Getting Back on the (Academic) Pony
I have been plagued with the horrendous responsibility, in the course of the past three weeks, to mark undergrads’ essay papers as well as write two of my own. The former was relatively painless in sheer time-spent terms, yet utterly horrendous in terms of how my intelligence was so molested by the things these people wrote. The latter is still ongoing, because after what is almost three years of non-academic writing, two of which were spent actively writing editorial-styled stuff on commentary, I’m finding that getting back into the groove of academic writing is rather… tricky.
But first the marking: first and foremost the task itself is slow. It takes roughly 20 minutes or so to mark a medium-length paper of about 6-8000 words. To add to the pain, the essays are largely crap, or slightly better than crap. This means that one spends hours marking torrents of crap which varies in consistency. Of course, it does mean that when one comes across a slightly decent essay it generally receives a far more favourable grade, almost as a subconscious ‘thank you’ for providing one with a break from the mental genocide that normally occurs. So yes, marking essays is onerous. No matter, when the grades are received I will not be surprised to see the population of my tutorials decline significantly, which means there might even be seats for everyone.
Now back to my papers. I find it has taken me 2 weeks to actually formulate a coherent argument for my first paper, and mere hours to actually write it out. In fact, the most annoying part of writing the paper is probably the referencing. YAWN. So once I learn to speed up the researching part, I expect this Masters lark will become far more efficient. Just as well, for after meeting with my supervisor (I’m officially researching piracy now! Hurrah!) I expect there’s going to be a LOT of necessary reading, in terms of historical, legal and strategic aspects. It’s a three-pronged attack! Like Europe in 1944, or something.
Menial slave labour aside, I am officially writing my research paper on piracy in the Gulf of Aden, which has good potential to really say something interesting in the greater academic world. Lots of things need to be read up on, including historical accounts of piracy, Malacca, Guinea, hell even 18th century privateers might make a cameo. International laws on maritime warfare and general transnational crime. All this stuff needs to be collected. Good gods! That being said, I have to admit that it’s freaking awesome that I’m able to actually write about pirates in an academic paper. That truly is rad!
And what, after all, am I listening to during all of this? Why, the best study lounge metal ever: Russian Circles – Campaign
