It's no secret that I'm a workaholic. Doing the bare minimum for anything just isn't my style. In fact, I take pride in the fact that I'm such an overachiever; it's part of my identity. For example, when I grade a paper, I spend several minutes reading and commenting on it; then I write a paragraph or two assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the paper before I assign a grade. My students seem to appreciate this, and I like to think it helps them become better writers.
Recently one of my more gifted (and more lazy) students came to see me during office hours regarding his literary analysis paper. He was telling me about his recent English teachers—an AP Language and Comp teacher who commented copiously and an AP Literature teacher who only marked a letter grade at the end. I expressed similar displeasure with a college professor who had similar practices. The student said that this teacher made him not want to work as hard because he didn't think the teacher bothered to read his work. My thought was the opposite: I still worked as hard but was frustrated because I didn't have feedback on my work.
I then was about to say that I believe hard work sets you free—when I suddenly had a flashback to my days of teaching Night: the gates of Auschwitz say arbeit macht frei—work will set you free.
This is kind of scary.
Maybe I'll take a day off.
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