After two marathon marking sessions in two days I’ve finished marking all my final exams. I’ve also completed all the final marks. This seems like a good thing.

However, by finishing marking final exams days ahead of my usual schedule, I’ve done my psyche an incredible disservice.

One of the advantages of having work to do at home is that you don’t have to think about the  other projects  you’re not doing. You can always tell yourself “Can’t do that now, I have too much to do.” Then, the paid work expands to fill any available time so that you never have to do the other projects.

However, for reasons I can’t fully explain, I’ve already finished marking all the exams of all my classes. I’ve done this with a full weekend to spare. This means I’m now revising my weekly plans.

Complicating things even further, I’ve already finished exams that aren’t due until next Friday, which leaves me a third day to fill.

I’m now sorting through several layers of denial and excuses to formulate a new plan.

Marking may kill me in the end the same way it kills people in the cheap seats on airplanes.*

Because I’m in an atypical “Git r Done” mood I’ve done a couple things I usually don’t do. 1) I’ve decided not to attend this year’s International Stationery and Office Products Fair Tokyo and 2) I’ve actually sat down to work until I’m finished.

It’s the latter that may kill me.

I spent the day in my office chair marking student exams. I did nothing else (well, unless you count watching Marvel’s Iron Fist as background noise but that didn’t involve actually standing up.**)

I’ve made a shocking amount of progress, but I also skipped my usual evening exercise time.

Besides blood clot risk, I also run the risk of having what’s left of my brain turn to jelly as I read student writing.

*(Note: I’m counting the effects of sitting for a long time, not the effects of being beaten unconscious and dragged off by United Airlines staff.)

(**Note the Second: Iron Fist is better than I was expecting and has a great supporting cast but, like Marvel’s Daredevil, it suffers from having a shockingly uncharismatic lead actor.)

If I were smart, I’d stop doing this bit of blather for a few days.

The trouble is 1) if I get in the habit of not writing then this bit of blather will slowly fade away and 2) I’m not smart.

However, the end of term and exam marking time is fairly boring. All I have to report is that there’s nothing to report. I could mock my students’ exams, especially their long writing sections, but thus far the exams haven’t been entertainingly bad. Also, the long writing sections, at least on the second year junior high school exam, are fairly easy.

Eventually, though, my mood will turn and things might get more interesting.

Until then, I’d better get back to marking. Or at least to convincing myself that’s what I should be doing.

Today was the day of the exam I’m in charge of which meant I felt as if I was about to go on stage to do some acting. I felt this way because of past problems. Of course, there were delays which led to a minor mistake and then there was a delay that started feelings of panic and made the pre-performance feeling even stronger.

(Note: If you’ve never done acting or paced around in a locker room before a big match, the feeling you get right before things start is a feeling in your gut that leaves you confused about whether or not you need to pee, poop, or puke. You need to do one, but can’t decide which is about to happen. You therefore have to keep pacing, lest one of them happen immediately.)

The day started with a delay as a major train line was down and that pushed all exams back an hour. I misread the email and I thought mine would start at the regular time because it was after lunch. I arrived at the right time and panicked when the sound technician didn’t arrive. I was quickly informed about my mistake and then tried to relax for an hour until my exam.

Then, when it was actually time for my exam, the sound technician arrived with only a few minutes to spare, putting me in a panic again.

Luckily, he had time to do a sound check and the listening went off without any problems.

I’m only just now managing to relax, though.

Plan A never got started, but Plan B has been nearly successful.

Plan A was to stay at school and mark exams for a few hours and then come home and slowly dredge through the remaining exams. (Note: the dredge through exams at home is my normal marking system.) The importance of Plan A is that the more I mark at school, the more I “put way” so to speak.

However, I abandoned Plan A as soon as I got my exams. Instead I went to lunch and came home where I dredged around before I even started marking. There was also an odd set of emails involving Saturday, the school where I work, the company I work for, and the latter’s shocking unwillingness to give clear instructions even though we are expected to go to them for instruction. (Long story that’s still being resolved so more on that later.)

Eventually, I started marking, and have made good progress. The goal for Plan A was to finish all the junior high school first year exams today and have a few hours to relax before getting two sets of exams tomorrow.

However, because of the immediate switch to Plan B and the odd emails from the company I work for, I’m behind where I wanted to be.

The goal is still to finish this batch of exams tomorrow morning before I head off to the school where I work. However, that depends on if I get any emails from the company I work for or not.

All in all, it wasn’t a bad day, until things got annoying.

I’ve mentioned before how I’m in an odd place where I work for one company but have been assigned at the same school for a long time. I therefore have to distinguish between the company I work for and the school where I work.

Today the two worlds clashed. Sort of.

I’d just finished a decent day of classes (even my low level class was pretty good) and I’d brought some audio editing work home so that I could use an English language version of the software. After completing the listening files for the final exam, I was just about to start a nice, relaxing break when I got an email from the company I work for.

They “asked” me to “teach” three days during the summer at a kindergarten in my town. It is, as near as I can tell, the definition of shit work: summer vacation plus kindergartners plus difficult to reach location plus Japan summer heat and humidity plus every other Monday plus the fact in all the years I’ve been teaching, I’ve never taught at a kindergarten. I am therefore the least qualified person in the company to “teach” the assignment (which will be nothing more than glorified babysitting).

Oh, and I’m babysitting our youngest on those days as those are days She Who Must Be Obeyed works.

I pointed out that I’d prefer not to teach on those days as I’d be using a paid holiday on one of them and had to babysit on the other two.

I then got a response telling me to take paid holidays for the other two.

At this point I got salty. I said I wasn’t going to take paid holidays for the other two days as I’d been with the company 18 years and hoped to get a little respect and consideration from it. If they couldn’t give me that they should just give man an official order to report to the shit work and send me the materials I need to do it. They should also stop wasting my time pretending I actually had a choice.

I haven’t heard back yet, but I expect a phone call tomorrow. I hope it’s not the new guy. We haven’t met yet and I’m afraid I’ll leave a really bad pre-impression.

Today felt like Thursday. So did yesterday. Tomorrow, when it is actually Thursday I suspect it will feel like Friday.

Part of the problem with this time of year is that we are mostly finished with all the planning we need to do. We have exams to finish and listening tests to record and edit, but none of that takes much time. That leaves us with lots of down time to fill during the day.

In class we are merely watching the students work on (or not work on) review assignments. We field a few questions, but mostly we react to every movement and every stretched arm. The conversation is usually:

–Student raises arm to stretch.–
Me–Do you need me?
Him–No, no, a thousand times no.
Me–Carry on then.

Because we have a lot of down time, the week begins to drag and I think that’s what makes it feel longer. The weather is also changing, which drains a lot of energy.

Then there’s the dread of how busy we will be next week when the exam papers arrive.