rakkauden ja epätoivon laulu

This summer I am working at the Alberta Education marking centre again.

Regardless of what your feelings are about the Provincial Achievement Tests (PATs) and Diploma (Grade 12) exams, I think that teachers who are administering these exams should know a little about what happens to the students' papers BEFORE they get marked. Students might be interested, too.

I don't know how much information I'm actually allowed to divulge - obviously I'm bound by order to not say anything about the schools' or the students' papers that come through my hands, but I don't know what else - so I'll be as broad and brief as possible.


Part A exams (written answer)

1. Receiving - Boxes of exams shipped in from schools are picked up at the loading dock. The coloured shipping labels are scanned to register that packages have been received by us.
2. Breakout - The boxes are opened, and the exam materials (exam papers, teacher marking guides, audio CD recordings of the questions for the vision-impaired, etc.) - and the accompanying school paperwork (registration/attendance lists, packing slips, etc.) - are separated into bundles.
3. Pre-sorting - Staples are removed from the paperwork. Marking guides, the question CDs, and any obviously unused exam booklets (i.e. with no student labels on them) are removed from the bundles.
4. Sorting - Each student label has an index number printed on it. Every bundle of papers is sorted numerically by index number, student label -side up. Using the attendance list as a guide, any further blank papers (eg. labels were applied but student was absent) are removed. Papers with misapplied labels or student information but no label are flagged for review by the next department.  (4b. All papers, blank or not, have their serial numbers (printed on the front cover) scanned in to register their return to AB Ed.)
5. Registration - This department registers papers with no labels (usually means the student arrived at the school part-way through the school year, or wrote elsewhere other than at their own school) and makes labels and marking sheets for them. They also print replacement labels.
6. Scanning - The student-label-with-no-name labels are scanned in to mark that an exam has been received from the student. Attendance data is also keyed into the database. A list is printed off for each school+subject that says how many papers were received, and names/indexes of students whose papers were not received for whatever reason.
7. Verification - The scanner's list is checked against the registration/attendance list information for accuracy. The books are counted to make sure they're all there. They remove the school paperwork (some supervisors deal with it, I'm not sure what they do, though).
8. Inserting - Marking sheets with index numbers are collated with and tucked into their matching booklets. ONLY AT THIS POINT is the tear-off flap on the back with the student's name removed to make the exams anonymous to the markers. Some schools think they're making our lives easier by preemptively ripping the flap off. Please don't do that. The pre-sort people have to tape them back on. I can't stress this enough. TEACHERS: PLEASE DON'T RIP OFF THE TABS FOR US. THANK YOU. Something happens to the tabs. I don't know what.
9. Bundling - Exams are combined into packets, each of 5 papers from 5 different schools.
10. Marking - It's not as simple as just putting the packets into the hands of teachers, but it's at this point that teachers actually get to look at the papers.
11. ???!

Part B exams (multiple-choice / numerical answer - machine scored)

1. As above.
2. As above.
3. As above, but readings and/or question booklets are also separated, leaving only the paperwork and bubble sheets in the bundles.
4. As Steps 4-7 above.
5. The bubble sheets are, well, machine scanned.
6. ???!

So that's a peek inside the standardized test marking machine. Any questions?

Been feeling really troubled since last Thursday. That day and today, psych class was about habitual procrastination (and by extension a lack of study skills), and while my prof started off a little bit more clinically last week, today he really turned on his psychologist/counselor mode and, well, saying that the lecture really hit close to home is an understatement.

I mean, habitual procrastination. I've sat here all afternoon daydreaming aimlessly, while I have a short assignment to write for tomorrow and a research essay for FAILCLASS due Thursday. I've started neither. There is a small pile of books on my desk. They've been skimmed through but nothing's been marked off for the essay.

