Today is the 6th day of the mid-year school holidays already! Time really flies... in fact, I think it's travelling on rocket fuel nowadays judging by the speed it seems to be going. Which means there are still 13 lesson-free, dateline-free, chaos-free days left for me to enjoy. Enjoy... now I'm not too sure if that's the word I should use here. You see, school holidays used to really mean school holidays back in those days, but now, it just means that you get to do your work at home instead of slogging it out at school. Students are given tonnes of holiday homework to complete, and teachers have stacks of mid-year exam papers to mark. No wonder teachers still get paid during the holidays!
Teachers who teach subjects which only have objective-type questions for exams are lucky. They get to finish marking their papers very early on, probably even before the holidays starts, record the marks, and they are all set to have a stress-free holiday. This is why I envy my colleague, a Geography teacher, who goes on vacation overseas every holiday while her colleagues (like me) have to sit at home filling exam papers with red ink. Well, as they say, life is unfair...
I think language teachers (like me, again, thank you) are the worst hit when it comes to marking papers. We have to read essays upon essays of students' writings, and after considering the quality of content and the accuracy of grammar, award a score that reflects their language proficiency as accurately as possible. It would be really simple to just grade an essay A, B, C, D or E, but to give a specific score to it is not an easy thing to do. And the worst thing is, no matter how badly an essay is written, we still have to read it word for word, from beginning till the end. You can imagine how I feel after reading some 50 essays over the past two days, each of them seemingly bent on massacring the English language with each merciless stroke of the pen. I'm surprised I didn't suffer a stroke myself after going through the agony!
However, the whole ordeal is not without its benefits. Making sure that I finish marking on time and not overstress myself forces me to keep to a schedule, which trains my self-discipline. This is good for me considering that I tend to take things too easy when given the chance. Now, I have learnt a trick to motivate myself whenever I feel lazy and want to procrastinate -- to focus on how good I feel when I finally finish marking everything. So, the whole process of marking actually helped me to be more positive-thinking in life: when faced with any obstacle, just focus on the reward at the end of the journey. Last but not least, it teaches me patience. At times, I really feel like strangling a particular student for making silly grammar mistakes, especially grammar points that I have repeated countless times during lessons, but I have to remind myself to keep cool so that my marking will not be affected by my mood. Note to self: repeat the grammar point in class for at least 5 more times, or until the students can repeat it in their dreams, whichever comes first.
Someone once told me: there is a reason for everything. So, no matter how bad things look, there is always a silver lining. Just God's way of helping us grow stronger. That's why whenever I feel like complaining, I'll keep on reminding myself to look at the brighter side of things. Life will be easier and happier that way. And on that note, I'll end my ramblings here, go to bed and wake up fresh the next day for another dose of 50 essays. God bless us all... especially language teachers everywhere.
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