The Plan...

Philosophy PhD Husband and I are planners.  We made it through grad school because we had a plan for how we were going to get through our respective programs, and hey, it worked!  My plan for finishing the dissertation involved writing "a page a day."  I chanted that to myself each morning, and made it a mantra in the evening; "page a day" became almost a second version of daily prayer.

So naturally, now that Philosophy PhD Husband and I have jobs, we still make plans.  Of course, now that we have kids, our planning takes on a different kind of tone, and of necessity, we have to change our plan each semester because our teaching schedules vary quite a bit.

 At the end of this fall semester,  I can give you a pretty good sense of how this semester's plan went:

THE PLAN (the Fall 2011 Version):
6:00 am: Wake up, get ready before kids wake up; dress kids, eat breakfast
7:30 am, M-F: Leave the house; drop off the kids at day care; arrive at work by 8
8am-4pm: Work a full day.  Do course prep, grading, committee work, meeting with students, writing, meetings and teaching as much as possible in this time block so that when we are home with the kids, we are with the kids and not divided in our attentions
4:00 pm: Meet at the car; collectively pick up the kids
4:30 pm: Arrive home.  Play with kids for an hour before starting dinner
5:30 pm: Make dinner; eat
6:30 pm: Play with kids some more; the parent who did not cook does the dishes
7:00 pm: Begin getting kids ready for bedtime
7:30 pm: Kids in bed; lights out
7:30-9:30 pm: Finish up on day's work, do some housekeeping, paying bills and so on
10:00 pm: Bed, for that full 8 hours of sleep

Now, as with all plans, this plan needed some flexibility and some changes - specifically about a day into trying it out.....

THE PLAN - The "Day after the Semester Started, What Were We Thinking?" Version
6:00 am: Wake up, get ready before kids wake up; dress kids, eat breakfast
7:30 am, M, W, F: Leave the house; drop off the kids at day care; arrive at work by 8
(BUT, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when I am not teaching till 9am, we sleep in a bit because inevitably we get to sleep a bit too late and need a bit of extra catch up sleep. So we aim to leave the house by 8 am.)
8am MWF/ 8:30 am TR-4pm MWF/ 4:30 pm TR: Work a full day.
4:00 pm MWF/ 4:30 pm TR: Meet at the car; collectively pick up the kids
4:30 pm MWF/ 5:00 pm TR: Arrive home.  Play with kids for an hour before starting dinner
5:30 pm: Make dinner; eat
6:30 pm: Play with kids some more; the parent who did not cook does the dishes
7:00 pm: Begin getting kids ready for bedtime
7:30 pm: Kids in bed; lights out
7:30-9:30 pm [NB: Or till necessary work is done]: Finish up on day's work, do some housekeeping, paying bills and so on
10:00 pm as an ideal; more like 11pm: Bed, for that full 8 hours of sleep

A few days into the new, revised plan, I realized that it wasn't working for a couple reasons: a) I was writing a book; b) the baby refused to get into the act.  Half an hour of bedtime prep just wasn't her thing and we were getting more and more tired by the day.  So:

The Plan - The "Why Won't You Go to Sleep, Sweetheart, I'm Going to be Up Till 3 am" Version
7:00 am: No, really, we can get ready in half an hour....
7:30 am, M, W, F: Leave the house; drop off the kids at day care; arrive at work by 8
8am MWF/ 8:30 am TR-4pm MWF/ 4:30 pm TR: Work a full day.
4:00 pm MWF/ 4:30 pm TR: Meet at the car; collectively pick up the kids
5:30 pm: Make dinner; eat as early as possible
6:30 pm: Play with kids some more; the parent who did not cook does the dishes.  Philosophy PhD Husband lovingly watches kids while I madly write on my book.
9:00 pm: I surface for air.  Kids not in bed, though not for lack of trying. Husband running ragged.  Run through the "I'm going to start counting if you are not in PJs in three seconds" mantra.
10:00 pm: Four year old in bed; baby still crying.  Spend an exhausted half hour debating with spouse about whether to do "cry it out" or whether to rock baby.  Baby falls asleep on shoulder in mid-debate.
10:30 pm: Try to clear path to kitchen.  Noise of doing dishes wakes baby.  Repeat 10 pm convo.
Midnight:  Dishes done; maybe just a few more minutes to work on book.

