at the prof's office I headed to tutorial. In the first one, two students came. In the second, three! I guess now that the students know what goes on in tutorial and have handed in their first assignment, they didn't see the need to come. I feel slightly unloved, but not really: can't take these things personally. The next tutorials---they are optional---will be the week the students are working on their next assignment, so I expect more bodies then.

Since I skipped out on lecture, I was home by 5pm even after I did some grocery shopping. And what a difference this makes in my Tuesdays! For the past several weeks I've been getting home at 10pm or later after long days of teaching or meetings, class lecture, and Massey lecture. It was nice to have a few hours to decompress. I do need to get cracking on work, but the long nap was definitely in order.

The internet has ceased to entertain me (for today) so I think I'll go read. And then tomorrow I should get a paper proposal done and get back to my dissertation . . . .

Uggghhhhhhhhh, and complaining about students.

I've been really feeling quite rotten the past couple days. I think I might be slightly better just now . . . so let's hope that when I get up tomorrow, I'll be well enough to go to school without it causing me too much trouble, health-wise.

Other than being sick and feeling weak and feverish, I have papers to grade. But I'm on a bit of a roll now, and have only 6 left to do. I am really unimpressed with the quality of most of them. Geez. A few students have honestly tried and, whatever their success rate, at least they tried. But so many others I feel just rushed the thing off and this annoys me. And, although I realize I should chill out, I can't help but take sloppiness personally. If a student sometimes spells it "Mao" (correct) and sometimes "Moa" (INCORRECT), I am annoyed. And etc. The biggest problem, though, is just that students don't know how to make good, evidence-based, reasonable arguments in written form. And it really boggles my mind. I know when I was an undergrad my writing wasn't as good as it is now. But I learned how to write an essay in high school. So even if I misplaced a comma and messed up possessives and plurals, I still---for the most part---understood the function of paragraphs and proper essay flow. Most of these students do not. Since this is a third-year course, I don't have abundant sympathy for them. They have to start taking responsibility for themselves.

Thanks!

I was feeling pretty rotten on Saturday, but by nightfall was well enough to head out with FN and EH to the Embassy, a hipster bar in Kensington Market. We went to celebrate my birthday, and a whole bunch of people showed up. It was a great time, and thanks to everyone who came out! Now I know who my true friends are, eh ;-).

People kept insisting that I drink shots, and when I absolutely could not refuse, I did so. By the end of the night I'd ingested 6 of them plus half a pint of Weiss beer. I drank a whole lot of water too, though, so wasn't particularly drunk or ill. And I was fine today . . . except that I am sicker than ever. I can't blame going out for being sick: it's just day 4 of this cold, which means my nose is stuffed up and it's disgusting. Needless to say, I won't be heading out to see Woodhands tonight. Which is sad, but such is the state of things.

In other news, I still have 25 essays left to grade. Best get myself something to eat and then get on those ASAP.

I see writing in my future.

I actually got a lot of work done today. I haven't managed to start writing my first chapter yet, but it's coming. In all seriousness, I think I can start really writing this week. And because I've got all these notes (on books and articles, not on my archival materials) in some kind of order, the writing should happen without too much difficulty. I don't mean quickly, but I do mean without difficulty. I'll let you know. At the moment, I'm happy. (And nocturnal.)

Oh, except that I've got 30 student papers to grade. Poop.

Grading = done!

After a marathon grading session yesterday---35 exams---and 5 more today, I'm doing grading until next fall! I've agreed to TA the same course again next year, but with less grading and perhaps some tutorials. That will be good, and though I don't need the money, it won't take up too much of my time. I really quite like this prof. and the course and I've learned so much from his lectures this year. (Yes, and this is post-comps for me.) Plus, this way I can get him to write me a nice letter for when I want to get a teaching job of my own. ;-)

Spring/summer may finally have come to Toronto, which is good, but means I will have to do a bit more shopping. I'm also going to be doing a lot of walking in Israel next week, so I might go in search of good fashionable/comfortable shoes. And a pair of summer pants that actually fit would be nice. (But I don't have my hopes up about that.) The store that FN recommended to me on Queen West where I bought a few tops last Sunday was perfect for skinny people, but they didn't have many bottoms. Must find other skinny people-friendly stores.

