Monday, May 03, 2010

Math: A Word Problem

I have 28 research papers to grade.

If I grade five papers a day, how many days will it take before I'm drinking heavily?

11 comments:

  1. For bonus points, calculate this value after accounting for instances of plagiarism, blind repetition of lecture points, failre to proofread or incorporate prior suggestions as well as occurrences of original thoughts, insightful theses and demonstrable academic/personal growth.

    My guess is 2.73 days.

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  2. Let's see. Pain points mount 1 per 1,000 words. I'm guessing the research papers are 2000 words apiece.

    Plus, one half pain point for dropped quotation, 2 pain points for every uncited summary or paraphrase, 1 PP for mangled Works Cited. Plus, 2 PPs for each wildly incoherent jumble sale of a paper.

    Basically, you'll get an average of 7 per paper. Given that 70 PPs is the equivalent of a George W Bush State of the Union, I'll give you two and a half days before the absinthe bottle lies toppled and reeking on your dining room table.

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  3. absinthe? that is so hemingway.

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  4. Anonymous7:10 PM

    Susan beat me to it;-)

    Unless, Susan, you meant one paper instead of one day?

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  5. This is why I wouldn't mind leaving teaching. I hate grading those damn papers...

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  6. Anonymous9:58 AM

    I'd wager one HOUR.

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  7. I was going to say three hours . . . but of course this depends on how much time is actually reading/grading and how much is gnashing teeth, hair pulling, and desperate procrastination in dread of whatever goes wrong on the next one.

    I may start drinking pre-emptively on the next batch: if I'm a little numb before I start, maybe I won't mind the problems so much.

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  8. I vote for a new drink every 3 papers.

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  9. I'm grading, too. And because I'm pregnant, I can't drink.

    This is making the papers harder than ever to grade.

    Have one for me, will you?

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  10. On Sunday, I called a colleague to solve a problem about revising our bylaws. She told me dealing with bylaws was more fun than dealing withe the paper she was grading. That is really bad.

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