Thankfully, the book got finished six weeks into the semester.  I had thought that would mean we could revert to an earlier plan, but Philosophy PhD Husband decided to apply for a few jobs and simultaneously we both began having to attend some evening meetings for work.  Only occasional meetings, but still....

The Plan: The Mid-Semester (Now Things Are REALLY Starting to Happen) Version
7:15 am: No, really, we can get ready in half an hour....
7:55 am, M, W, F: Drag selves to car.  Drop off harried and annoyed husband at work so that he can dash to class even later than his students.
8am MWF/ 8:30 am TR-4pm MWF/ 4:30 pm TR: Work a full day.
5:00 pm: Notice clock and wonder why spouse has not called to figure out who will arrange for the school pick up.  Call spouse.  After 5 minutes of complicated sorting through schedules and figuring out who has to do what before leaving, one of us leaves to pick up the kids, promising to "be back in half an hour to pick you up...."
6:15 pm: An hour later, spouse shows up.  Go home (finally).  One person makes dinner; the other chases after the toddler.  I mean, the other plays nicely with the kids.  Or, if spouse has evening meeting, dinner is boxed mac and cheese made while chasing toddler around.
7:00 pm: Dinner on table
8:00 pm: Begin bedtime process
10 pm: Phew.  Kids in bed.  (NB. If spouse has evening meeting, kids will not be actually asleep till spouse arrives back at home.) Work. Work like mad on the varying job apps, papers, grading, assessments, and so on.
Midnight:  Oh, heck.  The dishes.  Spend 15 minutes tiredly discussing whether to just leave the darned things till morning or not.  Finally do dishes.  (The impetus for this by the way is quite simply that regardless of lack of sleep we just do better in the morning if there is a nice clean sink there.  Hence, dishes usually done but not without some pain.)

This plan actually served us well through most of the rest of the semester.  Until, that is, it got to final exam week, wherein the whole plan had to be revised.  

The Plan: The Final Exam and Grading Blitz Week Survival Version

Ha ha ha ha ha.


Ah, well.  How nice for us that a whole brand new semester awaits in 2012 and we get to have a whole brand new plan.

Dear Students,

I understand that you all wanted As in my courses and felt you worked too hard not to get an A.  So let me take this opportunity to address your concerns.  I have, for simplicity's sake, bolded your concerns first, and then offered my comments in non-bold, except for the last point. 

1. This is not an English class.  You grade too hard on form.
First of all, I hope your English professors don't take too much offense, for their classes are not solely dependent on form either.  Or put another way, what you say and how you say it both matter.  If I can't read and understand what you've written, then the content is a loss no matter what the class. 

2. Corollary to #1 - After all, I had an A in all my English classes.
Yes, my classes are focused on writing, and after that, on spoken group presentations.  In humanities classes, it is not generally helpful for me to give you quantitative tests, especially at the 300 level. But the fact that in my classes, the grading is based on your writing doesn't mean much in relation to your English classes, except for the fact that I am glad you have taken some English classes.  This is because I teach 300-level ethics courses.  That means the writing will be different and more difficult than in your 100-level English class.  (And your 300-level English class will also be more difficult, I presume.)  I do apologize in advance, but I did think the purpose in taking the course was that you would learn and grow in new ways.


3. Another Corollary to #1 - You focus too much on our thesis statements rather than on whether we know the religion stuff.
Well, on this point, I hope your Sunday School teachers don't take offense, because I'm quite sure that they didn't intend that their class, taught over 9 months and often only one day a week, was meant to "cover" absolutely everything about the faith we profess in Jesus Christ.  Sometimes some of you seem to think that because you took religious education in Catholic high school or because you went to Sunday School, you now know all about religion.  And some of you, perhaps many of you, have rejected "religion" or "organized religion" or "hierarchical religion" (feel free to put in another term if you are more comfortable with that...)  on the basis of knowing it all.