Ok, time to make a list of things to do and buy before my departure on Sunday . . . .

Grading zone.

Apologies for not keeping you as up-to-date as I would like. I've been busy. I essentially took the day off on Sunday, not originally intending to. But it just happened. You see, I went for lunch with a friend from my MA days who was in town this weekend; then I went to a free (for me) concert at the Glenn Gould Studio; then YT and I shopped on Queen west---and I got some good stuff!---and then it went home, wanting to grade. But not long after my return, LG called. He hadn't spoken to me (online or off) for a week, and I was happy to know that he does want to be my friend, after all. We figured I could go eat and watch a movie at his place and be home in time to grade 20 papers. Well, after lots of sushi and "The Constant Gardener," it was nearing 11pm so I left . . . only to be sucked into hanging out with a few Massey men for an hour in the common room. Yes, I have no willpower. But it was fun. Needless to say, I did not grade once I was home.

This (Monday) morning I had to get up bright and early to transport myself to York University for my reading group. Although I wanted to die on the subway/bus-ride over, the meeting was good, and then---again, because I have no willpower---I joined the other women for lunch. The others were all Yorkies today, and it's always interesting to hear what goes on in that history department. I managed to make it home just shy of 2:30pm, at which point I went to campus (mine, just down the street) to give a prof some papers and do some grading sans distractions. But of course I chatted a bit too long with a couple profs, a Massey friend, and a historian I randomly ran into, and only managed to grade 10 papers before I went home for dinner. And I've since graded only 15 more. Which still leaves me with 40 to do before noon on Wednesday. I can do it!

About grading, I will say that I've had some really very good exams. Some not do fabulous ones, too, but overall I'm impressed. Good job, students. You make me happy and hopeful for the history of our kind. (Well, maybe.)

Grading exams ain't so bad.

Exam grading is oh so much better than essay grading. ("Let me tell you," to quote FN.) Of course, I'd rather not do it---and next year I most likely won't be---but exams go fast. Fifteen minutes a pop. Sometimes less. And to think some of the students spent a full three hours writing. Ten down; sixty five to go.

The only other thing I did today, other than lots of procrastinating (by reading, cleaning, eating) was head over to EW and CW's place for a birthday party. Good food, and it was nice to see a couple people I hadn't chatted with in a long time.

Silly Facebook is eating up too much of my time. I must cut down on it. As well as cut down on general internet time wastage. There's some great stuff out there---NYRB, for example---and some entertaining sites for when I need a bit of a break, but seriously: I am a grown woman who has serious work to do. Sheesh.

Congratulations to Dr. TC, PhD!

Excellent! I didn't understand a word save the "and," "but" and "in conclusion" parts, but you seemed quite impressive, Dr. TC.

Today I also took in EW's talk---very well done and quite interesting, I must say!---and ran errands in preparation for my leaving the country Sunday morning. EW and I lunched at Massey and then I was back there for dinner, wearing my gown for the last time this school year. (I had someone take a pic of me so I can send it to my dad, who will laugh and say it's very ridiculous and strange. Which of course it is, but it's a "thing.")

Back at home I had to rest for a bit and then it was back to grading. Sigh. Which explains why I have NOTHING interesting to say. Blech.

Why is it still winter?

Sigh. But no doubt my upcoming trip will herald the beginning of spring so I will return to flowers and short skirts (on other people). I've been pretty good today, despite my very late rise from the land o' sleep. Marked 8 papers so far! And I must say that the vast majority of them were really quite good, which is excellent, but not good for the grade average, which is inching up to 73. But whatever.

After the eight I decided to do something less taxing and photographed an entire book. It was published in 1928 and comes via inter-library loan, so it's good to have it, lest I not be able to get it again. Since I was photographing a printed source, I decided to run the optical character recognition function in Adobe Acrobat to see what happens. I'm impressed with the results! It even recognized a word that was on two lines, separated by a hyphen. Wow. Now if only all my sources were in clear, dark, straight print . . . . Technology is the shit. (Reason #3,639,782,619.)

So, yeah, winter. What the hell? Maybe it's always like this in April, and I just forget. But it's getting old.

Tomorrow I'm going to do laundry and learn something about fiction. I'll tell you about it afterwards.

