UGH papers
Mar. 18th, 2011 08:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ifeelbetterSo--to be clear--I love teaching. I love teaching to the "whoa" degree that Mya once described in song. I love students: I love student who make epiphany!face in the middle of class, I love students who finally understand that questioning authority includes questioning me and then do it well, I love students who ask adorable things like, "but I can be a feminist even though I'm a guy, right?" and I love students who think--just think in general, in a non-specific way.
But I hate grading. I hate grading with the fury-ful intensity of a thousand suns. If I could, I would make grading robots do all that work so I could go back to pretending that students (a) care and (b) learn sometimes. Ignorance is bliss, you know, and I can't very well maintain that kind of ignorance when they are making me stare their pissiness in the face.
What is worst about grading (I think) is the Sisyphus part. You've spent hours and hours and hours correcting and carefully phrasing your criticism--and then they hand you the same damn bullshit in the next paper. I wish I had a dunk-em option. It would go like this: if their paper has the same mistake from last time, they get dunked in a vat of saltwater. Like, no matter where they are or what they're doing--when I read the sentence where they use to wrong format for citation despite the fact I marked it throughout the essay and in the end comment last time, they suddenly fall into a vat of saltwater. And then it happens again for every subsequent bad citation. I don't know if would be pedagogically useful per se, but it sure would improve my grading experience.
Or maybe I could just get a red button--like, one of those giant things they have in game shows--that I could slam forcefully every time they are appalling in writing and the lady would suddenly appear at their side and say, "You are....theweakestlink." That would also improve my grading experience.
I have provided visual accompaniment to this rage-filled flight of fancy:
In case it was unclear...that's "scream [is greater than] mouth capacity"
But I hate grading. I hate grading with the fury-ful intensity of a thousand suns. If I could, I would make grading robots do all that work so I could go back to pretending that students (a) care and (b) learn sometimes. Ignorance is bliss, you know, and I can't very well maintain that kind of ignorance when they are making me stare their pissiness in the face.
What is worst about grading (I think) is the Sisyphus part. You've spent hours and hours and hours correcting and carefully phrasing your criticism--and then they hand you the same damn bullshit in the next paper. I wish I had a dunk-em option. It would go like this: if their paper has the same mistake from last time, they get dunked in a vat of saltwater. Like, no matter where they are or what they're doing--when I read the sentence where they use to wrong format for citation despite the fact I marked it throughout the essay and in the end comment last time, they suddenly fall into a vat of saltwater. And then it happens again for every subsequent bad citation. I don't know if would be pedagogically useful per se, but it sure would improve my grading experience.
Or maybe I could just get a red button--like, one of those giant things they have in game shows--that I could slam forcefully every time they are appalling in writing and the lady would suddenly appear at their side and say, "You are....theweakestlink." That would also improve my grading experience.
In case it was unclear...that's "scream [is greater than] mouth capacity"
