And, It's Over

I usually should be grateful for work, especially if it's slated to be the last day of a test scoring project, doubly especially if that project actually goes over its projected end date.  However, even though I didn't really know how much work was left, I kind of thought that we wouldn't have a full eight hours of work left, like we did today.  Came in at 7:30 and thought we'd leave by, at the latest, 1.  That would allow me to catch the Gopher baseball season finale at Siebert Field at 2.

But no.  With the help of extra papers that were dropped in our figurative lap last night (that's very odd; why would we get more papers the night after our supposed end date?), we stayed till 3:30.  Actually, if a full day, we should have stayed till 4 and got lunch.  I thought about just ditching the day at 1 so I could make it to the game, but again, there won't be work for another week-and-a-half or so, so I needed to curdle every single minute of work I can get.

(By the way, I tried going to the game after work, but I couldn't find parking close enough where it would justify me even catching the very end of it.  But it was a good thing I bolted; the U. lost to Ohio St., 4-3, in ten innings.  I would've been late to come home for dinner because the good guys lost.  And doubly by the way, they won last [Friday] night, clinching the Big Ten regular season championship, so they may not have had much to play for today.)

So that is it.  A project that featured a phantom guy swooping in as an immediate supervisor for a week then leaving (mental note: have to remember to complain about this to their Human Resources department), some bitchy passive-aggressiveness by leadership, a lot of being told to go back to my desk (had to complain about that in the evaluation; I still am pretty incensed about being lectured to like I was a child), me moving around from laptop to laptop (reading material in tow) like a refugee fleeing his war-torn country, and the entire project being moved four different rooms five times, and it's over after six weeks.

I am usually melancholy about the deaths of test scoring projects, but this cavalcade had so many disruptions that forced me and the entire room start-and-stop that it got to be very tiresome.  In particular, moving from task to task because there were so few papers to score before we had to move on, and needing to buddy up with the person next to you to score papers several times a day, neither of which I have ever faced, was very irksome.  Those two things, I'm afraid, might be a reflection of the new kind of tests -- evaluating essays as a reflection of Common Core standards -- that will represent The New Normal.

Oh, and the commute.  I won't have to drive an hour there and waste 80 minutes going back ... at least until this project begins in August.  The next project will be in the same city as the place I went to in years past, but it's a different building.  I am afraid that it'll actually be a longer commute than the one I usually took last year, but I think it'll be shorter than the one I've had to endure the past month-and-a-half.

Also, there are things that I should do that I now have the time to do.  My health insurance, for one.  Maybe I'll talk about it later, but as of right now I don't have health insurance.  I get to see my shrink.  I should get back to exercising, and I'll be able to do that for now.  I'll have reason to eat fast food for lunch (even though I'll have to take the sandwich Mother makes for me every day, just in order to keep up with the ruse that I'm working).  I might even take in a Twins game, just to see how horrid they are now.

I should still get a full-time job, but for me, right now, this is good.