…and this is a 
Light…tunnel…end of…going into! The light!
Category: Personal
Posted on: May 8, 2008 2:07 PM, by PZ Myers
My last class for this semester was today. I'm done with the teaching part, now all that's left is the dry, husky, tedious, boring administrative part: final exams and grading and the passing of final judgment on the efforts of my students. I get to become a mindless bureaucratic drone unenlivened by creative thought for a little while.
Anticipate continued incoherence, with light and scattered posting for a while. But there is hope, and none too soon.
Comments
Is that a light at the end of the tunnel....or just a freight-train coming your way?
Posted by: Alex | May 8, 2008 2:19 PM
There is a light that never goes out.
Posted by: Janine ID | May 8, 2008 2:25 PM
On behalf of myself and serious students everywhere, my compliments and gratitude to you and all dedicated educators. Your efforts on this blog also enlighten every day. Wish I was your student.
Posted by: MicroZealous | May 8, 2008 2:28 PM
My last classes were also today. I'm done with the teaching...for good. Having recognized the futility of trying to improve my creative writing by getting a PhD in English, I'm bailing out of academe altogether.
After this round, I'll never have to read a freshman paper again. I'm starting to feel a bit giddy, and do crazy things like post to science blogs I've mostly lurked on for many months.
Posted by: Laurel | May 8, 2008 2:30 PM
My god! It's full of stars!
Posted by: Coyote | May 8, 2008 2:34 PM
Ha! I am done with finals, grades are done, AND it looks like I am past the whining about grades stage, even. Shoot, I even have my door open and am answering my phone today!
Posted by: Pablo | May 8, 2008 2:41 PM
I'm a student, but luckily I just had my last final today, so I'm officially done with college. Now I get to work for the rest of my life. Hooray!
Posted by: Derek | May 8, 2008 2:54 PM
I decided, in my omniscient wisdom, to have a SHORT essay question in the final evolution test. Students, all 57 of them, have complained all semester long about not been able to express how much they know about the topics in multiple choice exams.
Needless to say, I'm not as omniscient as I originally thought...
Posted by: TrekJunkie | May 8, 2008 2:58 PM
Needs more rollerskates.
Posted by: Sili | May 8, 2008 3:11 PM
You semester folks are depressing me...I only just finished midterms :\. Still about another month to go.
Posted by: Etha Williams | May 8, 2008 3:16 PM
Handing in final grades today...
WOO-HOO!...
Posted by: Bob | May 8, 2008 3:16 PM
It's against university policy to give exams during the last week of class. Just throwing that out there.
Posted by: Student | May 8, 2008 3:25 PM
Hey PZ- try my grading method: a glass of cabernet for every 10 papers. It works like a charm! That way, you turn your boring bureaucratic drone into a gentle inebriate haze.
It beats grading papers NOT drunk, anyway.
Posted by: Plastic Flag | May 8, 2008 3:41 PM
I would like an A-, please.
Posted by: Jefe | May 8, 2008 3:46 PM
I've been over this quite a few times: it's against university policy to give a final exam in the last week of class. It is acceptable to give a unit exam, however.
Posted by: PZ Myers | May 8, 2008 3:53 PM
All this academia talk is making me quite wistful. I did college and law school at night while working and raising a child. So I never had the "real" college experience. Oh, well. Probably, like working as a dancer on a cruise ship, it sounds better than it is.
Posted by: Lana | May 8, 2008 3:59 PM
Tunnel of light? So you're saying that grading finals is similar to having your brain starved of oxygen, and you do this twice annually?
This explains much about my time in college.
Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | May 8, 2008 4:39 PM
I hope you will find some time to post about the Platypus DNA findings that are on all the front pages today.
Posted by: Steph | May 8, 2008 4:53 PM
Have you found a significant uptick in absenteeism? Our whole campus has had a serious case all year. Hoping it's an anomaly and not the lead end of a trend.
Posted by: Darby | May 8, 2008 5:09 PM
Just finished grading research reports. Calculate and submit tomorrow, and the semester is OVAH!
Posted by: MAJeff, OM | May 8, 2008 6:24 PM
Pah! I bet they are going to PAY you for doing that huh? Back when I was a lowly teaching fellow they only paid us for 9months and our contracts had finished when we were sat there grading exam papers. There I was not being paid to wince at the bad grammar and missuse of affect and effect (can't have been in MY tutorial group this one) when I could have been being not paid to write my thesis.
Well at least I had my Trophy Wife(TM).
Posted by: Peter Ashby | May 9, 2008 3:18 AM
I actully LIKE grading exams. The answers are so original! They bear no resemblance whatever to the material I taught. Such as in the photsynthesis unit: What color are plants and explain why this is so. One student answers "blue" Gotta love it!
I also have to resist giving extra points for honesty, when a student answers "I don't know" isn't that worth something?
I grade tests while watching Star Trek reruns, makes the time go faster.
This summer I have microbiology in the evening: 6-10:30 4 nights a week - Friday off. It's a marathon.
SG
Posted by: Science Goddess | May 9, 2008 8:18 AM
"An administrator is someone who, upon seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, orders more tunnel"
Posted by: Xavier | May 9, 2008 9:55 AM
Science Goddess in #22: Is the "blue" student color-blind? One might have hoped he or she would have memorized what color everyone else is calling plants, of course.
Laurel in #4: Best thing I ever did for my writing skills was run screaming from Academe before grad school, having read too much of the PMLA than was good for my digestion. (I have maintained a friendly relationship with higher ed. in general.) In the ensuing 20, 30 years I did other things--assorted odd jobs, nursing, pro gardening, evangelical Arborism--about which I now actually write. Having skills in my native language was useful in the other work, too, so it's not as if I'd wasted my life in school.
Posted by: Ron Sullivan | May 9, 2008 10:08 AM
Yeah, but when the Enterprise is in Warp, time goes slower, so it evens out.
I hope I haven't spoiled it for you...
Posted by: Kseniya | May 9, 2008 2:34 PM