Random Thoughts After a week of grading finals. I need a vacation. I like Christmas as much as the next person, but I want something more. I want a perfect vacation. Someplace warm, but not too hot. Some place where I can hang out all day by the ocean and see mountains, a place where hundreds of beautiful friendly women roam casually around wearing next to nothing. Every morning the personal trainer (The Exercise Nazi) would come in my bedroom, wake me up and run my fat ass around the block for an hour. Then she would take me to the breakfast buffet. There would be pancake, biscuits n' gravy, sausage links, French toast, and on and on. Everything is served by women in cute maid outfits. (Yes, I'm such a dog). Then the mornings would be filled with reading, video games, or sitting in the sun sipping frozen daiquiris. Then Exercise Nazi comes back for round two an hour before lunch, this time it's rock climbing, hang gliding, hiking, biking, or something always different and fun. Then it's time for the lunch buffet, followed by a massage, and hour of in the hot tub with scantily clad women sipping more cold drinks. Then an afternoon of more butt sitting or maybe a little travel. See an art museum, or something to give my tired old brain a workout. The Nazi returns just before dinner for swimming, martial art horseback riding. (Funny thing is I've already cast the role for my Exercise Nazi and she wears lots of leather exercise gear!). Nightlife can be movies, plays, dancing, or more butt sitting and I don't have to dress up for any of it. This is heaven.... I could do this for a month. I love my family, but most family vacation are more stress than relaxing, trying to get everyone not to fight, eat the same food, and stay out each other way is nothing but work. Hell is driving my Wife, Mother, Grandmother, and Daughter shopping! I remember driving just the first three around one time and they all were giving me direction where to go. Three different people giving three different direction and none of them are behind the wheel.

Closest I ever come to this is when I get a chance to depressurize after each semester. I get 3 week to sitting around home in my underwear, order pizza, play video games, read, and watch porn. (It would be really nasty porn, the kind with a goat, two midgets and lime green Jello.) Is that too much information?

Why am I in this mood? Because grading Finals rots your brain. I really hate grading, not because it’s time consuming, or difficult judging people’s work. It when you get crap from a student that makes the whole evaluation process sucks. I was grading one exam and you could tell this person had no clue about anything. I was beginning to wonder if he was in the same class with me all this semester. He looked like he was listening, but the hamster is dead and it’s corpse is flopping around in the wheel. I giving away points any little thing I can find so I don’t have to put a big ZERO on his paper. The sad thing is there were several other students who got “A”s and I tried to make this final easy compared with the midterm exams. It makes me just want to write on the exam booklet: “GO HOME, find a job digging ditches.”

OH… but it gets better. I have several students from Canada. One of them told me the grading scale goes something like this: 100 – 83 is an “A”, 82 – 67 is a “B” and 66-50 is a “C”. 50% is passing! WTF!

Oh even better… I finished grading one class and scored the final, the course grades are turned in to the Dean. The next day I have student turn in several assignments that are weeks overdue. Why the hell would you do that? I suspect that these students saw their final grade online and decide they would try and save themselves by turning in something for all those zeros behind their names in my gradebook.

Then there are the students who never turn anything in, don’t show up for class, fail the final, and get pissed because clearly it’s somehow my fault. The best part is some of these clowns have been in the same class before and this is their third time taking the course.

We now have dorms on campus. Some of my students live 500 feet from the door of my classroom. You would think they would be and the first ones to class everyday. NOPE! I had one person who was constistly late by five minutes. What an ASS!

I no longer wonder why teacher go nuts and get burned-out.