The need for oompa loompas

oompa loompa lompity dee
what sort of grade shall I give to thee?*

I intended to write tonight about my disgust and distress over the many comments about Madonna's advanced age (53), and how that has rendered her somehow un-hot now, but I procrastinated too long over a stack of papers and ended up grading for many hours tonight. In fact, I'm still not finished, in spite of the cramp in my hand, and will be at it until the wee hours.

It's grueling work, grading essays. Here's a little secret: we all hate it, those of us who teach writing. We love writing and most of us love our students, but we hate grading their papers. We procrastinate as bad as they do. We hate it that much. In fact, that's why the scantron was invented, but I can't use one. My students have to do real work in my class. And I have to do real work grading their papers.

I wrote on Facebook I thought I should be given a staff of oompa loompas to help me with this burden. One reader wrote back, "I highly doubt you would get any work done if you had a bunch of dwarves with chocolate in your house, sounds more like a realized fetish party." Hee. True that.

So instead of writing about Madonna, I'll go back to reading and commenting and wishing somebody had made these kids write when they were younger so they'd have a little practice doing it.

Tomorrow I'll write about Madonna, the elderly pop star, if I still remember why I was so upset today.

* Credit to Diplomat for that ditty.