I'm grading. Some days, there is not enough alcohol in the world to get through this with sanity, sense of humour, and retinas intact. Since using commenting tools such as this one would be frowned upon by my institution, I'm stuck with cursing in the inside voice, and writing banalities such as: "Dear Clueless Christopher, your research paper on the politics of basketweaving would be much stronger if you included a thesis, engaged with the existing body of literature, and displayed a working knowledge of the rudiments of the English language.".
What I'd really like to write is more along the lines of:
Dear Fuckwit, I made it through a page and a half of your paper before getting up, pouring another glass of wine, checking my Facebook, watching two videos on YouTube, and playing three levels of Angry Birds in an attempt to motivate myself to come back and read nine more pages of the crap that you took in 12-point Times New Roman and then proudly handed in. At the rate of one drink consumed per every 400 words, I *may* be drunk enough to give you a grade that will keep my overall course average within the "desired outcome" range - but I need you to know I'm going to feel like shit about it in the morning. Sincerely, where's my aquiline benefactor?!
Q: Since it's going to be a long night, and mine is the misery that loves company, I throw it out to the rest of you. What is the best comment you have ever written on a student paper? What do you wish you could say to your snowflakes? How do you get through nights like this while still remaining on speaking terms with your liver?
A: Post your replies below.
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I fear I am living up to the non-Cohen aspects of my name tonight...
(But at least I don't work here.)
I once gave in to the impulse to write "WTF" on a student's essay when she claimed that Sir Walter Raleigh had written a review of Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice some 200 years after he died.
ReplyDeleteThe student was mightily offended because, apparently, I should have known she meant Walter Scott (all these Sir Walters look alike), even though she didn't cite a source, and anyway, "WTF" is ABUSIVE language. (NB, I just wrote the letters not "What the ever-loving fuckity fuck, you MORON", or similar.)
Since then I stick to platitudes, or the occasional "this word you use, it does not mean what you think it means" when I am feeling frisky.
The best comment I ever got as a student was for a differential topology assignment that I had attempted to solve with results from measure theory:
ReplyDeleteYou do not understand measure theory. Do not use it again.
Kids, kids! Remember that a basic function of being a teacher is to be -patient-. I will confess, however, that whenever I get a student in my Intro-Astronomy-for-Non-Majors class claiming that Project Apollo was a hoax, I will write, "This is frankly unbelievable. The whole world was watching!" and it's hard for me not to add, "You young fool!" The F that I give as a grade for this kind of work makes my point well enough, though.
ReplyDelete"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
ReplyDeleteApplicable to a very broad range of English papers.
Best comments I've written on a student essay? Oh, lordy, here we go:
ReplyDelete"Your mother is not a scholarly source."
"Review your timeline -- Martin Luther King, Jr. was not present at the Civil War."
"Use complete sentences, please."
"Amorous does not mean the same thing as loving."
I am an English prof at a Midwest CC. I could go on, and on, and on ...
I keep it simple: "Huh?" saves me time and ink.
ReplyDeleteThe worst comment I ever received: "If negative infinity were par for the course, your score would converge to it."
ReplyDeleteThe meanest thing I ever did on someone's paper? Well, you math people will love this one. You know how students will cancel quantities when they shouldn't be cancelled? Well, a student once got a 78 1/2 % on their midterm exam and I decided that I would cancel the 2 with the 78 and leave 39. So there you go, their score became 39%. Do this to plenty of students who can't seem to cancel correctly, and it will nip the problem in the bud (of course you will have to do some grade changes...).
The other group of students in your typical remedial math classes will put equal signs everywhere and anywhere, especially in places that they are not needed. I once wrote "equal-sign diarrhea" on a student's paper when they did this.
ReplyDelete"I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and crap a better paper than this!"
ReplyDeleteOk, I never wrote that, but I once told a kid, with whom I had a good rapport: "It looks as though a thesaurus threw up all over your paper. Use your own words."
I often write "I have stopped editing your paper, but be assured, mistakes continue," whenever I decide that I don't want to be a copy editor anymore.
ReplyDeleteI've also become a big fan of just writing "NO!" for things that are factually, demonstrably wrong.
I just wrote on an exam essay, "This is entirely devoid of content and demonstrates absolutely no mastery of course material."
and on a senior-thesis draft, of a student whom I happen to like a lot and usually does excellent work, "Read this sentence out loud. Tell me if it sounds like English to you."
and because I work where I do, the occasional Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot does come out.
