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Seven ways to figure out whether you're a junior prof:

1. You spend a lot of time avoiding committee meetings
2. You've hidden from a student by diving under the desk
3. Achieving a personal life is on your list of things To Do
4. You still haven't given up on the idea of Free Food
5. Your real expertise lies in exploring the local happy hour scene
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7. You spend more than 8 hours a day contemplating alternate career plans

Friday, April 10, 2009

The Grading Blues

I have the grading blues. Great papers and terrible papers are not my problem. It's those in the middle--that awkward sentence that I can't figure out how to fix, that slightly-off-the-mark summary that is sort of right, but not right, that structural issue that requires a lot of thinking to discern. It gives me a headache.

How many minutes per paper? How much commentary? Do you type your comments or write them at the end of the paper?

Help, help... I have the grading blues.
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4 comments:

  1. AnonymousApril 11, 2009 at 8:13 AM

    I go back and forth: typing allows me to keep a record of my comments, which I like (particularly for writing rec letters years later), but writing keeps me more concise, which I think is better for the students . . . I'm tempted someday to try it all virtually, using Word's track changes or something - I'd love to hear if anyone's tried that . . .

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  2. juniorprofApril 12, 2009 at 5:54 PM

    Ooh. Word tracking changes. That's an idea. But will we fix everything that they should fix??

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  3. AnonymousApril 12, 2009 at 8:19 PM

    I write comments on the paper and attach a typed commentary. The comments are usually word changes, grammatical problems, and snarky rhetorical questions (e.g. "Agamemnon is part and parcel with..." elicits "So Agamemnon is a box, huh?"), while the commentary is bigger picture and more positive (e.g. "You've done an excellent job with identifying the context; now you just need to dig deeper!").

    The efficacy of this approach? I don't know. I want to believe that it allows me to strike a balance between being justifiably harsh and constructive, but it may just confuse the poor bastards.

    Either way, it allows me to work through some deep-seeded parental issues.

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  4. AnonymousApril 13, 2009 at 3:33 PM

    I agree. Write only sarcastic comments, or at least "no", withholding "good" or "yes" unless they've really earned it. But type a summary of the written assignment that's constructive.

    ReplyDelete

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