Almost There

I finished up every tiny last bit of grading this afternoon. It was such a relief to get through the last writing assignment and tally up the final grades.

This has been an awful semester in more ways than one. You've heard about all the non-school crap I've had to deal with, and some of the academic poop as well. But you know life really sucks when you have to grade over 150 papers that read like this.

The opening paragraph to a paper on the Holocaust:

The Concentration Camps were where the Jews had to go after they got kicked out from there own homes from the Nazis. Things for the Jews got really bad.

Oh it gets better...

The good things were that Buna was a very good camp. People there were able to care for one another with out getting into trouble. The Buna camp was a bit better than the rest of the camps. The good thing about the camps was that people were given new cloths to wear and also were given two tents to live in...The whole point for the concentration camps was that the Nazis hated the Jews very much. They wanted the Jews to die in some what way or another. Right after the Hitler came into power, every one of the Jews was sent to the concentration camps to be tortured. The Jews were forced to work under the Nazis rule. Most of the Jews were not allowed to work with friends, brothers and their own dad. They were not allowed outside of the concentration camps.

Mind you, Buna was part of Auschwitz and how any concentration camp can be a "good camp" is beyond me. But this was written by a COLLEGE student. Have I mentioned how much I fear for the future of humanity?

Now, most everybody knows that the last few weeks of the semester are hell for all professors. Heck, even the most recent post in Rate Your Students explains what we normally go through. My in-laws have been very nice and even rescheduled Mother's Day dinner because they knew I would be concentrating on grading today. My parents? Bah. My mom is pissed off at me because I forgot to send her flowers. Um, hello? I forget my name at this time of the semester. you want me to remember flowers? Be thankful I called. She doesn't understand. At least Bear does. Last semester he tried to help me with grading. He got through two papers before he yelled "how the hell can you read this shit?" and gave up. So anyways, I'll order the flowers tomorrow.

Tomorrow, I'm going into the office and handing out final grades to those few who will actually show up. I gave out a lot of F's this semester. Nine in one class of thirty five students, but that class was my hell class. Still, I think I'm breaking the record of 15 F's that I gave out last semester. I haven't tallied them all up yet but it's a safe bet.

I also get to start working on the summer classes which start in a week. Yes, I get a whopping six days off before the start of summer school. Joy. At least I'm only teaching two classes per session. So it shouldn't be too bad. Ha. I say that every semester. :)