I spent today at home marking student courseworks from my second year Meteorology module. Regular readers of this blog (yes, I know, there’s no such thing really) might recall at least one previous post that I have written moaning about how much I hate marking and mostly I just want to say it again – I hate marking. In fact, I really, really, really detest marking. Of course the completely ironic thing about this feeling is that most of the students who produced the work that I am marking hated having to produce that work. Some of them probably really, really, really detested having to produce it. Which makes us kind of even I suppose, although it seems a bit unfair that they each only have to suffer once whereas I have to suffer as many times as there are students. Sometimes I think we should enter into a pact. I’ll not set them any work to do, they won’t have to do it, I won’t have to mark it and we’d all be happy. Sadly, of course, such a beautifully simple and elegant solution is not allowed. Marks there must be and, in truth, it is through having to do assessed pieces of work that most of the learning happens which is, after all, the whole point of studying a subject at University.
As I get older I try to see the positive side of things and so I have to ask myself what the positive side of a day spent at home marking might be. The answer is actually rather simple. On a day when I go to work I spend approximately 40 minutes getting to work in the morning and another 40 minutes getting home again at the end of the day. I have a two mile walk (usually – tomorrow it is three because I am starting at the Marine Station) which takes me between 30 and 35 minutes but there is always some time lost at either end going through doors, taking off my coat etc. All of which means that by staying at home to mark I get back 80 minutes of my time, and what can I do with 80 minutes? I can run 8 miles. Which is exactly what I did at the end of this afternoon – 8 miles down and around Mannamead (Thorn Park, Mutley Park) across Mannamead Road along Seymour Road and up and down a few hills, back across to Mutley Plain, down into Hyde Park and Central Park, past Argyle’s ground and home after a few twists and turns along the way – a route that seems to have become my go-to route over the last few weeks – 8 joyous miles in the misty, drizzly half-dark which more or less cleansed my mind of the horror that it had been through for most of the rest of the day (I exaggerate a little).
Marking and running. Without one I wouldn’t quite have had the opportunity for the other and probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much either. In the end then, it was not such a bad way to spend a day after all.
Tim O'Hare 