220 down, 12 to go

Twelve scripts to go. I think I've decided that if you can't spell "sentence" ("sentance" is the most popular misspelling, with the variation of "sentace", but "scentence" is gaining popularity) then you don't really deserve to pass Higher English.

Ironically, Mr Life and I had great difficulty with a clue in today's cryptic crossword: "A few words could be fine". Answer: sentence.

I'm also feeling somewhat uncharitable towards candidates - answering questions on two articles about the Olympics - who write "Olimpics" or "Olyimpics".

(Yes, I do realise that some people are dyslexic and no, I'm not actually failing these people for these mistakes alone. Though I'm tempted... .)

Mum has been worse but is now better again, though still in hospital. It's been quite a struggle visiting twice a day and getting the marking done. I fear that retirement isn't as much fun as I'd hoped.

Connie and Di

This is a completely irrelevant picture from a few weeks ago of Son and Nearly-Daughter-in-Law doing press-ups in the garden. I like it for the expression on Cassie's face. ("I shall sit here to be companionable but I am completely ignoring these ridiculous postures into which you are arranging yourselves.")

And I came across a nicely irrelevant comment in my exam marking. Candidates are answering questions on passages about the Olympics. One of the articles compares the Olympics to the rainforest because of their "biodiversity" - many sports, many different nationalities, etc. No animals are mentioned. To explain this comparison, one girl wrote: "Pandas wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the rainforest." Which may well be true, in some everything's-dependent-on-everything-else sort of way, but didn't get her any marks.

I've been reading Joyce Grenfell's diary of her wartime travels with ENSA in the Middle East, when her digestion tended to be a bit upset from time to time. In her ladylike way, she was sometimes "rather Connie" (constipated) and at other times, "somewhat Di" (the opposite). Di is still residing with me, though rather more quiescently than previously. My poor old mum, very much Connie, is having indignities done to her person and is now on a drip, nil by mouth. So no cups of tea - a real deprivation.

Oops

Disappointingly, there haven't been many howlers in the exam marking so far. However, the passage is about drug cheats in sport and the writer says there has been a "smorgasbord of examples" of this in all types of competitions. Various candidates' answers make it clear that they assume that smorgasbord is a banned substance.

I vaguely fantasise about young people whispering to each other at wild parties in the next few months about whether they've tried any yet.

My knowledge of wild parties is somewhat limited.

Set off the fireworks!

Finished the marking! Hooray hooray.

As the pupils whose work I've been marking might say, I'm not sure whether I feel more "stagnatory" or "imaginatery" at this moment. A mixture of both, I think.

Must now go and pack up the last batch of scripts, note the code numbers and so on, fill in various forms and go and have a lovely warm bath.

Massive blog-catch-up starts tomorrow - though the garden is also in need of attention, not to say the house. Mr Life is a fine fellow but his tolerance of grot is higher than mine.

Trying too hard

Candidates are supposed to use their own words as far as possible in this exam - to show that they understand, and can discuss the meaning and connotations of, the more challenging words and phrases in the passage. Still, I think one student took this a bit far. To avoid using the word "tooth" she wrote "an item in your mouth used in the minimising of food".

Eighteen scripts to go. I should re-enter the real world on Thursday.

Marking

My scripts are throwing up disappointingly few really silly answers but there have been some nice invented words, such as:

* finction
* rememarable
* sensicle
* supposably
* competivity
* grosely ( I think the student meant a combination of "gross" and "grisly" - computer games can be grosely, he claimed.)
* frustantedly

43 scripts to go. I must be sensicle and get on with them, no matter how frustranted I feel about it.

All work and no play...

Today I started The Annual Great Marking Marathon - marking national exams in English. I look just like the lady in the picture: young, blonde, long-legged and wearing high heels. Or not.

Q: Why do I do this?
A: I don't really know. I do it because that's what I do at this time of year.
Q: Do we really need the money that much?
A: No.

