Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Should I give in?

Only 4 papers left to grade! woo! The papers are actually all pretty good and it is not an onerous task. I have actually learned some stuff from some of them. I was struck last semester with how many of my students obviously wrote their entire final paper the night before it was due, including research. I don't necessarily have a problem with this, if you can pull it off, but they could not. The papers read like papers written the night before. This semester I made each student choose a focus country on which to write their final paper. Then they had to write about the country for each of their response papers and they had an abstract and outline which are both part of the final paper grade. I think this has definitely improved the level of papers I am getting, as at the very least they mildly thought about their country a little bit before the paper was due.

The question in the title refers to my great craving for a sweet ice coffee confection from Starbucks (or maybe Dunkin Donuts?) I try not to patronize Starbucks that much, but I still have booooring data analysis to do, and the caffeine/sugar might help me get through it. I am about to go to the library and do some other errands, so I will probably get something on the way back.

I am very stressed as I travel to grad school town in 15 days. I had dreams of having a whole (albeit rough) draft of my diss by then. Alas, this data analysis is sucking my soul and is taking soooo long. I hope I will have it done in 15 days. If it takes me all 15 days I will not have time to write anything new, which means I will show up in grad school town with only a bit more written than when I was last there. Oh well. I really am working a ton, even into the night, and I do not believe I can physically work more. So what will be done will be done and I will just have to live with it.

4 comments:

DancingFish said...

I know it was yesterday but if you are still craving a treat- DD is giving away free iced coffee all day today. 16oz. I think!

meeegan said...

Your craving is nicely timed!

Hang in there with the diss, and be kind to yourself too.

Anonymous said...

Starbucks down the street managed to take a funky old garage that was in terrible shape, and fixed it all up so that it is the trendy Starbucks. And while Starbucks being trendy is hardly news, keeping an old building here in the Fort is unusual, and should be encouraged. So we will go to that Starbucks, but not the others. :) Which is good, because no other coffee shops have the green tea frapuccino.

Sounds like you are working away. Yay for you!

Laurie K said...

I am working away!
The only thing our neighborhood is lacking is a good coffee shop. So we do go to Starbucks from time to time. I really hate their new "we're your neighborhood coffee shop" deal though. They are a big, soulless corporation! Just admit it! AND they recently had all these pictures up of people lounging around enjoying Starbucks as their neighborhood coffee shop, and none of the people looked anything like the actual people in the Starbucks. So that is what inspired my most recent Starbucks fast.