The view from bed - by Jon

The past year of my life has taught me two harsh facts:

1) Whenever I don't get enough sleep (i.e. pull an all-nighter) I will get sick without fail.
2) Doing an MA means that a full-night's sleep is, on any given night, as likely to happen as G-d descending from the heavens to personally smite your cruel, oppressive thesis supervisor.

That being said, I've been fighting a cold/flu/cold/flu/cold combination for what feels like a solid month-and-a-half.

At present, the task that's keeping me awake is the marking of second-year history papers. When I started working as a Teaching Assistant, and I was all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about helping the next generation of students become tweed-jacket wearing, pipe-smoking historians, I thought that an "A" paper would be:

1) Cogently argued, with a clear thesis
2) Free of any spelling/grammar mistakes and
3) Offer keen insight into the subject matter.

After this, my umpteenth round of essay marking, I have decided that such papers do not exist until at least the PhD level. I am thankful if:

1) The paper is written in English instead of whatever back-alley slang they're teaching the rich white kids in Oakville these days
2) They don't cite Wikipedia, or at the very least have heard of a "library"
3) There is a single sentence that doesn't make me reflect on the fact that should I make it through the Graduate School Gauntlet, I will one day have to teach students who think that in 1973, Allende's government was overthrown in "Chili," which I can only presume is the most delicious of the Latin American nations.

Thank you, and goodnight.