Grading at Home

I have a very difficult time grading at home. This is in part due to years of training. When I was taking my exams for my PhD, I tried to stop bringing home teaching work. Having both teaching work and student work to do at home became very overwhelming. I would have so much to do that I would become paralyzed and do nothing, so I stopped bringing teaching work home. Well, I tried to stop bringing home teaching work. I was well into dissertation writing before it became a solid habit--all teaching work done in my work office; all of my research done at my home desk. This was such a huge help in my finishing my dissertation while teaching 4/4. I didn't have to try to prioritize my work. I knew what to do based on where I was. If that meant I returned papers to students a week later than I had intended, then that's what I did. If that meant that I was only able to work on my dissertation on the weekend, than I made the most of that weekend.

This last year, I have been letting that division slip a bit. It started with service work. Graduating meant a promotion which meant having to serve on bigger and more committees which meant leaving work with things still needing to be done IMMEDIATELY (that stupid orange exclamation point that shows up on ALL OF THE EMAILS is evil; I hate it). I have brought teaching things home too, but I usually don't do them because I'm just too tired. That's the other reason that I have a hard time grading from home. Once I start to relax in the evening, I just don't want to work anymore. And since many of my relaxing things involve my computer, my home desk is both research space and entertainment space. That makes it hard to do research things too. And I need to be doing my research things. I have a way overdue book review I keep thinking I can get to, then something happens. And then there's my own stuff. I dreamt about one of my book chapters last night. Nothing useful, but I woke up happy that my brain wanted to work on the book. I want to work on my book. I really do, and it was good to remember that, even if I have all of these other deadlines looming.

Tonight I brought home two essays to grade. If I finished them, I would have one set of essays done (2 sets left--I have 3 sections of one class). I did it. I graded both essays; that class is done. But now I need to do some reading for class tomorrow (the 4th one, which does not presently have a stack of essays to grade). It's a novel, one that I like and one that I have taught before; I just need the refresher for tomorrow's discussion (which is already planned out). This will be more enjoyable than grading, but it's still working at 10:30 on Tuesday night when I'd rather just go to bed.

Compartmentalizing helps me keep sane and able to do all of the things without becoming overwhelmed. I feel like my boxes have gotten saggy and are no longer keeping all the things separate. I need new boxes. Or to teach fewer classes. That would also fix this problem.