The Plashing Vole

Like most academics right now, I'm marking: dissertations, essays, presentations, performances and online collaborative work. Unlike man...

I've (almost) nothing to say this week. Personally, it's been one of banal but necessary administrative labour the details of which ...

No insights into my working life or current affairs coverage this week, Vole fans! All I've done is mark essays and clean my house. Gues...

The relentless searing heat is not conducive to the calm, dispassionate and rational state of mind required to fairly mark (screw you, split...

As you can tell from the title of this post, I saw The Tempest  this weekend, at the Globe Theatre in London. The seating was hard and open...

The clip above is of Simeon ten Holt's Canto Ostinato , which has provided my marking soundtrack for the day. It's a Dutch version...

Welcome, friends, to Marking Hell, In Marking Hell, academics are condemned to face the consequences of their teaching. Those little jokes, ...

Afternoon everybody! I haven't just got up, I've been marking essays all day, having sent off my Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Ge...

We had our school's staff conference today. Some of it was general briefing about the state of recruitment and so on (you suckas over in...

Occasionally, I get fan mail and requests. One reader, whom we'll call Bruno di Gradi because that's his online identity, suggested ...

A marking playlist isn't quite as simple as you might think. Anything too catchy is distracting. Anything too soporific means you may wa...

A big pile of books in today: Tanith Carey's Never Kiss A Man In A Canoe: Words of Wisdom from the Golden Age of Agony Aunts . Elaine ...

I'm a happy Vole now the wind's howling and the rain's falling. A good dump of lovely snow over the benighted Dark Place would b...

Teaching from 11-4 without a break today - exciting but very wearing, and I'll miss my daily hit of the Leveson Inquiry . Nothing will t...

Here's an interesting piece for you students and academics: With the best of intentions and the worst of outcomes, anonymous marking d...

OK. I'm wearing my new (old) Curve t-shirt to remind me of when I was young and hopeful. Music is playing ( Sugar , Copper Blue ) and t...

OK, Seefeel were quite a good suggestion (thanks Dan) and I'll check out everbody else's suggestions soon. But most of all, I've...

Well, I'm back at work less than ten hours after I left the office last night. I've already managed to send an e-mail with: the wr...

I am, as you may know, knee deep in essay and dissertation marking. As always, work goes from the absurd to the wonderful (though nobody has...

Today's task is marking resit essays - fresh attempts by those who've fallen short, or tried to cheat. I'm particularly looking ...