This one is for papers that are so far below the minimum that I refrain from wasting any more ink/time/nerves on them:
ReplyDelete"This draft is not nearly as polished as it should be at this point. If you are interested in revising, please make an appointment or see me during office hours."
"I often write 'I have stopped editing your paper, but be assured, mistakes continue,' whenever I decide that I don't want to be a copy editor anymore." I love this and am letting you know that I'm stealing it.
ReplyDeleteI also engage in "Huh?!?" and LOTS of "Awk." One exam question was so filled with historical inaccuracies that I just put "Nope" at the top.
"You were asked to write about Raymond Carver's 'Cathedral,' but this paragraph is so vague it could apply to literally any of the short stories we've read. It is completely devoid of meaning, and thus worth zero marks. Next time, be specific."
ReplyDelete"You cannot cite yourself as a source." This was when the students (yes-plural!) get tired of me saying they didn't invent the concept of basketweaving and need to cite their sources even if they use their own words. So, when thy pull shit from their head that doesn't relate remotely to anything and that could be considered just seeing a basket in life and try to "fool" me by writing from the hip, they try to avoid Academic Dishonesty by citing themselves. I have also said, "Your *insert family member here* is not a citable source unless they are a researcher in the field. Asking *FM* about basketweaving does not count as research".
ReplyDeleteAnother one is that just because they learned something once doesn't mean they should check a reputable source to make sure and not everythng is "Common Knowledge". So, I write, "Would your typical Wal-Mart shopper know this if you asked them?" (no offense to Wal-Mart!!).
I am tempted to write things like, "If you had even picked up the book, read the rubric, or any information I have given you, you would see what you handed in is shit.", "I don't care how HARD you TRIED! It's still wrong.", "Seriously? were you even alive when I screamed this repeatedly in class?", "Use the writing center because I can't fucking understand this shit you have turned in", "Really? You couldn't reprint this so there wasn't the cigarette hole in the middle??", "REALLY???"...The list is endless.
I have also become a fan of "No." when something is just so wrong. I end up writing things like, "Review the basket weaving terms/theories" and "??".
I frequently write something like, "You may have some good ideas here. However, problems with grammar, vocabulary, and organization make these ideas very difficult for the reader to understand and significantly lower your grade."
ReplyDeleteI too use "No" and "??" and "There are far too many grammatical errors here for me to correct them all." I also write "self-contradiction" far too often.
What do I really want to write? I want to say, "Give up. You do not have what it takes to succeed in college. Go home."
I'm actually very diplomatic in comments (probably why I need to vent spleen here). I do write the occasional "I'm not quite sure what you mean by this" (which could be translated as "huh?" or, more likely, "WTF!"). And I write a lot of "check for and fix this problem throughout" after correcting a grammatical, citation, or other sentence-level issue *once*. After that, they're on their own; I, too, am not an editor, though some people think that's what comp teachers do/should do. The problem is that if we edit their papers, they'll never learn to do so themselves.
ReplyDelete@CC-It's not just comp proffies that they think should edit their papers. I don't teach in a field that has ANYTHING to do with English, Literature, Composition, etc. and have had students DEMAND that I edit their papers to show them where their mistakes were and correct them for them. I go through and say things like, "in-text citation incorrectly formatted" or "Noun-pronoun number disagreement", etc. and they still bitch. I get, "I don't know what is WRONG if you don't tell me!!" If they would look at what they wrote then look at the citation manual, it would bite them in the face. UGH!
ReplyDeleteI think purple hearts should go out to comp proffies because I can only imagine the demands they get if *I* am getting editing demands in Basketweaving!
Some of my students get "so close, and yet..." written here and there.
ReplyDeleteMy favorite, though, was one student who was literally incoherent. He also liked to cite himself a lot. I started writing stuff like "I cannot divine any meaningful structure to this sentence," "what on earth does this mean?," and "I have no idea what you're trying to do here."
I put far too many comments on essays. It tires me out and scares them to death. However, they virtually never ask me why they didn't get a good grade on an essay. I always tell my students that I'm happy to discuss their papers with them in my office hours AFTER they have read my comments. Very few of them show up and the ones who do actually have read the comments and want some help avoiding similar mistakes in the future. This is help I'm happy to give.
ReplyDeleteMany of my colleagues avoid this problem by not assigning written work. When the students' grades are determined entirely by multiple-choice scantron quizzes, then they cannot write anything wrong.
ReplyDeleteI am a big fan of "huh?" and "not even close."
ReplyDelete'You do not seem to have read the book you are reviewing."
ReplyDeleteThe best I ever received: "Enthusiasm alone does not make a good paper."