I've done it almost every year since 1979 and I suppose I just have a sense of duty and thrift. It's a way of earning extra money (not a huge amount, but a useful sum) so I feel I ought to continue; and in a strange way it brings satisfaction. Well, finishing it brings satisfaction. But I'm a long way from this happy stage. So far I've marked 3 scripts. Out of 240. And it's taken me two hours.

Back to the grind. Let's hope for some really silly answers; like the ones some of you may remember from last year, when candidates had to discuss the expression "The wind is starting to come out of the sails" and two candidates misread this as "The wind is beginning to come out of the snails". They tried hard to explain what this meant but... no.

Right, that's it. Back to work. No time to blog. No time to read blogs. Life is hard; life is earnest.

Dreamies

I left work early today to go home and tackle the marking mountain. First, I popped into the supermarket to buy Dreamies, the cats’ rather expensive little treats. I’d been to the other supermarket yesterday and there were none. Shock! Horror! I don’t know what’s in Dreamies but the cats adore them.

I also needed fruit.

However, since the alternative was to go home and do my marking, I had a little wander round the supermarket after buying the fruit and the Dreamies. It was earlier than usual so I felt relaxed, which I wouldn’t be once I’d started the marking.

So by the time I left the supermarket, I’d bought:

1) A plastic mini-greenhouse – only £20! What a bargain, and I’ll really use it if the weather ever improves (it’s very cold and windy today and the mini-greenhouse would blow away).

2) Two lamps – because one of the dining room lamps has gone phut and I don’t want two non-matching ones, do I?

3) Bubble bath – because a bubbly bath is essential at the end of a long day.

4) A plastic colander to replace the one I melted the other week. (The saucepan that I melted it into wasn’t improved, either.)

5) A packet of mung beans, for sprouting. Protein, you know.

6) A set of three ducks for the bath. I hope that the expected grandson will like them. Or is this hopelessly old-fashioned? Will he want a waterproof computer game?

7) Letter trays and a magazine holder for my desk, which is constantly trying to become chaotic.

8) Loo rolls, for obvious reasons

9) Two bunches of daffodils because it's spring (brr!) and they were half price

10) Fruit

11) Dreamies



Total cost: £61.42.

I told you that Dreamies were expensive.

And I clearly had to share all this with you before starting my marking. But I'm off to begin it now... though I might have to make some soup first. It really is very cold here.

Creeping like...

My pile of marking consists not of essays but of the answers to "close reading" questions which ask candidates to analyse and evaluate the style of a passage. To answer one of the questions, they might reasonably discuss the metaphor "the wind is beginning to come out of the sails" - as a description of the dwindling success of one of Britain's cities. This is an easy option to choose and most candidates get some marks.

But not the two unfortunates (from different schools) who slightly misread the text and spent some time trying to explain the concept of the wind having come out of the snails. They were quite ingenious in their interpretations but... no.

Back to work.

On the train

On the train from Glasgow to Edinburgh - cities which are traditional rivals:

Man with Glasgow accent to train attendant wheeling coffee and biscuits trolley: Have you got any cereal bars?
Attendant with Edinburgh accent: Yes - they're expensive, mind.
Man: Will it break the bank?
Attendant: 'Fraid so. £1.50.
Man: It better be good.
Attendant: It will be. It's from Edinburgh. That speaks volumes.

No, no, I'm just about to do my marking. Yes, I may have paused to make a banana cake but I had three over-ripe bananas. What could I do? And yes, I've just spent some time footering about with minor adjustments to the church magazine, of which I'm editor but you know - I have my standards. But marking's next. See me go!

Monday

On Monday, I left Cassie Cat busy in the garden

and ignored that tempting chair in the sunshine

and the lilac, filling the air with the sweetest perfume in the world

and the clematis scrambling over the sitooterie

and the dicentra, nodding in the shade

and got on a train to Glasgow for a markers' meeting.

It was a pleasant journey.

The meeting was in a hotel beside the River Clyde, with its rather futuristic buildings.

