Moving right along

I'm in the thick of grading papers. But, I feel like I'm getting the hang of it. Though I collected essays on Wednesday and did take a look at them, I didn't really start grading till Friday. I was nervous about it, so I decided to wait till after our grading workshop in preceptorship on Thursday afternoon. At the moment, I've graded about twenty, with the goal of finishing one section by the end of the weekend. That leaves about five for tomorrow. I'll meet with DR on Monday to go over my grades and get her approval, then I'll grade the second set of papers. I'm hoping to have them all graded and returned by Wednesday. They are fun to read, since this assignment had a personal element. So I'm learning a lot about my students. But it is really difficult to put down the letter grade, because even with the rubric, grading is really quite subjective. So far, there seems to be a pretty good distribution of grades, with most falling in the B-C range. Still, it's not easy--I don't want to be too easy on them, but it's hard to be harsh when you know the student and want them to be successful. I also have to keep reminding myself that they aren't all shooting for A's like I did, so maybe a C is what they are looking for; maybe it won't be disappointing to them. I imagine some of this nervousness will pass with more experience. I think it'll also be easier to grade an assignment that doesn't include the personal element. We'll see about that in four weeks when I collect Essay 2.

In other news, I went to the English Dept party last night and although it was a nice event, it was a bit disappointing. I spent the evening with the other GAT's in my group, so that part was fun. Since we usually see each other on campus and mostly talk about school, it was good to socialize and talk about other things. But, the four of us felt disappointed that there were no other EL/L students there. Not one! We had all come hoping to get to know some of the other EL/Lers better, and maybe talk with some faculty, but neither happened. I think it's been harder for us to get to know other people in our program because of the Linguistics conflict--we would have seen other first year students more often if we had been in that class with them. And it seems like I should have gotten to know some of the second year students by now, but I haven't really. I missed the last EL/L get-together, which was a happy hour, so I wasn't sure I wanted to go anyway, but hopefully I'll make the next one and start to feel more connected.

Some exciting news--Mark has his first student taking lessons starting tomorrow. He also got a call today to play 2 concerts with the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra. Both of these are thanks to his professor recommending him. My TEAD plays in the SASO, so I think it's cool that Mark will get to play with her and I'll get to see them both perform. (That is, if he can get me a ticket--they're $20 each!) But I think it's exciting that his name is starting to get around here in Tucson.