Procrastination is Bad

You'd think that after nearly 20 years of teaching (with a couple years off for various fellowships and such), that I'd have learned that procrastinating about grading is a bad idea and a worse practice. And yet, I procrastinated much of the weekend.

Besides the slowness getting back papers and all that means, procrastination basically means I do almost nothing else meaningful because I tell myself that I'll grade in just a moment, and I really need to grade, and I don't have time to put bulbs in or whatever. And then I don't.

I woke up at 4 this morning after a nearly sleepless night because I was so tense about my grading, and I finished the stack. So, for now, I am ALMOST caught up on grading. ALMOST. (I have two papers to grade, and maybe can do them by this afternoon if I finish some other stuff.)

And then I get a stack this afternoon, too. But that will be a pretty good stack, I think. I hope.

I did do something at least mildly cool this weekend, other than procrastinating. I started watching a friend's DVDs of Breaking Bad. The basic concept of the show is that a high school chem teacher finds out he has lung cancer, and knowing that his wife is pregnant and he's got a son with a disability, he's desperate for money. So he turns to a previous student and begins making meth with him.

It's a weird premise, but the show is really good in an absurdist way. And there's something to be said for a show that shows that high school chem teachers have highly valuable skills.

I've only watched the first several episodes of the first season so far, but there are a couple of highlight moments. First, I laughed when the bathtub collapsed. (I think it's the part of me that delights in teaching Titus.) And I loved when the meth partner kid gets all involved in making a really great product for his customers and throws out three batches that he thinks are inferior (though the other cooker he's working with thinks they look great). It just cracks me up somehow to think of meth dealers being really concerned with having a high quality product. (But then, I know nothing about meth, so maybe it's a big deal?)

I also loved the DEA agent brother-in-law.

In conclusion, then, if you want to procrastinate, you should do it with a good show on the computer (or dvd if you have one of those).