reeling, writhing and fainting in coils
Wednesday, 7 June 2006 04:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtRight, let's not do that again in a hurry. Having goofed off all week on the marking, it suddenly occurred to me somewhat belatedly on Monday night that, in fact, the deadline for mark submission was, in fact, today, at 10.30am, following the happy experience of an invigilation from 7.30am (eeeuw: my Cherished Institution, in its infinite wisdom, has just redesigned exam scheduling so the first one is at 8am, not 9am as heretofore. Academics storm the admin block, news at 11).
Yesterday I marked all day, nonstop, until just after midnight, resulting in:
1. Five hours of sleep last night as joyous preparation for a 6am wake this morning.
2. A state of grammar-nuke-from-orbit-mode mental hype that meant I lay in bed for an hour and a half without being able to sleep owing to the buzzing apostrophes and the slow dripping of blood from mutilated verbs.
3. A blister on my marking finger.
4. The discarded corpses of two green marking pens, gallantly perished in action, in my waste-paper basket.
5. An uncontrollable and recurring fit of the giggles at the student who insisted, throughout her essay, on referring to the notable Arthurian hero Lancelot du Lac as "Lancelot Da Lake", which to my mind makes him sound like a somewhat poncy Mafia hit-man (which, in fact, for some versions tends to describe him more or less perfectly).
6. The horrifying realisation that KFM played the new Red Hot Chilli Peppers song SIX TIMES between 10am and 12 midnight - slightly more than once per DJ. It's not even that good a song: one of those ones that sounds vaguely like a band who want to sound vaguely like a rehash of The Greatest Hits Of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
7. Another Ruthless Rhyme, which I'll post when I've tracked down a rhyme to "epiglottis".
The invigilation, I have to add, was a total workout. Huge raked lecture theatre: I must have climbed two flights of stairs about thirty times. I ache. I've done easier gym routines. In addition, anything but an aisle seat is totally inaccessible to the invigilator, so I spent a lot of time trying to telepathically attract the attention of exam-zoned students with their heads down, four metres away. The skills required by the modern academic simply don't get any easier.
Now I have to go conduct a private invigilation of what I suspect is an information systems exam for a friend who doesn't want to fly up to Pretoria to do it, and has invoked the Great Seekrit Brotherhood of Academics. With any luck they'll feed me wine.
*staggers off*
Yesterday I marked all day, nonstop, until just after midnight, resulting in:
1. Five hours of sleep last night as joyous preparation for a 6am wake this morning.
2. A state of grammar-nuke-from-orbit-mode mental hype that meant I lay in bed for an hour and a half without being able to sleep owing to the buzzing apostrophes and the slow dripping of blood from mutilated verbs.
3. A blister on my marking finger.
4. The discarded corpses of two green marking pens, gallantly perished in action, in my waste-paper basket.
5. An uncontrollable and recurring fit of the giggles at the student who insisted, throughout her essay, on referring to the notable Arthurian hero Lancelot du Lac as "Lancelot Da Lake", which to my mind makes him sound like a somewhat poncy Mafia hit-man (which, in fact, for some versions tends to describe him more or less perfectly).
6. The horrifying realisation that KFM played the new Red Hot Chilli Peppers song SIX TIMES between 10am and 12 midnight - slightly more than once per DJ. It's not even that good a song: one of those ones that sounds vaguely like a band who want to sound vaguely like a rehash of The Greatest Hits Of The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
7. Another Ruthless Rhyme, which I'll post when I've tracked down a rhyme to "epiglottis".
The invigilation, I have to add, was a total workout. Huge raked lecture theatre: I must have climbed two flights of stairs about thirty times. I ache. I've done easier gym routines. In addition, anything but an aisle seat is totally inaccessible to the invigilator, so I spent a lot of time trying to telepathically attract the attention of exam-zoned students with their heads down, four metres away. The skills required by the modern academic simply don't get any easier.
Now I have to go conduct a private invigilation of what I suspect is an information systems exam for a friend who doesn't want to fly up to Pretoria to do it, and has invoked the Great Seekrit Brotherhood of Academics. With any luck they'll feed me wine.
*staggers off*
