Marking as far as the eye can see

Marking has a bit of a habit to ambush you! A load comes in, and you think you'll just deal with it, but before you have managed, then generally the next batch has already been added to it. And this year I suppose it was worse than normal; I was on strike for three days. On these days I otherwise would have been marking. I never really know how to combine working with a strike; you can't really not do it, and if you just don't give feedback, which would make it a whole lot faster, the students don't learn anything from the assignment. I am under no illusion that all of them closely scrutinise what you write to them, but if there is nothing to read,  then even those who might consider that, can’t.

It started with the palaeonvironmental reconstruction for my 3rd year module, then the field trip report of my glaciology module, then presentations and popular scientific articles for the 3rd year module again, closely followed by the assignment I designed after my friend and colleague Suzie quit, and then first year presentations and essays. And then the report for our fieldwork module. I won’t have to be bored! I suppose the question is: how much of that will I manage before the end of the year? I hope most!