Grading Essays in 24 Easy Steps is a true crime story as old as teachers, writing, and procrastination.

1. Collect digital copies of essays.
2. Email all the students who submitted their essays incorrectly.
3. Hope you’re a new person this semester who can start grading essays immediately upon submission, instead of procrastinating.
4. Decide you’re too tired to start now. You’ll do better with a fresh brain.
5. Lose sleep because you’re worried students are worried about the lack of feedback on their essay.
6. Follow interior decorators on Instagram. 
7. Like every Instagram photo you see with flowers arranged by folks in England. 
8. Read 2-5 books unrelated to the discipline you teach.
9. Prep lessons for next few classes, just to get it out of the way.
10. Research new career paths because you can’t keep doing this.
11. Lose more sleep. Have that dream again where you eat the table cloth at a swank restaurant with the wrong fork.
12. Come up with excuses for why you’re not done yet.
13. Nap.
14. Grade one essay. It’s not that bad.
15. Oops, the next one is terrible.
16. Set a timer for how long you’re going to grade before you can check social media again.
17. Hydrate.
18. Pee.
19. Reset the timer.
20. Obsess about all the creative things you would be doing if you didn’t have this soul leeching task leeching your soul of all creative impulse.
21. Stab self with grading pen you no longer use because you’ve gone digital.
22. Get around to grading 143 essays somehow. You have no memory of how it happens, really, but they are done except for that one student you fully expect will never to return class again, but he shows up so you have to scramble to grade it really quick during class so he doesn’t wonder why you didn’t grade his and only his.
23. Vow to become a new person who will never put herself through this again.
24. Collect another set of essays.

Originally published October 4, 2016 by Cherri Porter