The end is in sight.

Yes, I'm still grading. But, I handed in most of the essays today, and only have 22 more to grade. That's only, like, 20 more hours of work! Excellent.

In other news, I emerged from my house Tuesday morning to go to my reading group. And that was good. One of my friends from York is handing in her completed dissertation in a few days, which is awesome! And what is even more awesome is that I'll get to read it in short order.

After the reading group meeting---thankfully close to home this time, in the department---I met up with FPW and took him to lunch at Massey. Much fun was had by all, especially by me. (Really, since when do I not have fun at a Massey lunch?) Most of the crew was there: PB, CG, LG, SM, M2.0, handsome guy, and the first and second coolest guys at the college. Plus others of more or less interest. (That sounds mean, but I don't mean it to be mean. You know what I mean?)

And then it was back to the department to set up the weekly grad student coffee social. Some of the good historians were about there too. After heading back northeast to drop off the essays, gossip with the prof, and talk with a postdoc whom I happened across at the Munk Centre, I was back in the department partaking in more hanging out. (That means you, CB, MK, MS, PM, DR, EW, AT, et al.) I had vague plans of attending a job talk, but all my chatting meant I missed the start time so didn't go. And I had vague plans of grading a couple more papers before lecture at 5pm, but I was feeling pretty haggard, so I nixed that idea.

I hung around after lecture and walked back most of the way home with the prof, who is not on my committee, but is one of my faves here for sure. Once home, FN whipped up yummy food. And I found the recipe for it online, so I'm feeling slightly proud of myself. ;-)

The bad news at the moment is that I went to bed early---tired!---but then woke up after a few hours. So, basically, I had a long nap. Which is not what I wanted, and which is annoying because it throws my sleeping patterns off kilter once again. Ah well.

LATER (because it made me smile) . . . From an MSN conversation, 3:40am:

JP says:
luck wishes you well
CLM says:
wishes it you too.

And to you!

It continues. (And so does my despair.)

I've just spent nearly an hour and a half marking one paper. The paper was much too long and mostly not relevant to the course, but I can tell that the student put a lot of effort into the thing so I read it carefully and made lots of comments. But what can I do, really, when a student in third year---and one who I think is in political science or something similar---just doesn't get what the course is all about. And the course has been on since September, so it's not like students haven't had ample opportunity to figure out what's up with it. Beyond that, though, I remain perplexed that students who seem intelligent enough don't quite understand what the point of an essay is. You need to explain the statements you make. Tell me why something is relevant to your discussion, and how it is. Provide historical examples to back up your points.

By the end of third year I would have hoped that students enrolled in arts-type degrees would get this. But some of them don't. And then there are the hopeless cases: students who still just can't write and who really don't understand what a paragraph is. Hasn't anyone ever sat them down and told them that a paragraph is a string of sentences containing an argument with accompanying proof of said argument? And that paragraphs put together are the arguments (with evidence) that prove the thesis of the essay? It's such a simple thing! I know it's not easy to write an essay, but it's not hard to grasp the basics. Too often it seems students haven't learned/internalized---for whatever reason(s)---what an essay is all about.

Considering so many of them don't even bother to read the assignment instructions carefully, perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. Despair. And what do these people do once they get their U of T degrees? Presumably a significant number of them end up in positions where they do have to write at least occasionally. And perhaps even think---gasp!---critically and analyze things. I don't want to sound all I'm-better-than-them, but seriously: it worries me. No wonder my mom, who is retired from government bureaucracy, doing a master's degree in sociology (I know, I know), and getting A's on her essays, had so much trouble respecting some of her superiors. They must have been C students who graduated and never looked back. Sad. Depressing.

You're keeping me awake.

You don't mean to, but it's true.

I think I know why I sometimes have such terrible trouble falling asleep. Take yesterday, for example. Ok, technically, it was today. I was in bed at 3am, tired, and looking forward to waking up before the afternoon. But I lay there for hours---it must have been around 6am when I fell asleep. The problem is that I talked to and did too many things yesterday, and my brain kept thinking about them! Not thinking anything important or interesting, but just thinking. I couldn't make it stop. So today I decided to stay from Massey and my other friends and just chill at home.

