Scantron

Bean counters unfortunately rule.

For at least 40 years the U had an Scantron Office where faculty could turn in scantrons to a person skilled and knowledgeable in the "art" of scanning..... to have the beasts ran through the mechanical processor and analytics produced.  When you would turn in the scantrons, there would be a 24 hour turn around time in the process.  The Office was located in the very center of campus, so it was never more than a 12-15 minute walk for even the most distant classroom locations.  Very, very nice.  

About five years ago, the U saw fit to abolish this person's position and in doing so also closed the Scantron Office saying Faculty could now do their own scanning.  They even gave us the "luxury" of having FOUR different scanning mechanical processors scattered at various locations across campus.  

Unfortunately, some faculty are not particularly mechanically inclined, nor are they necessarily astute at following directions.  These faculty FREQUENTLY jam up the queue at each scanning station because they struggle in figuring the damn beast out.  Certain Departments seem to have an especially high percentage of folks who struggle with the beasts.  I will not name these Departments, but I can say that in my perusal of the situation, the percentage of science and mathematics faculty who struggle with the devices are relatively modest in comparison.  

Also unfortunately one of the four mechanical processors is on the fritz.  AND, one is not accessible now as the building in which it is housed is currently closed due to remodeling and structural improvements.  

Finally, it is FINALS WEEK, so the use rates of the damnable machines is at a peak.  With the two processors diametrically on opposite sides of campus, and each with long lines of woebegone professors each looking like they are being driven to drink because of the difficulty in getting scores accomplished so they can be added to the across semester grades students have earned.  

I HAVE graded all the written portions of the exams and papers required of my ~225 students, but I still have the scantron scores to obtain.  The lines never seem to diminish.  Perhaps I will come back in the middle of the night to see if the lines are gone.  

I am in the middle of administering my last exam of the semester (it too is scantron).  If I were to get into the daytime queue and wait..... with ~225 scans across all my classes and  11 different VERSIONS of exams (in the bigger classes I have different versions of the same exam to avoid "wandering eyes").  So my having 11 different scan jobs would not make me a popular person a the scanning station currently.

* * * * * 

I think I am going to try to go to the Retiree's Cigar Group.  I hope it is fun.  It is awfully damn cold today, having dropped to a current temperature of 10 degrees F (negative12 degrees C).  

I ran my 10 miles this morning (~16 km).  

Tonight my wife and I are planning to have TACOS!  Always a delicious meal!

I am hoping we can again go swimming today too!

No pipe dreams last night (sigh).  But, my TMJ pain is still regressing further!!!

PipeTobacco