Red pen? Check. Girded loins? Check. Will to live?

Maybe not.

I am a goddamned saint, I'll have you know. I am doing read throughs of my students' first papers right now. I will reread them all again later on and assign grades to them, but holy crap, I'm getting tired of the topic I picked: Power. Yeah, I'm a monster. Almost every paper talks about Hitler and his oratory. They seem unaware that he had the everliving shit beaten out of people who disagreed with him.

This one is my fault. Usually, I give students a lot of leeway to pick topics they want to write about, but this...ouch. I decided that I am going to have to not mark up every paper that I get as much as my obsessive compulsiveness compels me to. I still have 25 six-pagers to get through. This means reading quick, finding only the really scary problems (like organization and what I am calling "thesis WTF," and other major issues). Maybe marking up after each page? My ESL students will get extra comments, but really, I need to fly if everyone is going to get at least a little meaningful criticism back. No guitar playing for Bing tonight.

Anyway, I spent the afternoon at my university library working. If it had not been for the irritating undergrad who apparently had not heard of the newfangled invention they call "the Keenexes" and opted to sniff and snort like the punchline to a cocaine joke, I would have to say it was a successful work period.

Alright. These fucking papers of doom aren't going to completely fuck themselves up by themselves.

Think about that, won't you?

HJ