Tired Az (Kiwi English for Really Really Tired)

Today was one of those days...rainy rainy day and I had three blocks of 4 hours sleep (which sounds like it should be enough but for some reason it wasn't) and little energy to leave the house. And though I finished lecturing for Questions of Race and Racism, I still have to go into the office and hold office hours before the final exam tomorrow.

I figured out away to get out of the housen with Charlize, grabbed the Link bus to Auckland University, dropped munchkin off at Kindie (daycare right behind my office) and made my way to HSB 8th floor.

I made myself a cuppa (english breakfast with trim milk...hey, when in rome...) and settled in my office to grade 4 very late student essays. Because, I had little motivation, it took me twice as long to get through the first 3 essays. I was about to leave the last one for tomorrow and pushed myself to read on.

I found the last essay quite fustrating to read. It was well written and full of details about Ethnic Conflict, specifically Rwanda and Burundi (which reminded me of a course I took at Cornell my sophomore year) but I kept trying to figure out when the student was going to tie the topic in with the stuff on race and racism that they learned in class. Up and down the margins, I made notes on how they could have linked the examples to colonialsm, scientific racism, whiteness, genocide...etc. At the end of the essay, I wrote a paragraph long rant telling the student that they needed to "answer" the question and not just pick an interesting topic.

I didn't give the student a grade because I couldn't figure out if I should fail them because they didn't answer the essay questions or if I should pass them (barely) because they wrote a mildly interesting paper with some good arguments.

Arghh, I put the paper a side and went to the bathroom. On my return, I decided I was going to email the student and see if they could explain to me why they choice the topic since they didn't even utter the word race in the whole essay.

I searched for the student's email and couldn't find it. I spent 15 minutes searching and even considered emailing the Department Chair regarding the matter. I could'nt understand why I couldn't find the student in my roster...It must be a glich in the system, I thought.

Finally, I took a look at the cover page and saw "ANTH 100" typed in small black font. The course I taught was "ANTH 105." The student wasn't in my class at all.

I felt bad that I murdered thier essay with all my comments and notes but I was so tired by the whole ordeal that I just wrote "sorry, thought this was one of my student's essays" and slipped it into the correct box. I probably should have used white-out but I didn't have any in my office (other then admin, who uses white-out anymore...lol) and I was sure kiwis called it something different which would require me to explain to the admin what I was looking for (like the time I asked if the cafe did take-out and they stared at me blankly for a few minutes till I realized that I should have said "take away." The words are soo similar but they acted like I spoke a different language)...too much energy.

Wonder what they student is going to think of my comments...lol.