And now I must return to grading.

UPDATE, 5:10am: Wow. Shitty essays today. Sigh.

4:15am and pouring rain.

I shun joining the world. I rage against the machine. I follow the Sinatra Doctrine (to do it "my way"). Conformity is for chumps. I will grade, but I will do so in the wee hours. Because I cannot deal with being tired. It makes me unhappy and walk into things. And so I will nap at 9:30pm if I need to, and go to bed again at 6am if it strikes my fancy. And that's just how it's gonna be right now.

In other news, I have a place to stay in NYC. A little further out than ideal, but still technically in Manhattan and with a local grad student, which is excellent. Also much cheaper than any other arrangement other than free accommodation. And, my host has two cats. Apart from the times when I stayed with my parents, then, all my research trips have included cats. And all my trips have seen me rent a room in a house or apartment. I seriously can't recommend this way enough. I will stay in the cat apartment the first few nights of my trip while I conduct research and then spend the weekend with DN. Should be fun. I hope!

I've just marked a string of three A papers. I think, actually, that many of the students really did learn something this year. It's making me all optimistic about the future of humanity. How nice. ;-)

78 down, 4 to go.

Almost finished grading! I would have been done already, but was stricken by a crippling headache this afternoon/evening. Awful. And since my prof. doesn't want the papers until 1 Jan., there's no big rush. I will finish them all in the next few hours and then they can hang out here while I'm in Ottawa for a week.

There's not much else to report. LG is gone; FN is busy being a social butterfly; EC is in Europe; and most everyone else has fled Canada's largest city for their respective home towns. I am sad that I'll have to miss brunch in the morning at JDS and TC's place. FN will entertain them in my stead while I pack up and head to the train station.

The black flies have stopped appearing, which is nice. They were driving us batty. But now there's another potential problem with the apartment: the fridge is acting up. By "acting up" I mean that it has decided to make a very loud buzzing sound periodically. It did this last night when FN wasn't home and it was dark inside and totally freaked me out. Imagine it: I'm all alone grading, and suddenly this really loud noise starts emanating from the living room! And it didn't stop for another 15 minutes. I was worried something was going to explode, and I didn't really want to be in the way when it happened. I only realized later that it was the fridge, and I don't think that's going to explode. But still: sheesh!

I will miss TO when I'm in the nation's capital, but it will be a good change of pace. And then I'm back for less than 2 days before flying out to the other nation's capital, the one south of the border. I will definitely miss Toronto when I'm there. Sigh. But I will likely enjoy the archives!

Proof that I am what I read.

My first attempt at drafting's today's posting did not start off too well. Actually, it was rather disastrous. And then I realized the problem: I was writing like my students! To wit:

This blog was began so as I could tell my allies how my days was passing by. Thusly it was a Chronicle, of Jen's life. A few people only know about it's existence, and over the several months for which it was being written by myself there are fun times, boring times. The state of blog today is such; I want to write what I want.

And so I took a break and thought about my peers and read some news online. And now my English has improved somewhat. But hopefully this grading will end soon so I can begin the recovery process in earnest.

Conclusion: Good lord, people [read: my students]. Learn how to write!

Not much to say.

I've only marked 8 papers since I woke up Tuesday morning. Sigh. I really didn't waste much time doing unimportant things, yet here I am.

Laundry took hours. Goodness. I always forget how long the entire process is, but, man, it is long. Think of all the stages: (1) gathering dirty clothes and other things to wash; (2) getting out cart to carry the bag in (because it's invariably too heavy for me); (3) measuring laundry detergent for the both of us; (4) heading out the door (which is never a fast process); (5) walking to the laundromat; (6) loading the machine and starting the wash; (7) going home again---often with a stop at Shoppers along the way; (8) going back 30 minutes later to switch to the dryer; (9) doing that; (10) going back home---today with a stop at the dry cleaners; (11) going back to pick up (hopefully dry) clothes; (12) shoveing said clothes and assorted other items into my bag/cart; (13) going home for good; (14) unloading, folding, and putting away laundry; and (15) today that included making my bed (and helping FN with hers), and that always takes a while. Phew! Ok, I'm whining, but seriously people: it's a long, tiring process!

So now I am grading. "And miles to go before I sleep."