BBC Scotland - how exciting to work there. (Or so one fancies.)

But then I had to go in. Crowne Plaza - why CrownE, I wonder? Is it a Ye Olde Shoppe sort of spoof archaism? And why Plaza? Not exactly a British word.

Some hours later, back on the train.

Cows grazed bucolically near fields of startlingly bright yellow rape.

A rural nook near a little town.

And home. A vase of lilac; and another of lily-of-the-valley, the most fragrant thug in our garden.

200 scripts, two and a half weeks to do them. And now it's raining and I have a cold.

All done

I'm finished!

And the cats and I are exhausted!

And now I'm off to have a bath and finish my book.

Tomorrow I'll catch up with your blogs. Once I've done a bit of dusting... and ironing... and planting... and tidying...

Oh, the relief!

Getting there

36 scripts to go.

Concentrating fiercely*, I might be able to do them in about 5 hours. I'm going to try to mark 9 more tonight. On Thursday, normal life should resume. Thank you for your kind comments. I have actually been sneaking peeks at your blogs at work and shall be back commenting myself once I've dealt with the remainder of the exams.

A lot of the students can't spell "opportunity", a word which quite a few of them use to answer one question. I've seen it written wrongly so much in the last week and a half that I'm beginning to doubt my own spelling of it.

* You might gather from my doodles that the concentration occasionally wanders.

Happy birthday to her

It was our darling Daughter 2's birthday this week. Here she is with her cake; her big sister gazes lovingly on. This weekend, Daughter 2 is down in Nottingham with her actor boyfriend at his parents' house. He hasn't worked for a while; or only the odd day. It's such a worry.

These were my piles of marking this morning. Left hand pile: done. Right hand pile: not done. However, I've done a lot more today. The effect of darkness outside is just because I used flash. The sun in Edinburgh rose at 4.31 am this morning and won't set till 9.53 pm and I'm certainly not keen enough on marking to rise at 4 am. I love the long light days, though, which make the dark days of winter worthwhile.

I cut this perfect rose and have it on the table as I mark, to remind me that after next Wednesday I can get back into the garden.

81 scripts to go. I'm off to do another 20 this evening. Don't do anything too exciting without me, bloggie friends.

Silly people

At this time of year I’m mired in marking Higher English, our university-entrance level English exam. 210 scripts from all over Scotland sit on our dining room table. I do not have time to blog. Or garden. Meanwhile the weeds sprout liberally in the balmy air.

I’ve also been editing the church magazine and adding some little pictures here and there. They were in colour on my screen, so I printed them out to see what they’d look like in the magazine in black and white. It didn’t occur to me that since my printer is a colour one, this wouldn’t help much. (Should this woman be allowed to mark the nation’s children’s exams?)

A man at the exam board rang me up at work today to ask me to do an extra 13 scripts. My mind said “NO!” and I heard my voice saying “Yes”. Stupid voice.

“Where do you want to collect them?” asked the chap.

“At the parcel depot in – I think it’s in a street called Bankhead Crossway,” I said.

There was a pause while the chap consulted his list of depots. “Ah,” he said triumphantly, “that would be the postal depot in Russell Road.”

??

Must return to my toil. I’ll be reading you all at lunch times but won’t have time to comment much for the next two-and-a-bit weeks. Groan.

(In response to comments: yes, the shrub is a ceanothus. It's a wonderful blue, isn't it? I can see it from my position at the kitchen table as I plough through the scripts. Except that I'm not supposed to be looking out of the window, of course.)

Freedom!

My marking is finished and sent away. O joy. However, the trouble with being a keen gardener in the marking season – or a marker in the gardening season – is that the garden romps away while the marker is closeted indoors drinking coffee and wielding the red pen. The result is that urgent gardening backlogs await her on finishing the scripts. So I’m still busy – but I much prefer gardening to marking.

While I’ve been slaving on scripts, our son and his beloved have been revising for their finals, which happened last week.

The cats have usually found this quite boring.

