So hollow, baby

Going to school nowadays has become a daily chore that I dread. I wake up reluctantly and wish I had another job, dragging my tired body in the darkness that envelopes my room (its 5.30 in the morning) to put on my work clothes and drive for 45 minutes to a destination I no longer look forward to.
Why such a dread and disgust? Simply this - it is not a stimulating place - there's no excitement or reason for celebration, there's nothing significant happening, and all that happens is scripted or required. It's keeping to rules and laying your eggs on demand. It's a drain on my emotions and a death blow to my mind. With an endless list of given tasks to be completed by deadlines and presentation of lessons to students who constantly need to be convinced to pay attention and do their work, I find my enthusiasm squashed and my opportunities to try new things, prepare interesting exercises or even celebrate learning all but lost.
Marking of student's work in their unkempt exercise books is tantamount to entering a brain-torturing chamber. Reading and correcting the endless badly written essays (not their fault - it's bad teaching/failure on behalf of the teacher to teach well) is really depressing and does nothing but murder my enthusiasm.
The reason is simple - all my hard work is almost not appreciated. Most students don't even look at my corrections and the few that take note do just that - acknowledge I had done my work but do nothing else. There is no re-writing of corrected work and no applying of lessons learnt from mistakes I had corrected.
So why do I do the endless, unending corrections? Its my job! and also I may be in hot soup if a parent chooses to look at his/her child's work (I wonder how many do) and discover to their horror that I didn't do my job (never mind their child didn't do his/her job) and then make a fuss that might lead to warnings or even expulsion or even worse, a media frenzy with my face splashed all over various tabloids in the state and country. So get the red pen and mark . . .
I just feel so hollow inside, a zombie robot going through the motions, unhappily fulfilling what is required of me driven by fear of punishment and the loss of a stable income. I feel I am insignificant doing activities that will mean nothing in history and in the lives of the students I teach. All this unending activity is just useless flurry, a shadow without substance, a waste of life and time . . .