Thursday, December 07, 2006

Avoiding Work

I like most aspects of my job. I like kids. I like English (I even speak it quite well, if I do say so myself). I even like grammar and am not afraid to admit it. Most times I don't mind staying late planning. I don't even really mind long (boring) meetings. I even get up relatively early in order to go along with the ridiculous, adolescent unfriendly, early morning school schedule!

But I hate grading. I mean I really hate grading. Right now I have 63 essays written by freshmen to grade and it is literally the last thing on earth I'd like to do. Need your house vaccuumed? I'm your girl! Want a root canal done cheaply? I'm totally unqualified, but totally willing. Right now I'd rather write an essay than grade these.

So, I'm thinking at what point if there's an aspect of your job that you just loathe, are you really not made to do that job? Ideally work takes advantages of your strengths and interests and makes best use of them. If I really hate grading, admittedly a rather large part of my profession, should I really be a teacher? If a mom really hates changing diapers, should she not be a stay at home mom? Or is that a small aspect that everyone dislikes and if she likes the other aspects then it's still a good job for her? An accountant who dislikes paper work?

1 comment:

Megan said...

Since I live with an ex-teacher, I've heard my share of complaints about grading. I think the discipline was more taxing on him, though. His solution for grading was to create multiple choice tests (with maybe one or two essay/short answer questions) and then "let" me help him with the grading. That was one advantage of teaching history over english!