For your delectation

A sentence composed of some of the more egregious spelling errors encountered in the grading of my exams:

"It would be obsurred to sudgest that Charolette would diside to lable the jars herself!"

(Granted, it's hard to think of a context in which this particular sentence would be uttered, but you see what I have to work with....)

What Makes Me Blog

I've been aware that I needed to post for a long time. I think that I've had ONE post in the last month? (Traveling with family, visiting family, having family visit = not posting. I don't blog when there's a chance that my parents will catch me. And then I just got lazy, and then overwhelmed by the non-blogging, and the cycle continues.)

But I'm posting now, because...I'm grading!

Yes! I have a paper from the FALL that I'm about to start reading. I know. It was a very legitimate and not-begrudged Incomplete (family health emergency, all kinds of awfulness), so I harbor no ill will towards this paper. Or the student, for that matter, whom I like very much. But I have had the paper for three weeks and have not been able to bring myself to open it. Now, it is open. Now, it WILL BE GRADED.

The awful truism of grading: One paper is harder to grade than twenty. Why is that?

And now that the ice is broken, perhaps you'll hear more from me this summer!

Why do they do this to me?????

Here's what I hate more than anything in grading--more even than "since the dawn of time" intro-sentences:

When a student who has been doing really good work--like, earning an A despite being a non-major, participating in discussion every day, and coming to see me about papers and all that other solid stuff--plagiarizes some stupid sentence in practically the last assignment of the semester--an assignment for which, I might add, there were plenty of options, so zie didn't even need to pick this particular (and difficult) poem to write on.

Don't you haaaaate that?

According to my policy, I need to fail this student. For the course. A student I really like, a lot. I hate that!

Well, I mean, first I'll hear hir out, and perhaps there's some perverse misunderstanding of "ethical research" here, but...argh! WHY???? Dude, if you didn't understand the poem, you could've come to my office hours, and I swear I would've just explained it to you. ARGHHHHH.

THERE. That wasn't so hard, was it?

You know how, when you have one paper to grade, it's like the most difficult thing in the world?

Well. I've had a paper (fulfilling a well-deserved Incomplete) sitting on my desk since I got back from my holiday travels--that is, for 16 days--and I just couldn't bring myself to deal with it.

The worst [or best?] of it is, I knew that it was going to be an excellent paper. It was from my upper-division seminar, by an excellent student, and I'd seen a draft (which was quite good). There was no question; it was going to get an A.

But I dawdled.

And dawdled.

And, since classes don't begin until Tuesday, had very little incentive to grade it (other than to finally cross it off my list of things to do).

So, tonight, finally, I made myself do it--in part because I spent the early part of the evening clearing miscellaneous papers off of my desk (this is my home desk, mind) and it felt good, so I wanted to get this thing off, too.

And yes, it was an excellent paper. It got an A. And it took me all of 15 minutes. And it was an interesting paper that I actually enjoyed reading.

So what in the world is my problem, anyway?

I think that we need to resurrect this old picture:


--lest I forget who and what I am.

As Flaubert would say

This place is real! I have seen it!!!

...and sometimes, in bleaker moments, I wonder if this is not truly a self-portrait, if the Continental Paper Grading Co that I see in the picture (or out the train window, as it may be) is not in fact a glimpse of my own face, half-caught in a shaded mirror, as when one sees oneself in a hazy plate-glass reflection where one did not recognize a window, and for a moment, thinking that the reflection was another person--pale, expectant, with an unfamiliar expression half-formed upon the brow--recognizes with a shock that this unhandsome creature with the look of bland self-concern and the slouching, humdrum posture is oneself, a recognition that causes a dim shudder of revulsion and yet at the same time an anxiety, a desire to protect that vulnerable figure, that figure who, because semi-transparent (being a reflection in the smudged window of the Radio Repair Commission, a shop whose purpose has until now eluded you), seems so fleeting, so ill-formed, so poised to tumble into the forgetful abyss that lies in wait, always, perpared to catch every bourgeois woman, including this very one, on her fitful rounds of the cat food mercantile, the apothecary, the cheese depository....

...Yes...the Continental Paper Grading Co, c'est moi....

Grading, Grading, Over the Bounding Main

How did this happen? How am I grading again?

Oh well. By Wednesday, it will all be over. It must be over. I am not taking grading to Kalamazoo.

