The Midterm Scourge

As a student, I entertained bitterly fanciful notions of the hidden private lives of professors. What fun I knew they must be having. During Midterms and Finals, while I was sleeplessly stuffing fact after frightfully important fact into a brain fueled only by Honey Nut Cheerios and Jolly Ranchers, dreading that nearly palpable moment when night gives up and lets day come again, I just knew that somewhere all of my professors were having a party.

In my bones I could feel them savoring bonbons and peeled grapes while string quartets played easy-listening covers of songs selected from the Queen and Led Zeppelin catalogues in the background. Possibly a little BeeGees thrown in for good measure. (There were also, as I recall, a great many chaise sofas to aid in general lounging and a number of poor saps standing by with large fans at the ready.) And I would turn my bloodshot eyes to the hopefully still pitch black heavens and curse their clearly undeserved good fortune.

So you’d think that now that I’m one of those exalted elect – the few, the proud, the professors – I could get someone to turn the heat back on in my office on days when I can see my breath or at least get a test copied without having to forfeit all pride and/or sell my soul. I mean seriously, what’s a girl have to do to get a thing copied around here?

So in the absence of all I expected from my new and privileged position, I will concede that Midterms turned me a bit loopy these past few weeks. And I think if I’d had a guy with a fan following me around it would have been easier. (Though, upon reflection, I probably would have had him lose the fan and made him figure out how to get me copies. Which, of course, would have made me very happy indeed.)

I’m sure the first semester is the most tiring – only arriving a few days before classes began, not getting a schedule of the classes I was teaching until two days before classes actually began, staying just far enough ahead in my lesson plans to reasonably be considered (or assumed) to be prepared for each class, and adjusting to new everything all at the same time – all that can take a toll on even the most well-rested person. (Which I have never been.) But come fall semester, these things will not possess the gravitas they do now. Oh, they may still be issues in one form or another, but the degree necessarily lessens.

I’m looking forward to that.

In the meantime, however, that mature understanding did little to stop me from wanting to swear in three languages. And I could now, too, so you can imagine how tempting it was. Stacked up on top of all the regular horrors my schedule continues to offer me daily, I also had to find time to write, administer and grade approximately 63 billion written and speaking Midterm tests. It’s a rough estimate, but a conservative one.

And does anyone appreciate the trials of the solitary, beleaguered professor during Midterm time? Ha. Don’t be silly. No, it’s just a steady stream of “Have you entered your grades, yet?” “Are you done, yet?” “What’s my grade?” “Why did I get this grade?” “But if I lose those three points I’ll never be successful in life and it will all be your fault, Professor” and 63 billion sets of accusing eyes (conservative estimate) staring back at me for weeks.

Well if you didn’t want to lose those points, you should have turned it in on time!

[mentally regaining my weary composure]

I don’t get paid enough.

I know my acrimony may startle you, but I can assure you that it is the honest acrimony that comes with having lived through something that a pithy adage will tell us has made us stronger. I’m here to tell you now that sometimes those things just make you grumpy and tired. Also a bit hungry. And, if I’m going to be honest, a little nonplussed. Sixty-three billion students (conservative estimate) and not one of them offered to peel me a grape? The baseball of cruel reality has shattered the stained-glass window of my youthful dreams. It really is a hard world sometimes.

And clearly I’ve been teaching my students the wrong things. My lesson plans next semester will address this gap in their learning. Thoroughly.

Eight weeks to Finals.