Well, we had the exam today, as the prof promised.
My students felt pretty traumatized by the time it was all over. Because the exam was a rewrite–and a very quick one, at that–many of the questions were about topics that weren’t stressed very much in lecture or what little recitation I could give them. There were lots of complaints–to me, of course–that the new exam was much harder than the original.
I had one woman hand in her exam and then burst into tears. (Yes, she’s a pre-med.)
I’m going out of town this weekend. I’d planned to leave this weekend specifically because I knew I’d have very little grading to do. But now I’ve got the essay and diagram sections of 52 exams to grade. Somehow, I’m going to have to shove it all into the remaining time I have before I go.
And some more serious crap has hit the fan as a partial result of this monumental screw-up with the exam. I don’t feel like going into it right now, but I’ll probably start a new thread when I feel a little less dazed and in shock over it. I had been toying with the idea of just getting a full-time job and working on my thesis at night, rather than TAing. I think I’m going to start looking for a full-time job the hell off campus a lot more seriously now. I don’t even want to teach the rest of my classes this week or this quarter–which is almost over–at this point.
Oh, to hell with it. I’m going to bed. I can’t do much about it here and now, and I have no control over other people’s idiocy. I’ll tackle it again tomorrow.