Strange Conversations: Part Two Hundred and Eighty-Four
Posted 30 March 2010 in Strange Conversations by Catriona
Early morning IM strange conversation:
ME: Oooh, toast is ready! Bye!
NICK: Oh, of course. Oh wait!
ME: Quick! Toast is going cold!
NICK: We’ve now got 60 gig a month for no more cost from Internode!
ME: That is not urgent!
NICK: Sorry! Bye!
ME: My toast went cold for that?!
NICK: Bye!
You’ve got to admire his desperate attempts to leave the conversation at the end. Well, admire or pity them, I suppose.
(A brief apology: Things have been ever so slightly completely and utterly insane here, culminating in a pile of 93 first-year 500-word blog posts with a five-day marking turnaround and two other equally urgent deadlines, all coming due, oh, now. So the blog has suffered, I’m afraid. But do not abandon me, gentle readers! Not even if you find being called “gentle reader” horribly patronising! I’ll be back into my usual routine in no time—plus, there’s Doctor Who soon. Very soon. You wouldn’t abandon The Circulating Library just before the Eleventh Doctor appears, would you?)
Share your thoughts [5]
1
Wendy wrote at Mar 30, 06:02 am
a five day marking turnaround is evil!!
2
Catriona wrote at Mar 30, 06:47 am
Sssh! My boss might hear you!
We turn the first piece of assessment round in half the time allotted to subsequent marking, so that students get immediate feedback on their work and so that they can have some feedback before the (insanely early) mid-semester break at Easter.
(Seriously, week five is not mid-semester. It’s just not.)
It’s actually an eight-day turnaround (submitted on Tuesday, returned the following Wednesday/Thursday).
But since they were submitted late on Tuesday, had to be printed off Blackboard before they could be marked, and I have back-to-back tutorials on Wednesdays and Thursdays (plus guests to dinner on both Tuesday and Thursday that week), I really couldn’t get to them until Friday.
It’s my own fault for being too tired to mark in the evenings last week.
Later items will have a seemly two-week turnaround.
3
Matthew Smith wrote at Mar 30, 10:33 am
throw em down the stairs…
4
Wendy wrote at Apr 1, 09:55 am
I can see how that marking turnaround is excellent in theory…but is a little bit more difficult in practice.
5
Catriona wrote at Apr 1, 12:56 pm
It’s a little tiring, but the students really seem to appreciate getting something back before the mid-semester break.