Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Dumb People Harsh my Vibe

Hello again. Today has been (and will continue to be for a little while longer) a long day of grading. I've been checking blogs and knitting the scarf as a reward every two papers, but the going has been tough.

The worst break I took all day was to visit the Craig's List help forums to try to piece together a problem we've been having. I think, but can't say for sure, that people selling the same thing (graduation tickets*) are flagging our post as scalping. But when I explained on the help forum that it wasn't scalping if the tickets didn't have a face value and there was no college policy against selling them, they made their attacks personal. There are eight new posts just today for tickets for sale, hence why I suspect it's our competition that's flagging them more than anyone else. I know flamers are just... well, mean-spirited people, but I still take it far too personally. And being at all emotional screws up my grading mindset.

And I started the day in such an optimistic mood, too.

So, I'm going to try to get 2-4 more done tonight and then head to bed. I'm hoping the assignment I've scheduled myself to grade on Friday will allow for more knitting. (Because I do paperless grading, I listen to the computer read papers out loud once, then grade them carefully while making comments. It helps me avoid making comments out of place or too harshly if I read through once first, and knitting keeps me from hitting pause to type something like, "WHAT?" in the comment field. The assignments I'm grading now are projects, not papers, and don't work so well that way.) If I can knit even a little bit more on Friday, I might actually be able to finish this scarf on time...

Anyway, sorry for the work babble. Back to it!

* Just in case anyone was confused, these aren't my tickets as faculty (no such thing). They are my husband's tickets as a graduating senior who doesn't want to walk at commencement. It's his show, so I left the choice to him. We'll be going to the receptions though. :) Free food and congratulations are the best part.

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