I can only say that if this class was just a refresher in sixth grade catechetics, they would not have hired a full-time PhD to teach you.  They would have found a hapless but loving and generous volunteer (i.e. someone who works for free) who wants to make a difference for the Lord - and that volunteer would know many good things and teach you many good things, but would also not care about whether you have a thesis statement.

I, on the other hand, am worried about your ability to reason in relation to ethical questions big and small.  And that means I want to see a clear thesis statement about what you think, and then supporting arguments.

4. I worked really hard.
I am sorry indeed that I cannot grade based on effort.  It reminds me distinctly of my college calculus-based physics course, in which I received (thankfully) a C.  Others in the class clearly had more aptitude to learn physics principles quickly, and they appeared to need to do almost no studying, and earned As.  I, on the other hand, studied physics in all my free time, spent extra time in the lab, checked out additional books from the library in an effort to try to understand,   and saw a tutor, all to garner a C.   On effort alone, I should have received an A.  But the professor was not grading on the basis of how hard I worked but on whether, at the end of it all, I knew enough about electrical currents that I would not burn up my friends and myself.  Knowing physics well and rightly matters; though I know that many of you do not think humanities knowledge affects people in the same way, still I grade on the basis that knowing ethics well and rightly matters.

5. Corollary to #3 and #4 - And another thing about this class, you didn't let us share our opinions.
If, by opinion, you mean oral statements made in class that refer to the course readings or lectures or other students' points (even if you didn't quite understand them) AND that enable you and others to make at least a beginning toward reasoned, focused thoughtfulness, in a variety and diversity of forms, relating to important topics like the Big 5 (abortion, homosexuality, war and peace, wages, and euthanasia) as well as to small seemingly insignificant topics like what kind of orange juice to buy and how to relate to your roommates, then I sincerely apologize.

I did arrange on the syllabus a diversity of topics and readings from a broad group of people who are generally thoughtful and provocative, but who do not share the same opinions about everything in the hopes of helping you develop and refine your opinions as defined above.  If you thought that the authors we read DID all share the same opinions, you did not read carefully enough. In class, I tend to play to their arguments, in an effort to help you understand the readings.  But if you think that their opinions are mine, and therefore you cannot express an "opinion", then you must think I am the most confused, messed up individual, for I cannot be politically liberal a la John Rawls and also take a post-liberal stance a la John Milbank.  I cannot support the church's teachings on contraception a la Humanae Vitae and also raise significant (yet faithful) concerns about it, a la Martin Rhonheimer.  I cannot reject gender as a concern (a la Andreas Kostenberger) and also think gender is a great concern (a la Sarah Coakley).  To say nothing of all the great patristic and medieval thinkers we also read.


However, if by opinion you instead mean random statements of the kind you could make at 2 am in the dorms while speaking with your friends, then, no, I am not sorry.  This is a class for which you get academic credit and I am trying to help you think in very particular ways.

6. All of which leads me to want to ask you, "Do you just simply think that because it's a religion (or humanities) course, you ought to be able to get an A?"
Do you think that because the knowledge learned in humanities classes seems more opaque, more "opinion-oriented," and more "fluffy" in popular opinion, that you deserve to receive a mark that is supposed to denote the highest caliber work and thought?  Writing a good thesis (or communicating one in an oral presentation), and then supporting it well, is, yes, very difficult work.  In other words, thinking is HARD, and I value demonstration of that skill.  Good writing, good oral communication both demonstrate good thinking.  If the thought is not behind it, the writing won't be as good.  I endeavor, therefore, to give those who carry out the task a grade of the highest quality.  If you did not earn an A in my class, it is because I did not see a demonstration of those thinking skills.

It is possible I am in error and I have not graded you according to these standards.  If you think that is so, please feel free to stop by my office with your paper, and be prepared to show me your thesis statement, your arguments, your careful reasoned analysis of the readings, lectures and class discussions, using the reasoning skills I hope you've learned in my classes and in the classes of your other humanities professors.

