First Day of Summer Break

Well it as officially the first day of my summer break today. I spent the first 3 hours grading - was only 1 hour and 15 minutes late turning in grades this semester. Didn't prevent from having to do the 'walk of shame' but at least I avoided a visit from the Dean.

I spent the last 6 hours of the work day at a 'studies' conference. Some of the information was SOOO boring and I doubt will be of any use at all. However, other information was fascinating - although I probably will never use it either. Still how often any more do I get fascinated by something? Not often enough.

Now, I'm going to spend the rest of the evening on my couch - watching bad movies and surfing online. Then I'm going to go to bed at a decent hour, sleep well, and then wake up and start to plan so ambitious a summer of research, etc. that I won't get half of it done.

Avoiding the Walk of Shame

If I graded like Daniel Solove, I'd never have to do the Walk of Shame again.

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).