Friday, May 27, 2005

And then, there were more...

'Tis the season! Some are giving their time to writing graduation speeches. Some are packing for long awaited trips abroad. Some are just floating hither and yon, back and forth to all the end-of-year events that swamp our calendars this time of year. Me, I'm content just to grade another midterm...or two. Ok, more like 30 or so at this point.

Last night I did some number crunching, which is quite a feat for me. Especially when I volunteer to do it. So, there's about an average of 70 minutes per exam times 90 exams is 6,300 divided by 60 minutes (1 hour) equals 105 hours. Even if we had gotten started Tuesday directly after the exam--say by 3:00 pm--and worked all through the night up until yesterday evening, that would leave us with about 76 hours left to go. Even if you divide that number by 2 (for the number of people consistently working on the grading) that's still leave us with about another 38 hours. But of course we did not get started at 3 pm Tuesday. So we most assuredly have at least 38 left ahead of us--at LEAST!

By now I'm sure that number has diminished slightly--though it seems that our piles of exams have diminished even more slowly. And yet we persevere, past the 3 am hour and on to the wee morning light I'm sure. I really am beginning to understand what Churchill was meaning when he talked about all that is left for him to offer is blood, tears, toil, and sweat.

Onward!

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Up From the Ashes

It's been quite some time, and to be quite honest I had forgotten about this blog site. Designed to make my journal entries readily available to my dear teacher, Pensive Discernment has obviously been left unkempt. Let's see what we can do about that...