by Matthew Henry Hall

Beyond having to pay for drinks, the biggest problem with doing one’s grading at a bar is maintaining proper focus. At a lively bar, overly-libated patrons bustle and bluster about, bumping into you, or worse, wanting to strike up a conversation. “I used to write poetry!” His collar looks like a mobius strip. He hovers too close, swaying, trying to read over your shoulder. “Keats! I freakin’ love Keats!” Disengage quickly, or he’ll spill his noxious beverage all over your grade-book.

Choose then a not-so-lively bar—one where the patrons come to sit and slump like depressed plush toys over their drinks. Find a quiet table in a corner. (Quiet is a relative term. Even so the oceanic rumble of a jukebox and/or tv will make a nice white noise.) Order your favorite alcoholic beverage. You’re now all set to dig into that pile of papers you’ve been avoiding for weeks. But beware, a larger danger still lurks, the danger of drinking and grading, or to be more precise, to drink too much and to continue to grade. One beer or one glass of wine in your quiet corner might take the edge off the disgust and fear of grading a stack of lousy, near-illiterate student prose. But three or five or who’s-counting glasses may very well spell disaster. And disaster is exactly what happened to my former colleague, Bertrand B. Pickles.

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