In other news, we found a house. It is less adorable than my house, alas, but it's a good size and has reasonable rent (about $125 less than our combined rents), a big yard, and loads of storage--a huge attic AND a basement. (Not that our boxes and few suitcases need all of that room, but it's nice to know that if something doesn't fit into the house proper, we'll have a place--or rather places--to put it.) We move in on June 1. I can't wait to paint!

Now, can I do four more papers tonight? That would mean that I could spend some serious time tomorrow on my paper, which is coming along but not quite...there, yet. Gah.

*An image search for this title yielded a picture of something called "graded bedding." I don't know what it means, but my vote is YES.

Railing, gnashing, anguish

I can't do it. I can't.

Yes, I'm being melodramatic. There have been (my favorite word:) histrionics (just a little). But oh, do you ever come to a point where you look at the papers sitting in a shiny tidy pile and think, I can't? I mean, you can't even imagine yourself grading them. It's like back in the early '00s when I was in a bad relationship, living with the guy, and I tried to imagine my future with him (marriage, kids) and I couldn't see myself; I saw some other person who was only kind of like me. That's when I knew we had to break up. It's like that. I need to break up with my papers.

I've read a few, and readers, they are not good. No! What happened? Their mid-term papers were better than this. I don't understand. It's clear that many of these students (in the survey) have no idea what a literature paper looks like. And part of that is my fault--if I have a smaller section next year, I'll build in some more writing instruction--but not all of it. They should be able to write more than six pages without packing in the blatant fluff.

And as I said, their mid-terms were better. In fairness, maybe they looked at their blank computer screens, and thought, like me, I can't.

So we're all caught in this sinister merry-go-round of impossible, reluctant activity breeding more impossible, reluctant activity. I will hand back the papers--eventually--ideally before the final exam--and they will look at the first pages, and contemplate turning to the back to see their grades, and think, I can't.

I am not a history teacher. Obviously.

So far, I have had two students declare in their papers that Beowulf is among the oldest works of literature in existence. According to one of them, it may in fact be the first epic poem!

I can assure you that I did not give them this idea.


*


About seven to go and then I'm done with everything but the stragglers....

Damn it.

Cool job that had asked for additional materials just announced that its search has been canceled.

On the other hand, I was much amused by the word "practacices" in a student's paper this morning.

Best line of the day

I'm in draft-commenting jail (slightly lower security than grading jail)--nonetheless it has its rigors. The following speaks for itself:

"Culture has now become an important aspect in our society today."

O it has, has it?

Prison Bulletin

• I am deep, deep in grading jail. If I'm very good, my sentence will be up by Wednesday night. I don't think that I'm capable of being that good.
• Yesterday I caught 2.5 cases of plagiarism. The 0.5 is semi-ambiguous: the student did have a works cited list and did cite some of his/her sources, but the paper contains a number of unacknowledged quotations (i.e. with no quotation marks) and the works cited list is all websites--when I said at least 8,500 times that websites are not acceptable sources for this paper. The two full cases of plagiarism were just straight-off-the-internet papers. One of them was laughably obvious: I read a sentence from the middle of the paper and new instantly that it wasn't the student's work. The sad thing is that I was so tired grading by that point that I was actually glad--one less paper that I have to read! But the short-lived pleasure is, of course, outweighed by my dismay. Of course.
• I exceeded yesterday's grading goal by one paper.
• But that was yesterday. The tally starts all over this morning.
  
• I can't bring myself to get started.
• I think that I'll go to the grocery store instead, even though I don't really need to.
• It's kind of cool out this morning, but beautifully sunny and clear after yesterday's heavy rains, so a walk to the store sounds nice.
• Then, perhaps, I'll take a nap.
• There's lots of time to grade in the afternoon, right?
• I have 27 more comp papers and then I get my survey papers on Monday.
• I am disheartened.
• I dislike assigning grades. No--I dislike assigning most grades. I love giving a student a well-deserved A; nothing makes me happier, teaching-wise. I recently had a student who had been sort of in the B- range all year write a terrific paper in which it was clear that she'd really worked at some of the stuff that had been tripping her up; I took tremendous pleasure in writing that A at the end of my comments. Even better was the look on her face when I handed it back. I'm going to keep that memory in mind when I meet with the two plagiarists next week.
• This summer is going to be lovely. I will spend many days doing whatever I want.
  
• It's much easier to fantasize about being done with the semester than it is to finish. Sigh.