The Walk of Shame

Well, I just completed the faculty equivalent of the "Walk of Shame." (For the uninitiated, the Walk of Shame is what my friends from undergrad called the morning walk from a frat house back to the girls' dorms after a night of debauchery.) The faculty Walk of Shame is what happens at my current institution when you fail to get your grades in on time. The registrar in some sick little mind game, turns off the computerized grade entry, forces you to print off a hard-copy of your grades, and then maks you walk them across campus and hand-deliver them to the registrar's office.

Unfortunately, the Walk of Shame is only one part of the whole ritual of humiliation that the registrar's office puts you through if your grades are late. Today, for example, grades were due at 10 a.m. By 10:15, the registrar's office had call the Dean's secretary to give her a list of offending faculty members who were late turning in grades. The Dean's secretary then sent an email to the Dean, my chair, and me informing me that the registrar was waiting for me grades. At noon, the Dean then showed up at my office door telling me that the registrar was waiting for my grades and what could he tell her about when they would be finished. I don't know what happens if you don't get your grades turned in after the Dean shows up at your door (maybe hired goons?), because I finished by 12:30 and walked the grades over the registrar's office. Of course, the coup de gras is the disapproving look you receive from the registrar's secretary for making their jobs more difficult (because everyone knows that the difficult part of the end of the semester is not grading your 100+ exams in under a week, but compiling the grades and posting them for the students to see).