'Tis the season that brings together people who rarely see each other--and not just for all those holiday parties. All week I've been encountering colleagues I rarely see as they line up to use the Scantron machine.
I've never used Scantron myself because it has no patience for student writing, but the machine is located about 30 feet from my office and it's in great demand this time of year. All day long I hear the whirr, click, and buzz of answer sheets running through the machine, and all day long I envy my colleagues whose grading can be completed by a mindless chunk of metal and plastic.
To distract from the envy and drown out the noise, I've been playing Christmas music in my office. (Not the Bob Dylan holiday songs I heard at Border's the other day, about which all I can say is this: sometimes it's a really good thing that I don't carry a gun while shopping.) The music makes the papers more palatable, but that doesn't mean I'm going all Santa Claus on the grades. Some papers wrap up interesting ideas in sparkly syntax and vivid vocabulary, while others deserve lumps of coal. My primary duty right now is figuring out the difference. And that's something a machine simply can't do.
Yet.
2 comments:
So glad someone else shares my disdain for BD. Great songwriter, crappy singer.
PS I know what you mean - Ella, Frank, Dean, Perry, Mel, Rosemary ... inescapable.
"...interesting ideas in sparkly syntax and vivid vocabulary..."
I give you an A+!
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