My life has become chaos. Not the controlled kind, either. The teacher I TA for has been out of the country for over a week, leaving me in charge of a class of over 100 students. Most of these students are freshman. Not only have I had to teach, I got to grade 100 papers in 4 days. This is so they could have the grades before their next paper was due, which was today. So, now I have another 100 papers to grade in 4 days. Oh, yippee.
After handing back the first set of papers a few days ago, I got to give a "soap box" lecture. This one was to remind them that a professor (a.k.a. me) doesn't really care how well a person can argue about their grade. We care more about the effort and time they put into their work. If they didn't put in the time and effort, then don't complain. I don't think the students were too happy, but I didn't have a line outside of my office after class of complainers. Instead, I had only a few students who wanted to learn from this experience (quoting another part of my soap box) and wanted to know if I had suggestions for them. It was great.
My other classes are going okay, so far. My research methods is going to be a lot of work. It won't be hard, just work. I feel like all I do any more is read, read, read. It's either to grade papers or to read articles for class. I also am supposed to present research at two conferences this semester, finish a literature review for a paper to submit to a journal, and begin my own research for my thesis. Needless to say, it's only chaos.
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