Sometimes grading a massive amount of papers throughout the dead of night can be...tiring. Alright; its always tiring.
Still, it is actually a lot of fun to see how these students of mine are responding already to instructions I gave them on their last assignments. The original assignment (a Precis on Mere Christianity) was not a great triumph for most of them. I am still having to reassure parents that everything is "ok" and that their children will survive failing a paper or two in order to become people that can write something worth reading.
And the proof is in the pudding, as they say. The reflection essays I am grading aren't exactly fantastic (though, I rush to admit, I was rereading some of my old Pull Questions from my second year in Torrey and, wow...they were not good at all...not at all...ick.) but they do show a development of thought already since their last papers. And that's encouraging. I am locked away in the Library for the night, without much variety in my reading material...but at least its getting better, and not worse.
And of course, grading affords me the opportunity to be the subject of speculation...am I susceptible to bribery? A question for the ages...
2 comments:
I'm always tempted to revert to my father's threatened method of grading: the balcony method. Throw the papers off the balcony and the ones that land face up pass and the ones that don't fail.
I'm usually only tempted by this at about 2am when I have to be up in 4 hours to teach.
But sometimes the grading is just great fun. When they actually throw themselves into it, it's amazing. And keep reassuring those parents. I always like to go back to Rick Vandercam's definition of risk - without risk, there's no possibility of failure, but there's also no possibility of success.
You're evil. Pure evil. Stop teaching innocent kids, causing your evil to rub off on them.
Write a paper on Mere Christianity worth reading? You're a jerk, and I hate you.
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