Annotation + Goals

Okay, new annotation: Chapter Thirty Six Part One

Whew.  I've just done a marathon 'grade submissions' run.  I've gotten through about sixteen of the 26 I need to grade by Wednesday.  I do have to say, reading fiction pieces like this is a lot more fun than grading regular school essays or the like.  I've got a much easier job than I make it out to be.  Still, 900 pages in a few days is a lot to get through.

So far, so good.  The students this year are actually pretty good, thought that's only going to make it HARDER to assign grades.  The trouble is, I know myself.  I want to give everybody an A every year.  It's tough to force myself to give anything else, and so I've forced myself to use a comparison curve, giving 'A' grades to the top students and lower grades to those beneath.  It's rough, particularly since I don't want to imply that those who aren't writing excellent work now should give up or anything like that. 

I want to be straightforward and honest, since I think that's good for someone to get.  Yet, at the same time, I want to reward hard work and progress.  Blarg. 

My goals this week are to finish these grades by tomorrow, then get the Scribbler edit finished and off to my agent.  Then, I'm going to get through every piece of mail in my inbox.  There are still some of you who sent me mail back in January that I haven't gotten to!  By the end of the week, I expect to get through all of those.  Then, finally, I'll get back to Dragonsteel.