Hello friends 🤗
It has felt like a successful week! My email inbox is manageable again, I enjoyed spending time with my mum, and I got a satisfying load of work done. All of that in just a four-day work week thanks to the bank holiday weekend. I am feeling re-energized and ready to get stuck back in tomorrow.
📆 Activities 🛼
Monday 1 April. Metrocentre; in-person catch-up with J
Friday 5 April. Visiting Grandma; participating in interview for disability & transport research; family dinner at Rosa 12
Saturday 6 April. Train strike so Auntie Marjie drove me home
🧑🏼🏫 Marking ✅
I feel like I have crossed a pivotal stage as a GTA. I spent three days solid marking student assignments. We are supposed to spend 30 minutes on each essay, but I ended up spending more like 45 minutes on average and some of them were more like an hour. Reading was fairly quick, but writing comprehensive, constructive, and specific feedback is time-consuming.
Although I had printed off a list of feedback phrases, I don’t think I used any of them. They just didn’t seem sufficiently relevent to this semi-creative assignment. I always referenced the grade descriptors, though, and had a list of words that were/ were not suitable for each marking band. I’m thinking about making my own ‘bank’ of phrases to help speed up my marking process - but this would only be worth it if I manage to get a teaching role post-PhD.
I put a lot of effort into the feedback so I hope that the students actually read it and take it on board. Perhaps that is naive. After a day or so of marking, I put the assignment prompt through ChatGPT just out of curiosity. The response it generated ounded like quite a few of the essays I had read. I’m not even going to try to figure out whether or not those students did use ChatGPT because it is impossible to prove and doesn’t change the way that I have marked it. It’s just a little disheartening to think that I may have spent an hour writing feedback for a chat bot!
🗑️ A Different Kind of Productivity 🔥
Feeling super productive this week, working a flat-out 9-5 day Tuesday to Thursday (Friday had some interruptions): getting stuff done and smashing my To-Do list. On top of marking some 17 essays, I have:
Scheduled 8 more oral history interviews
Sent over 50 emails
Read and commented on two chapters for Hidden Worlds
Updated my Academic CV
Submitted a fellowship application for the Smithsonian (including writing a research proposal!)
Applied for a new passport (just need to stick something in the post)
Perhaps this does not sound like a lot, but it was all quite time-consuming and the work load made each day pass quickly. If every week was like this, I wouldn’t be able to write or think deeply about my own research. But I enjoyed the “break” and sense of accomplishment from completing so many discrete tasks.
📚 New Words 📚
Convival. adjective; friendly and agreeable
The convival atmosphere at St. Dunstan’s facilitated peer-support and risk-taking in the process of learning to get about.
Accumen. noun; ability to understand, make good judgements and decisions
Blind welfare’s traditional focus on handicraft and vocational training in mechanical labour helped to cultivate considerable technical accumen within the blind population.
🧩 Entertainment 📺
📖 Started reading Donna Tart’s The Secret History. After trying to push through it, I am not getting into it so this is on the backburner for now.
📖 Started reading Lessons in Chemistry. I really like it already! It’s almost like people know what they are talking about when they say a book is really good (though, there is also lots of hype about the Secret History so I’m not fully convinced)
📘 Finished reading None of this is True. Not groundbreaking but I enjoyed it: 4 stars.
🎨 Drawing more pokemon
📺 Continuing to watch The Apprentice, Married at First Sight Australia, and Desperate Housewives
🍿 Watched 10 lives - cute cartoon with a cute, loveable cat!
You do yourself a disservice that sounds like a very busy week. Great that you got through your to do list and have a clean slate for next week.