ReplyDeleteIt makes me sigh when I read what you proffies have to wade through. Unfortunately, I fear it may be too late to save these students.
ReplyDeleteOnce again, I'm showing my age by remembering what my elementary and high school years were like. If we had to write anything about any subject (geography, history, science, or ESPECIALLY English) errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation, subject/verb agreement were counted off. This occurred in each grade.
Long before we got to sixth grade we knew the difference between "Let's eat, Grandma." and "Let's eat Grandma." Thanks to Twitter and Facebook they'd just write 'lets eat grandma'.
My usual standby is: "Huh?" but I mostly use VERY LARGE exclamation points to emphasize whatever I write in the margins, such as, "What do you mean Christopher Columbus made a pact with Abraham Lincoln?!!!!!!!!!!"
ReplyDeleteThe meanest thing I ever wrote was, "The ESL student in our class writes better sentences than this!" then I slowly crossed it out and replaced it with, "Do you need a writing tutor?"
@Gary - I'm not that old, and I don't remember whether we actually lost marks for grammatical errors and the like. But I did have a parent who was a teacher, who was educated when mastery of these things was stressed as an essential *primary-school* skill. It breaks my heart to read the writing not only of my undergraduate students, but also of my grad-school cohort.
ReplyDeleteI have always wanted to use the erroneous "mathematics" that the students use to add up their scores. For example, if each question is worth 5 points, make it worth the square root of 25. Then to compute their scores, add first, then take the square root. So on a 4 question quiz, they get root(25+25+25+25)=10 out of 20. Of course they would complain bitterly and I would respond with what's wrong? They would say "you can't do square roots that way!" I would respond, "but you just did!"
ReplyDeleteI can't remember my paper comments very well, but when I taught at a very customer-first place with narrative evaluations in addition to final grades, I used to write sentences like this:
ReplyDelete"Sally has yet to harness her considerable intelligence to the task of scholarly analysis."
Or: "Bob's marvelous creativity wasn't always his best tool when it came to argumentation."
In other words, I had to imply that the problem was genius untapped, not laziness or stupidity, lest we lost a customer.
...lest we lose, not lest we lost.
ReplyDeleteI've used "HUH?" a fair bit as well as the occasional "Nope," but my favourite margin comment(clue: I'm Canadian) was to a student who made repeated statements about the quality of life a century ago: "Men hunted for wild animals for food. Women made clothing from the animal skins." In the margins, I added "In 1906? In 1906?"
ReplyDeleteI've always wanted a rubber stamp that reads "Think better. Write better. 63."
The most fear-inspiring is apparently "You need to see me" followed by my office hours.
ReplyDeleteThe rudest is probably "This is hysterical. It is also completely wrong."
"There are things in this paper that are new and there are things that are good. Unfortunately, those that are new are not good, and those that are good are not new."
ReplyDelete@SocioConvert - Perhaps part of my disbelief at the illiteracy was the bulk of my education was in parochial school. Sister Marie Threat made you learn whether you wanted to or not, though I had just as many lay teachers as clergy.
ReplyDeleteAlso, my parents would look over my homework before I turned it in. To this day I remember a book report on "The Legend of Billy Bluesage". My father had me re-write it because I kept changing verb tenses in the paragraphs. I was probably in a hurry to get it done (I remember it was a Saturday) and just whipped through it. My lack of attention, probably to save time, in the end cost me more time.
To this day, I can't forward an e-mail joke without correcting them. i.e. - A man walked into a bar and says . . . Gotta change it to either "walks into a bar" or "said."
Best comment has been from a student as I was handing essays back:
ReplyDelete"Oh, shit. He actually read them."
Once, in response to a young male student with an overly aggressive attitude, I wrote, "Will you get a girlfriend, of anything else to take the inappropriate edge off your personality?" But of course, I have tenure.
ReplyDeleteIf a student writes something sexist (or racist, or homophobic, etc), I write "Please remember to avoid the logical fallacy of stereotyping as it weakens the defense of one's thesis in an academic essay." What I really want to say, of course, is far less polite than this.
ReplyDeleteGary, don't even get me started on tense shifts. It's a rare paper that is not riddled with them.
What I want to write is this: Seas of humanity surge through colleges all over this country. A huge proportion of those students are doomed to failure, or deserve to be. Like them, you're stupid and should drop out. College is not for you. Go get a job and face facts. 50% of all students are below average, and you're one of them. Quit while you're behind, before you waste any more of my time, your time, everyone's time, your taxpayer-funded financial aid, and the parking spaces in the lot.
ReplyDelete