November 23, 2008
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The Daily News
1 It's showtime, folks!
2 The other day I had predicted I'd get a buncha papers all graded by 11 a.m. On Saturday night I finished at midnight. I think I underestimated how much homework I had assigned.
3 It isn't so much that I assign it, it's that these guys ALL do it. Not all well, mind you, but to a man they do every single assignment.
4 It almost sounds nerdy, but a part of me appreciates all the pain of having to labor over a billion misspellings of "a lot" (they incessantly spell it, "alot" which has sent some English teachers hurtling out of airplanes, blowing up gopher holes, or doing atomic drops on large bean bag chairs.) or slamming words together like "eachday", or maybe even using a lower case i when talking about themselves.
5 For me, I'm just glad they're taking the time to do all the things out of which I dish. (Ha! Takin' it to the aburd limit, ohhhhhh yeah!).
6 One kid, (and I'll leave his name out) LOVES using (well, not ALL the time) parentheses in nearly every (I shouldn't say EVERY because he used none at all on at least two papers) paper (which is why I said, "nearly").
7 Yuh get all that?
8 I was being demonstrative there. Only an English teacher would use a word like "demonstrative". My but we are a boring lot.
9 Anywho, any DN reader worth his (or her) salt knows that almost nobody can butcher a sentence more than me.
10 Than I.
11 Every other DN is written with one eye open and one eye almost shut. I'll nap, get back to it, forget where I was, TRY to edit, and by around midnight I'll just say, "Ah foooogggit. Just push 'send'. "
12 So every now and again you're gonna get a DN sentence that you read three or four times before you say, "This sentence makes no sense. Am I missing something here?"
13 Yes.
14 A careful writer.
15 I usually catch the errors either the night of, or I'll make adjustments over the weekend so that the actual Xanga site cleans it up for whatever posterity there might be.
16 And on the one I did last week about the Puritans, a coupla pictures suddenly disappeared.
17 I shop for pictures the way some people shop for clothes. When I stumble upon a really good one, I measure it for safety and when I'm convinced it's probably innocent, I snag it and lay it into the design.
18 Design. Haha, yeesh.
19 And I naturally insist that the DN is notta blog. It pre-dates blogging by four years.
20 Who cares anywho?
21 Okay, okay so I'm off the subject, which was grading papers. <snore>.
22 In hiking, they call it a social trail. You're not supposed to go on those 'cuz you run the risk of getting lost.
23 And eaten by bears.
24 So really I just wanted to let the DN readers know that the next two might dish out some pretty short shrift because I have fourteen million "alots" to cure. As one teacher said at a meeting, "Most students are like, 'Homework. Argggh.' Our kids are like, 'Homework! SWEET!'
25 Truer words, truer words.
26 Bottom line: My deadline is Tuesday at 4. I also have jury duty this week.
27 What, no toikey?
28 Fear not, O ye faithful DN readers. I won't go hungry, I promise you. AND I'll hit my deadline or die trying.
29 Anyway, I'm out the doe.
30 Have a tasty day.
31 An have "alot" of fun.
32 Peace. <send>
www.xanga.com/bharrington
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