My professor's talking about self-discipline and self-accountability, whether it's locking yourself somewhere without distractions and not getting dinner until work is done, or getting a friend to hound you about staying on task -- and I think of how I lock myself either here or at the library and vow not to eat until I'm done. But I think that my depression saps whatever little motivation is left even after that isolation and deprivation that, no, even hunger isn't incentive enough. I've even ceased to feel ravenously hungry after a long fast. I have the discipline to leave behind the body and keep just the spirit. It's a weird feeling.

I was a bit surprised to learn that procrastination as a habit/addiction is actually such a big area of concern for psychologists. The idea of it isn't new to me, of course. It's something that I've been aware of in myself for a long time and have felt guilty for every single minute of it. So often people think it's just laziness, which completely ignores the origins of habitual procrastination (in schoolwork, anyway) in the person not having been challenged in school. The accusation of laziness assumes that effective studying is something that, once we know what the skills are, we can turn on or off at will and that we just don't choose to turn them on. But it's so much deeper than that. Having goals helps, but they can't be too far-sighted, because then you can't see how getting that essay or assignment done is supposed to be a step towards it.



Anyway, this looks interesting for grad school. I think it's a discipline that I can get behind and really pick out research interests in (something about identity formation, eh? The concept of "identity" seems to play a huge role in my interests and life).

Except that professor noted there? Most BORING lecturer I've EVER had (who knows, maybe he's more interesting speaking Finnish). And dang if I ever have to listen to that guy lecture about the Internet as an ART medium. AGAIN. And him setting up video games at the front of the classroom and inviting us to make fools of ourselves trying to play a dance game or swatting virtual ninjas off a screen. (Hey, his lab hadn't quite managed to acquire a Wii yet.)

In reminiscing, though that course may have been somewhat forgettable, it was EPIC. I chugged out pointless essays in short periods of time; I think the first I wrote over two evenings; the second one in less than half a day (it was more like half a day, but I took a long break in the middle). Both were five pages, 1.5 line spaced, and I had really no idea what my point was in either of them (maybe that's why I only got a 4/5 in that class? Ha ha). The utter breadth of the topics we were given to write about leads me to think that, perhaps, Finnish standards aren't as rigorous in the same ways as what I'm used to. Or maybe they're just more post-modern, and anything goes. :P

I really can't believe I once managed to research and write a five-page essay on a pointless topic in less than 10 hours, BUT MAN DO I WISH I COULD DO THAT FOR FAILCLASS RIGHT NOW.

(In terms of 'Finnish' essays, "Into the Mirror" was written much more quickly, but then, it was something personal.)

Some people I know are getting ready to write their GRE exams, in order that they can get into graduate school programs in the USA and some nicer places in Canada (or elsewhere). I know that I should be starting to look into these things; that is, where I want to go, what I can do there, and what I need to get there.

I think that some people who go on to grad school are those who are afraid of the world outside of the educational institution. The institution (in the sociological sense) is something in which we are comfortable, having spent at least a decade and a half - the majority of our lives so far - in it. Though even as a teacher I will not leave that institution, I will no longer be a student in it, and that can be just as intimidating.

As of now I do not know whether it really is so intimidating.

But I know where I want to go. You know too.

Of course I would like to end up teaching there, but grad school is definitely something that I am thinking about. Whether it's a M.Ed-or-equivalent program (that perhaps I can better understand Finnish pedagogy - what makes their school system so great anyway?) or some MA in (Inter)cultural Studies/Anthropology or similar (but since I'm lacking background in that field I might have to start over with a BA), though, I do not know. It may very well depend only on what the available options are, where I wish to be.

In order of preference: Jyväskylä, where I know the university area best; Helsinki and area, where my friends need me; and Tampere, which is just a really nice place.

I know this, but yet I am too scared to find what I need to get to these places for university. It is a fear not of failure but of closed doors. Anything that I need and can do, I can make it happen. But if I am unwanted, then it is out of my hands.

One is convinced that I, for reason of my motivation, would have no trouble getting employment and the right to reside in Finland. But such thoughts are naive, because passion and loyalty and patriotism grant no one privilege in the eyes of bureaucratic denizens whose discriminating factors are not those things.