Surviving Exam Week

Another week has bullet-trained by, dragging me along behind it as I tried to keep up with the exam prep, testing, and grading that has marked the end of the bi-monthly grading period at my hagwon (private academy). Early last week, I held review sessions with all of my students to cover the grammar points, reading passages, and vocabulary that we've focused on since the beginning of August. Meanwhile I raced to finish writing up written exams for each of 16 classes, and began entering grades and comments on 119 report cards.

It's not such an easy thing to grade students on oral comprehension or intonation, I've realized. I try to be objective and consistent from one student to the next, to consider my justification for each category on the report so that I'm not just arbitrarily entering letter grades. But it all begins to blur together after a while, and after typing the equivalent of a mini-novel, I wonder how much of my personalized comments my students and their parents are going to actually comprehend anyway. Not to be rude, that's just the reality.

Thursday and today, I administered the exams, and madly graded thousands of test questions, trying to finalize all of the scores and grades and report cards before leaving for what promised to be an exciting weekend trip to one of Korea's famous fall festivals. It was all a bit much, and by tonight at 10:00 PM when I finally got home, I nearly fell into bed with exhaustion.

I had hoped to take the last bus out of town to Seoul, and stay overnight with a soon-to-be-friend Leah, who was also going to the festival. But as it turned out, the buses finished running before I did, and there went my chance to jump-start the long journey to Andong for the weekend festivities. Perhaps it was all for the best -- this girl was in desperate need of some rest.

So as my eyes fell heavily shut against the flicker of the TV screen, I made myself a promise -- I've never been a believer in doing things halfway, which generally means I OVER-do them instead. Exam Week was no exception. But I promised myself to be more of a slacker next time around, to spend less time and less worry on these grades and written tests and rein in my strong impulse to "do the job and do it right." I'm not sure exactly what that solution is going to entail, but if it can take the edge off of the flurry of academic activity that pummeled both me and my students this week, it will be a step in the right direction.