These Eyes

In keeping up with my challenge, I've chosen a title from The Guess Who, an underrated (in my opinion) band from the seventies. You may or may not know much of their music, but you've probably at least heard "American Woman". The band had a lot of other good songs that didn't get as much attention.

Anyway, choosing this title today was kind of a no-brainer. My poor eyes! I love all of my jobs and the opportunity to do each one, and I'm tremendously grateful that my eyes have served me so well for so many years. If they stopped working, I'd be screwed. I could probably still teach if I couldn't see, but because I'm currently an adjunct I'd probably be considered expendable. And there's no way I could score essays online if I couldn't see them. I've actually thought about this kind of thing more than is logical. When I was little, I used to cover my eyes and try to walk through my house and go about my daily routine, seeing if I could function without sight. (Yeah, it's weird, but at least partially explained -- maybe -- by the fact that my paternal grandmother was blind. So it was my budding attempt at empathy, perhaps. Or it is just crazy.)

Reading this essays online truly does give my eyes a good beating. It hasn't been as bad since I've been a scoring leader; I back-read raters' scores but do administrative things too, so it isn't only reading essay after essay. Today I had two back-to-back shifts. The morning shift had a roster; the afternoon shift didn't. My task was to adjudicate discrepant scores (which I realize may not make sense to people who haven't done the job). Around 4:00, I got an email from HQ with a request to score ten essays that had been deemed unreadable by raters. (The essays we're working on now are handwritten and scanned in.) It took me nearly an hour and a half, but I managed to score eight of them. I had no intention of scoring an essay if I wasn't able to read every word of it. It took a toll on the peepers though.

Unfortunately, these eyes aren't quite finished yet. I have about five essays to grade for my class tomorrow night, and I haven't read the passage I assigned to my students either. I really should do both tonight, but I'll probably put off one or the other until tomorrow morning. The siren call of the orbital lounger on my porch is deafening; a few minutes of lying back in that with a cool washcloth over my eyes, cool breeze blowing and warm sun hitting my body, is too delightful an indulgence to resist. Work -- or, I should say, more work -- can wait a little while.