hmmm

I should have posted something of substance earlier, but it's been a busy Thursday: today was the final day for my Freshman English classes. Sad goodbyes, lots of food eaten and cell phone photos taken-- and final exams. Yes, I gave my two classes their final exams today. I have to correct those this evening and tomorrow, then enter the grades in my nifty Excel file (I'm not too bad at navigating through Excel in Korean), and turn the final grades in to the office sometime tomorrow evening.

My Freshman 1 class gave me the highest ratings I've ever received on teacher evaluations-- nearly perfect. Lots of cute little hearts and "I LOVE KEVIN!" declarations scrawled on their forms. My Freshman 3 class, as befitting the students' higher level and greater worldliness and sophistication, proved harder to please. I haven't done the calculation, but I suspect I've got about a 4.7 or 4.8 out of that class. None of the complaining comments pertained to me personally: many students in that class were thoroughly dissatisfied with the textbook we'd used, which hadn't been geared to their level. For whatever reason, our department had decided to make all levels of Freshman English use the same textbook. I adapted to this by giving my advanced class more time to tackle tougher subjects than the book was offering. While this was enough for some of my 3s, it wasn't enough for all of them. Another complaint, among both my 1s and my 3s, was that there were simply too many students in the class. I agree. I had twenty-five Level 1s and twenty-one Level 3s. A conversation class should, ideally, have no more than 7-10 people.

But that is neither here nor there. We now look forward.

So tonight-- ah, tonight, my love... I grade tests. Expect the next "Smells Like Golgotha" to appear around midnight, Seoul time, or shortly thereafter.



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