At times, though, Sirius has found it all too exhausting even to watch.

But during quiet moments, Cassie has offered advice.

Son and beloved have now passed their exams, however, and are officially doctors. I bought a cake (didn't like to make one in advance of the results, just in case...). Daughter 2 bought them medals (made of chocolate)

and champagne.

The only bad part of this from our point of view is that they start work (in August) in a town about a couple of hours away from here. I, the ultimate in clingy mothers, am not going to take this well, let me warn you now. I know, I know – you rear them to let them fly. Hmm.

Meanwhile, however, the doctor offered to hang out the washing.

How not to start an essay

An essay topic that students frequently choose is that of animal testing. It doesn't gladden my heart to find one of these essays in my marking pile.

The following opening paragraph isn't from my exam marking, just from an essay by one of my students. She's clearly trying her best to achieve the requisite word count and seems to feel that a full stop would interrupt her train of thought.


"Just let me ask you this, if your child or a relative may it be your mother, father, brother, sister, cousin, aunt, uncle or grandparent and they had a fatal brain tumour or cancer would you not let them get treatment so as they could possibly live a longer life, or would you see it that they died sooner just because you believe animal testing is wrong, although some may say "if that's what god intended then so be it" and would never let themselves or any family member be involved in anything to do with animal research."


I have thirty four exam scripts left to mark. Meanwhile the cats are doing a bit of relaxing.

Sleeping and supervising

Some of us were born to do washing and marking

and others - like Cassie - to supervise.

Better test these socks and things for softness, thinks Sirius.

while Cassie checks out of the window for slugs rushing across the lawn.

Look at those envelopes of scripts behind me, says Sirius. Get on with it and stop disturbing me.

The Marking 08

On Tuesday, I went to the markers’ meeting in Glasgow, an annual event attended by the hard-up, hardworking or just plain masochistic teachers who volunteer to mark (in this case) Higher English – the English exam taken by Scottish pupils who hope to gain university entrance.

Markers come from all over Scotland and you meet some people there year after year. Rather pathetically, it feels like a bit of a day out. I get the train through to Glasgow, which counts as excitement in my life, and a taxi – a rare event – to the venue. We then get free coffee and muffins! Later, even more thrillingly, there’s a free lunch.

We’re paid £2.67 per script and the first evening it took me three hours to mark seven scripts. I reckon that’s about 60 pence per hour. This is the point in the process when you think about how free that lunch actually was… .

I’ll speed up, though, once I become more familiar with the passages and the questions and stop agonising so much over the exact shades of wrongness of some of the students’ answers.

On the train on the way home I talked to a fellow marker whose teacher husband left her for the school secretary a few years ago. Now the deserted wife has a new partner, a millionaire businessman. He’s actually an old flame who sought her out after thirty years apart. You couldn’t put this in a novel because it would seem unrealistic, but there she was, glowing with happiness and prosperity.

I bet she won’t be doing The Marking next year…

And now I must ignore my garden in the evening sunlight and get down to work with a red pen.

The joys of marking

After ten days spent, when not at work, hunched over the kitchen table, I marked the last essay a little while ago at midnight 30. Can you hear the fireworks, see the balloons? The students chose their own topics and you'll be glad to hear that they know with certainty what are the right things to think about abortion, animal testing, euthanasia and the attacks on the Twin Towers (conspiracy or not?) They have, regrettably, suffered in large numbers the death of a beloved grandparent; they know why young people take drugs and too much alcohol and exactly what should be done about this; and one or two of them, glory hallelujah, have a sense of humour.

The apostrophe, or at least the apostrophe used other than as a decorative feature (especially in the word "its") is an endangered species. But I'm going to have a nice bath and read the letters of the Mitford sisters.

Tomorrow, or strictly speaking later today, I shall read some blogs. I look forward to catching up with your exciting lives. And remember, "it's" has to mean "it is" or "it has". "Belonging to it" is "its". Don't let me down, now.

The cats are exhausted. All that marking wears a person out.