How to keep me together, TA Edition

"Thank you for all your hard work." That's the sort of e-mail that picks me right up and gets me marking with more energy.

Well-timed praise is always a good thing.

Other positives: Creating Christmas music stations on Pandora.com. I'm currently listening to one that's all instrumental Christmas carols. That keeps me happy. (Coming across an entire set of really good papers helps, too.)

(It's so easy to get complaining a lot, when I'm marking papers. The funny thing is that this is my favourite part of my job. Okay, I'm also big into leading seminars. But marking papers was my first love. I get so involved in the process, and I love reading what my students think and especially love seeing them learn. But sometimes I start to go a little crazy, especially when the prose gets really impenetrable and they start making lazy errors. And so I need to keep myself encouraged while I'm working.)