Winding down

Things are winding down at college now. The students finished their term a week ago and there aren't going to be many staff around in the next few days. All my term's essays were marked and back last week, with internal moderation on Friday.... I can't believe how many essays from other tutors' courses I read for that. I'd never heard of Rudolph Hitler before, nor considered his place in history alongside Confucius as one of the world's greatest and most inspiring teachers. Working in higher education certainly is educational at times. The marking took all day in the end and left me completely drained but happy over the weekend. It's the first Christmas for years that I haven't had the PhD lurking in the background, making me feel guilty and anxious even when I pretended I was having a break. That's one big reason I'm looking forward to next year now, it will be different in a thesis-free way, even if nothing else happens.

Oh yes, another thing... I started fiddling with the 'follow blogs' thing in blogger but became slightly horrified when the google reader filled up really fast with people's posts and it felt overwhelming for some reason, as if I had to read everything because it was there. So as I'm in winding down mode, I changed my mind about the feed reader and have gone back to good old-fashioned links. I'd rather just pop over via a link when I fancy seeing how people are getting on with their various blogs, then it feels more like a pleasure than a duty, even if I do lurk rather than comment a lot of the time these days. Maybe I'll get my 'commenting mojo' back soon when I've had a good rest (and apologies for the Cheryl Cole/X Factor reference, it's obviously etched on my brain after all those weeks...). Hhmm, I clearly do need a rest...