ick

It turns out that the coming-down-with-a-cold feeling was accurate.  I woke up yesterday with a raw throat and nasty drainage.  I suppose I should be happy I'm not congested, but said drainage is making my stomache feel queasy today.

Who's ready to go back to school after the long weekend?  Not me, not feeling like this.

I did finish a lot of grading and can do more tonight, but tomorrow is going to be a rough day if I'm not any better.

The papers I dragged my feet on grading were, on the whole, about as wretched as I expected them to be.  Sometimes when the whole batch is lousy I just want to throw it out (as in, not put it in the gradebook).  It's not a crime -- not every little thing has to go into the gradebook.  But these ones, they're going in, and the students will just have to face the consequences.

This is the point where I lower the hammer: I've told them 4 or 5 weeks in a row exactly how to fix their papers, and the vast majority of them just don't do it.  I spent hours and hours (and hours and hours) making detailed comments so that they could do well, but from here it seems that was all wasted effort.

I will have to rethink the research paper process for next year, because I do not want to go through this again! It's contrary to the stated goal of the science project portfolio, which is to make the process and the outcome better for everyone.  So far, that's not happening... but then again, I graded the least-experienced class first, so maybe the other classes will be better?  Here's hoping.