Things your teacher never told you: I want to grade your paper less than you want to write it!

I spent a large chunk of my Sunday afternoon performing the single worst, most tedious, soul-destroying task on the planet.

No, I wasn’t rooting for the Cowboys or teaching my grandmother to use some new form of technology. It was far, far worse.

I was grading papers.

I know, I know, it doesn’t SEEM like grading papers would be that bad.

Trust me. It is. In fact, it’s worse than that bad. I would rather gouge my own eyes out with a blunt spoon than grade papers.

Which means that I truly picked a terrible profession as my day job until writing starts to pay the bills.

It probably serves me right that I’m stuck grading papers, because I was the obnoxious student who was typically outraged that my teachers didn’t run straight home and spend their entire lives grading my work so that I could get my five page paper (which I had spent no more than an hour writing, because unlike them, I had a life) back the next day. If any of my former teachers are reading this, I’m sorry.

When my students complain about a writing assignment that I’m giving them, I mentally pause and evaluate the arguments that they’re making against having to do the paper. And their arguments usually sound REALLY good. Mostly because I want to grade them FAR less than they want to write them. They don’t know how good they have it. I would trade places with them in a heartbeat, because WRITING a paper is millions of times better than having to grade sixty papers on the EXACT SAME TOPIC.

Literally, I spent hours yesterday grading essays on Twain’s use of satire in Huck Finn. One essay on that? No problem. Sixty? FML.

I’ve discovered that I have two favorite types of students when I’m grading essays: the kids who do a flawless job, requiring me to write nothing more than “Great work!” at the top with a smiley face, and the kids who don’t bother turning their work in at all. The latter group, in fact, tends to REALLY be my favorite, because they make my job that much easier. Just put a zero in the grade book and I’m done.

Unfortunately, in an honors (but not AP) English class, most of my students don’t fall into either of those categories. And if I had to write on one more paper that the writer needed to address the sarcasm that Twain used in answering the librarian who wanted to ban Huck Finn from the children’s shelf at the New York Public Library, I was going to lose it, find a megaphone, and start teaching my lessons with that because apparently when speaking at a normal volume, my explanations of satire are inaudible to teenage ears.

But the fact that I explained in excessive detail exactly what needed to be in their papers (to the point that if they brought a tape recorder and transcribed what I said word-for-word, they’d get an A+, even if they hadn’t read the book), isn’t what annoys me most about grading. Nor is it the sheer tedium of reading the same paper sixty times. It’s not even the amount of time that grading takes—time that I would far rather be spending in ANY other way.

No, the worst part of grading is that I actually take the time to do it (granted, because I have to. If I could get away without grading at all and not get fired, I would never grade another paper again), and then the kids look at the grade and promptly drop their papers in the trashcan. Not even the recycling bin. The trash. And then proceed to make the EXACT SAME MISTAKES on every other paper that they turn in for the rest of the year.

I mean, okay, I get it, you don’t care what I have to say about your writing (even though I’m a freaking published author. That’s cool. Ignore my advice), but can you AT LEAST show some environmental awareness in your choice of disposal method, just so I don’t feel like I’m wasting my time AND contributing to the ruination of the planet?

And I thought the guy standing on Rockville Pike in the tuxedo-wearing chicken suit in the rain had a thankless job.

In college, I was the queen of testing professors when I didn’t think they were reading my work. I would screw with the page numbers, leaving out a couple of numbers when my work wasn’t long enough, or using multiples with the same page number when it was too long and I didn’t feel like cutting anything out. I would mess with the margins, font size, and line spacing (for example, most people won’t spot the difference between a paper written in 12.3 point font and 12 point font—12.4 is where it starts to look obvious). And in one case, when I was positive that my professor wasn’t REALLY reading my work, I inserted a page long explanation of how I didn’t actually read the book into a ten page paper on a Willa Cather novel.

Not a single professor ever caught on.


Now, I’m tempted to use some of the same tricks with my grading, just to see if the kids are paying attention.

For example, if they got an A on the paper, would they really notice that the comments said that it was unreadable drivel, on par with the ramblings that a psychotic third grader would write entirely in goat’s blood? Or a B that said I think the author will have a fulfilling career in miniature golf ahead of him, based on his ability to fabricate information with a tiny pencil?

I haven’t done anything like that yet, but I’m pretty sure that I could get away with it.

Although, to be honest, if a kid DID put anything super creative in a paper to see if I was reading it, I’d probably give him or her an A, just for breaking up the tedium of grading.

No, not really.   I'm going to keep grading for real in the vain hope that SOME student will someday actually learn from my comments on his or her paper.

