Last night at 10pm I finished grading all the exams, papers, and projects from my four classes (119 students). Today I plan to finish grading everything from my one grad student who did 3 independent studies with me. I already finished one this morning, but then I had to go on campus for an unexpected meeting with a student (my Dean called me last night at home to set this up). It turns out I'll be doing an independent study during summer session 2 (while I am at home with our little girl), but I think it will work out okay as it won't be too much to grade the papers, quizzes, and exams for just ONE student in ONE class those 6 weeks. Anyhow, it will be a great feeling when all the grading is done! I've already entered the final semester grades for 6 of the 8 courses.
As far as earning tenure (since Jo asked), it seems to be only used in academic settings although there are other positions which have just as much job security (such as Supreme Court justices). Public school teachers (K-12) work towards earning tenure within usually the first 3-5 years of their employment. At the university level some positions are tenure track and others are not. The trend is that universities are moving towards a smaller percentage of positions being tenure track. If you enter a tenure track position and do not earn tenure (typically the probationary period is 5-7 years at the university level), then you are fired. This is in part where the expression "publish or perish" comes into play. At some universities tenure is fairly automatic if you have decent student and peer evaluations. At other schools many are denied tenure for a variety of reasons, particularly inadequate scholarship (which primarily refers to publications and procuring grant funding). If I hadn't earned tenure, then this next year would have been my last at this university. Three of the profs Paul has had in the last 2 years are going up for tenure in the fall, and so he was recently contacted by the administration to write an evaluation of each of them as a part of their tenure review process. Now that I am tenured it means it would be very, very hard to fire me (not that I've ever been fired from any job and I've never had tenure before). Hopefully soon I'll get the letter from the President which says I am also being promoted to Associate Professor!
Yesterday a student brought me a baby gift! How sweet was that! I have to say this is the second gift I have received from a college student (not counting from a GA) in the past 5 1/2 years I've been a professor. The first was the cake a couple of weeks ago. When I taught grades 5-8 it was very common to receive gifts especially at Christmas but also some around my birthday and/or at the end of the school year. The most common gifts were coffee mugs (which was ironic since I don't drink tea or coffee), candles, and body lotion. I still got some gifts each year as a principal, but not as many as when I was a teacher. However I went 5 years w/o any as a professor; I have received maybe about 2 cards on average. I do not mean to sound like I am complaining. I never gave a gift or card to any of my college professors! I am just saying that receiving baby gifts if I had been pg while a middle school teacher or a principal would have been more "expected" but receiving one as a college professor totally caught me by surprise! ;-) The pjs she gave me have little lady bugs on them and are size 3 months.
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