Sincerely,
TheologyPhD Mom
[NB: This represents comments I've heard over the years - usually off hand remarks made in the hall, and the like. This does not represent any one class I have ever had, but a conglomerate of concerns I've heard especially in relation to religion courses, but also in humanities courses generally.]

Grading like parenting???

I suppose it goes without saying that leaves never really begin or end in quite so neat a way as the human resources people would like to imagine: "Dear Dr. Theology Mom:  Your leave has been approved from January 3rd to March 15th.  After that time, you will be returning to modified duties as follows...."

Yeah, well.  Leaving is a bit hard to do, especially when grades were due only 15 days ago and the change-of-grade deadline for last semester rapidly approaches.  Unlike Philosophy PhD Husband, I seem to get hit hard with grade protests and a "grades hard" comment or two generally show up on my evaluations each semester.  I'm not sure how that can be, since I wouldn't say my grading average is all that different from the school's as a whole - around a B-. 

Some of my colleagues think it must be the courses I teach.  The first few semesters I was here, I taught a course in marriage and family, which has/had a reputation of being a "gut" class where everyone gets an A; then last semester I taught a medical ethics course where everyone was a pre-med major who "needed" the A to get into medical school.  They were an exceptionally bright bunch, which explains why a  large majority earned A-s.  Still, full As, to me, denote a really high level of excellence.  I don't feel like I can give an A just because someone is going to medical school.  (And, does an A- in a religion class REALLY hurt their chances to get into med school? Someone come along and correct me on that...)

A friend of mine quips, "You don't need to pay me to teach, but you can't pay me enough to grade."  That's a sentiment that nearly every academic I know shares.

I wonder why: people who are not, in the least, procrastinators when it comes to writing book reviews procrastinate when it comes to grades (and that's saying quite a lot since book reviews are one of the things people put off all the time); colleagues start groaning and grumbling the moment the grading for a semester starts (around the third week) and then it never lets up; people trade jokes about end-of-semester grading (just throw the pile of papers off a stairwell and grade according to where they land...), much like undertakers and doctors have a bit of morgue humor going, out of necessity.

I used to think maybe it was because grading involved making judgements, and maybe people don't like judging.  But THAT can't be quite right, at least in the world of academia.  We make judgements all the time - we learned how to make strong reactionary judgements in graduate school ("Well, that author has everything totally wrong."  And just as a caveat, I think most of us have to learn to be less judgemental the further from grad school we get - especially just around the time a first book review of a book we ourselves wrote comes out, and we feel all the injustices of harsh words...)

My current theory is that grading, especially in the humanities where paper writing isn't nicely quantifiable with multiple choice answers and math problems, is like parenting and that's why we don't like it.  Grading involves not only making judgements, but trying to help people learn to do better.  This is a task made quite difficult by them, at an age when they believe they are perfect and have the most amazing thoughts that even their professors have NEVER ever thought of.  It involves telling them when they've done something wrong, like plagiarize.  It involves disappointing people who put in a lot of work but who nevertheless do not deserve an A on the output - perhaps a bit like my 3 year old who cajoles me for candy because she tried really hard to eat 2 pieces of broccoli on her plate.

But whereas the parenting I do with my kids has many rewards and I see SOME progress eventually because of the longevity of parenting (my 3 year old is finally, finally telling us when she has to go potty...), those rewards are VERY very far and few between with college students.  We only see them a few hours a week and usually only for a semester; most of them don't come visit during office hours; we read final drafts of papers that make it clear they haven't even looked at the comments made on the rough draft.  We try to tell them that good writing reflects good thinking, when they want to believe that if they've done the standard 5-paragraph essay it should be an A because all the elements are there. And in the end, all we have to show for the hard work of grading is the students knocking at the door demanding to know why they have __________ grade.

In other words - grading is a process of moral formation of our students - and that takes a lot more time than just the semester in which we have them.  The hope, I guess, is that the university community as a whole is able to foster this kind of awareness over four or five years.  One professor may not hit  point home, but five or seven would.

Anyway, this just goes to show why grading questions leak over to my leave.  Grading takes time.