But it would still make grading a lot less mind-numbingly awful.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned by her cable/internet provider

Last week, I got an Apple TV and a subscription to Netflix, which (because I can buy shoes and groceries online) basically means I will never have to leave my house again.

Of course, because the universe hates me, setting the Apple TV up was NOT as easy as it should have been. According to Apple Support, (iSupport? And for that matter, why isn’t Apple TV called iTV? Actually, it’s probably better as Apple TV. iTV sounds like an STD. Like I picture a doctor talking to a patient and saying, “It’s actually quite serious. You’ve contracted iTV. You’re going to have to notify all of your past sexual partners because they could have been exposed as well.” NOT something you’d want to give as a Christmas present.) it won’t work on my TV at all without being wobbly.

Two days later, the score was my dad: 1, Apple Support: 0. Well played dad, well played.

So I was thrilled at how easily I would be able to watch movies/TV shows/all of the concert videos from my computer.

Which means that something had to go horribly, horribly wrong. Because like the course of true love, my life never runs smooth.

Thank you Verizon Fios, for stepping up to the challenge of screwing everything up.

I suppose I should be grateful. Fios completely dying on me is less expensive to deal with than my TV blowing up or my surround sound amplifier catching on fire. But it’s also more annoying, because I currently have ZERO cable OR internet service.

In other words, I’ve been Amish for the past 36-48 hours, depending on when you’re reading this.

Okay, okay, not TRULY Amish. Because I still have electricity and running water and store-bought butter, and yes, TECHNICALLY I can still get on the internet VERY slowly by using my cell phone as a mobile hotspot and docking it to my computer.  So maybe more Mennonite than Amish. But whatever you call it, it flat out sucks. A lot.

I don’t think of myself as a person who watches a lot of television. I’ve got a handful of shows that I’m addicted to (at the moment, Dexter, Boardwalk Empire, House, Glee, and South Park are all set up to record the series on my dvr), but other than those, I don’t really watch anything else. I can’t stand reality shows or anything on Bravo or E!, so when the cable went out yesterday and the Fios guys told me they couldn’t get anyone out here until Friday, I figured it was a pain, but I would be okay.

About an hour after that phone call, I called Fios support back and BEGGED them to send someone out sooner. In that hour, Rosie and I had somehow regressed to a Lord of the Flies type scenario, with war paint smeared on our faces, a conch shell, spears, and a mysterious beast stalking us through my apartment.

Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. The beast didn’t show up until the second hour without TV or internet.

Luckily, the wait is almost over. In theory. Because, in theory, the Fios repair guy is supposed to show up this afternoon. In theory.

The problem is that the only window they had available was 1pm-5pm today, unless I wanted to wait until Tuesday night. And if I waited until Tuesday, I’m pretty sure that by the time they DID arrive, I’d have “No TV and no beer make Homer go crazy” scribbled all over my walls and it would look like the scene out of Apocalypse Now when they finally find Marlon Brando and he’s a fat psychopath who has enslaved all the natives. I mean, the horror. The horror.

But one to five this afternoon? Um, hello, I have a job! So I warned them that I can’t be there before three today, and I think I made myself sufficiently clear that they absolutely NEEDED to arrive AFTER three.

Which means the guy is going to call me at 1:15 to say he’s there.

And if that happens, God have mercy on everyone who works within a thirty mile radius of any Fios employee. Because I’m not going to go medieval on them. Oh no. Sorry Quentin Tarantino, but that’s not nearly scary enough. I’m going to go biblical. I’m talking darkness and locusts and smiting their first born.

It’s probably not healthy that instead of reading or working on my next book (or even getting ahead on my blog posts), I’ve been sitting here plotting my revenge against Fios for when they show up too early. But I know that’s going to happen. And while I threatened over the phone last night to go back to Comcast, I don’t really want to do that either. Because after years of suffering at the hand of Comcast, I finally freed myself from its evil empire, and I don’t want to go crawling back like a battered woman returning to her abuser again and again.

So Fios guy, if by some chance you’re reading this, I’d show up around 3:15 today if I were you. Because while William Congreve (NOT William Shakespeare, as the line is commonly misattributed to) said, “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned,” what he MEANT to say was “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned BY HER INTERNET AND CABLE PROVIDER.”

The number one cause of insomnia? Stephen King (but I love him anyway!)

Somehow I missed the memo that Stephen King’s new book came out yesterday until it was too late to go and get it.

I have no idea how this happened, because I’ve gotten every one of his books the day they came out since I was 12.

You might be asking yourself why I’m such a huge Stephen King fan, especially when you take into consideration that I refuse to read anything by many other bestselling authors, like John Grisham or James Patterson.

