I could really use a divey Italian place right now.
Paper grading procrastination seems to be the most rampant area of delay among academics. I really like your idea of reframing it as an intellectual task. Scooting off to coffee shops is also a great idea.
I so could have written this post. I completely agree that paper grading is my biggest bane and weakness, and about redefining it as an intellectual task. Unfortunately, I haven't yet figured out a way to do that...
Ditto what AC and NK said: reframing grading as intellectual work is a brilliant way of characterising the problem. I certainly haven't been able to do this myself this semester. I suspect that the crucial point is way back when we make up the assignments. If we could just remember back in September (or whenever) to craft assignments so that they yield results the grading of which will constitute intellectual work... The classes I can think of where I've succeeded in doing that in past years are ones where all the term's assignments built on one another in a systematically cumulative way, so that 1) I was already familiar with the bulk of what students' final projects would consist of, and 2) I could look quite specifically to see whether they had made the final one or two leaps of competence, analysis, or integration. In those cases, I really felt like I was assessing student progress, and because I had worked with students at successive stages of their projects I had some investment in the outcome. But I more usually teach classes where it's not at all straightforward to have students do that kind of term-long project. Or, most often, I don't plan far enough ahead, especially with new preps, and find myself making up assignments late in term that proliferate work for me but in which I have no investment.
I hate working in isolation as well. That is why I surf blogs while I am grading papers. I like to hear other academics complain about how they hate grading papers and know that I am not alone.
I think that I feel bad when I'm grading. This is irrational because I do not take credit for a wonderfully written paper (ah, I helped that student so much), but I do tend to spiral downward when I see the 50th instance of its instead of it's or one form of there used to cover all the options. I feel like I've missed the opportunity to teach them something once again.
foolish of me, I know. I don't delude myself about being so powerful in any other endeavor. But here, one by one, they manage to convince me that I could have done better.
The best I have ever been able to manage was to set up grading as an endurance test.
And to provide huge rewards for completion.
A friend and colleague once told me that she believed that grading (or more precisely, commenting), was the best one-on-one teaching that she did. And remembering that the comments that I write on papers is actually teaching--sometimes even more than what I say in the classroom--makes the process seem valuable, if not always fun.
My thoughts in preparing end comments then morph from "nice job" and "what were you smoking?" to, "What can I teach you with this note?" It works for me at least to keep me locked into why I'm even doing the grading.
Like RMC, on a good day I can think of grading as teaching: it's like my one last chance to get some key ideas across or to straighten out some lingering confusion on things.
Grading is also a chance to grade my own teaching. If I've managed to communicate the things that are most important to me, I'll see it in at least some of the papers/exams. If not, well, the work don't lie.
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