Adjunct’s Lament, Part II
As I wrote just over a year ago at just about this time: They don’t pay me to teach. They pay me to grade. I’m looking at a stack of term papers for a masters-level business ethics class. Everything else is already transformed into numbers. I vowed last year I wouldn’t let grading interfere with my anniversary trip with my wife. I know that, like the tedium of discovery in my day job, the right approach to grading a stack of term papers is sort of like eating an elephant: just start one bite at a time, and work your way through it. But I know what’s waiting for me, and man oh man do I want a beer before I get started.
It’s easy to forget sometimes how much this place spoils me.
Burt Likko is the pseudonym of an attorney in Southern California. His interests include Constitutional law with a special interest in law relating to the concept of separation of church and state, cooking, good wine, and bad science fiction movies. Follow his sporadic Tweets at @burtlikko, and his Flipboard at Burt Likko.
They don’t pay me to teach. They pay me to grade.
It’s like when I was working as a consultant. They didn’t pay me to program, they paid me to get the timesheets signed. (I’m not joking, or even exaggerating. At the weekly call with the main office, the first question was always “Did you fax the timesheets yet?” After that, questions about how the project was going might be entertained.)Report
I remember my father grading papers as a kid, sitting in his chair with a board across the arms to make a desk. Watching TV, maybe drinking a beer, slowly working through them. Full professor or adjunct, it is still tedium.Report
So would gundecking the grades be the *real* master class in business ethics?Report
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand that’s done.
It’s
Millerhomebrew time.ReportAs a TA, I actually enjoyed marking papers, especially if they were good ones.Report