The answer is simple: Grisham and Patterson are hacks.

Okay, granted, my definition of hacks probably varies from the definition that anyone else would give you, because I also consider Charles Dickens to be a hack. His books were only so long because he got paid by the chapter.  And he needed as much money as he could get.  For booze.  Hack.

All three of those authors are/were hugely successful hacks. But in my book, (no pun intended--but go buy it anyway!) anyone who finds something that sells well, then basically writes the same type of thing for the rest of their careers to keep churning out bestsellers that are fundamentally the same as all their other books is a hack.

Which is also why I refuse to read most chick lit, with the ONLY exceptions occurring when the books have truly original concepts and characters. Because if I read one more book about an early 30-something girl who works for a magazine/newspaper/tv station who gets dumped by her boyfriend/fiancé/husband then goes on a self-discovery kick and eventually finds Mr. Right, who SEEMS to be Mr. Wrong until the last two chapters when we find out that he’s been in love with her all along and they live happily ever after, I’m going to stab someone.

Literally. I will stab someone.

And that brings me back to why I love Stephen King: the stabbings.

I’m kidding. Kind of.  But not about the fact that I will stab someone if I need another chick lit book.  I'm 100 percent serious about that part.

You could argue, however, that Stephen King, like many other writers, sticks to a formula that works. For example, in all of his books, someone or something goes crazy and kills people. But it’s always something super creative and different that goes crazy and kills people. And even though I’ve read all of his books (many of them more than once), Stephen King ALWAYS keeps me guessing (usually incorrectly) about what’s coming next.

Of course, there’s also one major problem with me reading Stephen King books: I have a massively overactive imagination and am completely convinced that once I’ve read something scary in one of his books, it is then lurking in my house waiting to get me.

Statistically, I know this is unlikely. If there IS an evil force in my house, why would it wait until I was suspicious of it to attack me? Wouldn’t it prefer to have the element of surprise? Although, if I were an evil supernatural creature (shut up, no, I’m not!), I’d probably want to wait until someone was afraid of me to attack because the element of fear would be more fun than the element of surprise.

But because I have a ridiculously overactive imagination, it’s not usually the stuff that you’d expect to scare me that scares me the most. For example, I’m not all that scared of ghosts. But every single time I wake up in the middle of the night and have to go to the bathroom, I HAVE to turn on the bathroom light and make sure that the scary dead bathtub lady from The Shining isn’t in there waiting for me. No, not the one from the movie. She didn’t scare me; I found it pretty funny that Jack Nicholson made out with her. But the dead bathtub chick from the BOOK still scares the hell out of me. Because my mind makes her much scarier than any movie ever could.

 
The supernatural stuff isn’t his strongest suit though. Don’t get me wrong, he’s REALLY good at that. But deep down, I DO know that most of that stuff can’t be real, so it tends to only scare me late at night, when I’m alone.

Instead, the best part of Stephen King’s writing is his identification of the fear in situations that we can’t control. I know full well that there probably isn’t going to be a giant dome that drops down randomly from the sky one day and cuts Rockville off from the rest of the world like in Under the Dome. But Stephen King creates such a completely believable world in his books that you feel like YOU are in that town with his characters. And it makes you wonder what you would do if you were in the situation that they were in, even though your rational mind KNOWS that is highly unlikely.

 Because what if our cell phones DO start emitting something that destroys rational thought like in Cell. I almost never actually TALK on my phone. I’m going to be one of the people who has to figure out how to save society if that happens. (Well, okay, probably not. The zombie creatures will most likely kill me within the first few minutes of the crisis, so it probably won’t be ME saving the world. But what if by some random chance it is?)

 And in my mind, his scariest books are the ones that have little or no supernatural elements in them. While The Stand DOES have some supernatural parts, the idea that a super virus could kill off most of the world isn’t actually all that far-fetched at all.

I think his scariest book is Cujo, because every single thing that happens in that book COULD happen. Even today with cell phones, it’s an exceptionally plausible story. Because let’s face it, there are definitely still areas with no reception. Like my parents’ house, which resides in the black hole of all cell service. (Which I immediately realized was a good thing when I read Cell, because in case of a cell-phone based apocalypse, I could hide out there long enough to figure out how to save the world.)

So I’ll be going to Barnes and Noble after school today to pick up the newest Stephen King book. Which also means I’m going to be tired tomorrow, not from staying up too late reading, but from staying up too late because I’ll be afraid to go to sleep.

But I’m still going to love every minute of it. Bring it on Mr. King. I’m ready.

