It really is the most wonderful time of the year.
Exams and papers are graded, I can see over my filing pile and I am up to date with all of my reference requests. I still haven’t starting writing “that” paper for a conference submission but at least I feel optimistic it will happen.
The best thing to come out of this entire term’s grading (and there was a lot of it) were the takeaways and key learning points, otherwise known as the “ah-ha” moments, identified by numerous students in their final business communications course papers. In a previous post I pointed out that professors don’t take any joy in grading poor papers but I didn’t mention the immense joy some of us do get from grading insightful, original and well-crafted documents.
The specific points identified by the students don’t really matter to me at the end of the day. What does matter to me is that the students demonstrated that they learned something from the course content and from the experience in which they participated.
I have known some of these students for two and even three years and to see them grow and mature in their communication effectiveness and analysis was wonderful.
Although I’m going to enjoy my break from the student’s smiling faces over the holidays I know that when classes resume I’ll be ready to smile right back.
photo credit: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/sleepykisser/298046370/“>水泳男</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin> <a href=”http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/”>cc</a>
Straight Talk Prof 