Although I'm probably going to feel differently once I'm reading it.  Oh well.  To quote the late Warren Zevon, "I'll sleep when I'm dead."  Although if the afterlife is anything like a Stephen King story, I'll actually be roaming the earth and killing people when I'm dead.  But I'm not too worried about that.  I'm more worried about the dead chick in my bathtub, the clown in the sewer, and the Walkin' Dude.

It's cold and dark. This time of year would be awesome... if I were a vampire!

It’s currently my least favorite time of the year.

No, I don’t mean the Christmas season.

I mean it's cold outside.

Because I hate cold weather the way I hate people who go ten miles per hour UNDER the speed limit when they drive past a speed camera.

Okay, that’s not ENTIRELY true. I like the cooler weather for about a week because I enjoy getting to wear my leather jacket and cute boots. And I like those newsboy hats that you can’t wear in warmer weather without looking like a jackass or a Britney Spears wannabe (and honestly, despite the successes she’s had, Britney Spears is the LAST thing I want to be).

But the novelty of my colder weather clothes wears off really, REALLY quickly.

And then I start wanting to make like a bird and fly south.

Which is where having a full-time job REALLY gets in the way.

I like almost everything about spring and summer better than fall and winter. I love wearing sandals. I hate wearing socks. I love wearing dresses. And I REALLY hate having to choose between wearing stockings and freezing when I wear a dress.

The last two years have been even worse on me though. Not because of the snow storms, but because I now have Rosie. When it’s warm out, I don’t mind throwing on a pair of boxer shorts and flip flops and taking her out in the morning or late at night. When it’s cold out, however, and I have to put on pants, a sweatshirt, a jacket, boots, a hat, and gloves, I mind. Because after you bundle up THAT much and go freeze outside waiting for Rosie to go, there’s no falling back asleep.

This is why I think global warming is such a gyp. It’s called global WARMING. In theory, if I start using aerosol hair sprays like it’s my job, stop recycling, use plastic at all times, leave all the lights on in my house at all times, and basically do everything I can to waste as much energy as possible, it SHOULD make the planet warmer.

No, I’m not stupid, I know it doesn’t work that way. And despite hating the cold weather, I’m kinda tempted to buy an electric car to get a polar bear to hug me, because I think this commercial is adorable.


(Although the making-of-the-commercial video is kind of cooler than the commercial itself.)


Global warming, in a lot of cases, does the exact opposite of what it sounds like it would do. And none of the movies about what’s going to happen are remotely accurate either. In the case of Waterworld, that’s a damn good thing because I get majorly seasick and would have to kill myself it the icecaps melting meant that the entire world would be underwater. Besides, I’d NEVER be able to get rid of the jewfro if there was that much water around. Suicide would, in fact, be my only option.

I do have to say though, that SOMETIMES, the climate change can work in my favor. If the freak snowstorms that hit the DC area last year (and I refuse to use the term “Snow-mageddon,” no matter what. When The Washington Post ran a contest to decide what to call the storms, I voted to call the storms “Kaiser Snow-se,” and I will not acknowledge the far inferior choice that the rest of the DC area made) are the result of climate change, I’m 100 percent in favor of it.

But Sara, you HATED walking Rosie in the snow!

Yes. But I LOVED getting nine days off of school that we didn’t have to make up. Because unlike everyone else, who went so stir crazy that they started writing Redrum on the walls and chasing their families with axes, Shining-style, I can entertain myself in the house for days on end.

But I think the worst thing about this particular time of year isn’t even the cold weather. It’s the time change. I mean, I LOVED the extra hour of sleep Saturday night (not that Rosie let me enjoy it… she just jumped on my face to wake me up an hour earlier Sunday morning. I need to train her to wake me up in a better way. The pouncing on my head method is unpleasant to say the least.

I also appreciate the time change in the morning, when for a couple of days, it feels like I’m getting up at 6:30am instead of 5:30am. And as an insomniac night owl, I fall asleep a little easier for the first couple of nights when my body thinks I’m going to sleep later.

But I REALLY hate the afternoons, when it gets dark at like 2:30. Because the problem is that from November to March, I don’t see the sun at all on school days. And while I know vampires are totally hot right now, and while I’d TOTALLY be willing to keep these hours for Eric Northman, I really start resenting school when it keeps me from even seeing five minutes of sunlight a day.

Short of building a machine with the exact opposite purpose of the one Mr. Burns used to block out the sun or moving to a spot smack dab on the equator, where the days stay the same length at all times, I don’t have a solution to this problem.

So if anyone has the smarts and resources to build a darkness-blocking-out device, or the funds to move me and all my stuff to a warmer climate, please let me know. I’ll be extremely grateful.