Confessions of a Slacker, Part 1

My job takes me a lot less time than it used to. This I admit freely, because I used to put in 60+ per hour work weeks, when I was young and green, and inexperienced. Before I knew more. Before I knew better.

My job does not take as long to do as it used to because I have chosen not to waste time. The ruling principle of not-wasting-time is never to put in any effort that will, in effect, be wasted. That seems easy enough. The problem is figuring out which time is wasted.

There are of course many things to accomplish that are a valuable use of time: being on a hiring committee is grueling and takes months. But I always volunteer, because it’s terribly important and will have a vital impact upon the life of the department for years to come.

What I have realized over the years, however, is that the biggest waste of time can be found in feedback to students. To faculty members that spend 45 minutes to an hour grading a term paper, I ask: Why do you do this? It is wasted time. I discovered just how wasted the first year (many, many moons ago) that I decided to give my students until finals week to turn in their papers without penalty. They asked for the extension, I fretted about it, but then thought, “why not?”

“You won’t be able to get your paper back with comments, though!” I said in a worried voice, wringing my hands. “I know you’ll want them back with comments. Come see me in the fall and we can talk about your papers in detail…”

Before that fateful semester, I twisted myself into a writhing agony to get my students’ graded term papers back to them by finals week. I pored over each one, marking every comma splice, scribbling encouragements, citing where they went off track, and where they could have made a solid section even stronger. Those papers were forested with comments. As I have never taught less than four courses a semester, you can imagine how much time I spent grading.

Wasted time, I was to realize. I allowed the students the extra week, but I told them as well that they still could receive comments if they turned the paper in during the last week of school. If they waited until finals week, they wouldn’t receive the paper back at all, unless they came to find me the following semester. And when they did, they would not find comments, as I would have been pressed for time merely to submit their final course grades.

“So if at all possible you won’t want to turn them in during finals week,” I told them. I was young and naïve. I assumed that most of them would not avail themselves of the extra time, as it would deprive them of my sage commentary and advice on their work.

I’m sure you know what’s coming. Not one single student turned the paper in by the last day of class. Every single one took the extra time. “Well,” I thought gamely, “surely they will come by to talk to me about their work next semester…”

Mais non. One or two stragglers dropped in, asking for the paper. But this was in the days before attachments, before even the possibility of electronic submission. They came because they wanted the paper itself. They had typed it, and did not have a copy. Even that buoyed me some, but only a tiny minority ever actually wanted to talk to me about their grade. Most just snatched up the paper and left.

It was depressing, but I’m a practical person by nature. I saw no reason to continue to mark up innumerable term papers when the students would prefer to just turn their papers in as late as possible. So I just read them and wrote one letter at the bottom. Five minutes instead of fifty.

Then, as time passed, I started to wonder about grading during the semester. I was one of those teachers that cited every single mistake. I expected, of course, that students would work to improve so that they would not make the same mistakes again. I was wrong. I was wrong I think even about my expectation that they would read the comments, let alone try to improve. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been followed back to my office by a student clutching a D paper, a student that immediately demanded to know why they got such a low grade.

“Did you read my comments?” I ask blandly.

Of course they didn’t. They just looked at the grade. “Come back when you’ve read my comments,” I say. They didn’t want to come back. They wanted to argue about it right then. “Come back when you’ve read my comments,” I’d repeat.

They’d leave, and I’d never see them again.

Once I began to work with blackboard, students submitted electronically. I'd write about a paragraph in the comments section (I can type a paragraph a minute, so not much time there). Then I realized that students don’t even go to the comments section. They go to the grades page, and just look at their grade.

Thus over time I have spent less and less time grading, even as my students write more and more. My sophomore and junior level classes write 500 words a week each, plus tests and a final (and in the case of the junior-level class, an oral report). I speed read, and make a brief comment.

In the syllabus is the instruction that informs them what to do if they want more: “make an appointment with me if you want me to provide you a completely corrected copy, with changes tracked, lengthy comments and all your mistakes corrected. We will go over it together in my office and strategize ways to improve.”

Then, I spend my office hours alone, reading on my chaise lounge or working on my own personal academic projects. Only one person this semester has even asked me for a fully corrected paper. But when she realized she’d actually have to, oh, come to my office hours to get it, she balked.

There are some things a professor cannot in all good conscience avoid. We must prep for class. We must teach that class to the best of our ability. We must remain prepared and engaged with our subject matter. That stuff takes a lot of time, but it is time well-spent.

But obviously we don’t have to comment on student work. At least not the way everyone thinks we are supposed to. It’s a waste of time, because students either don’t read the comments or don’t make the first effort to apply them to future work.

So right now I’m looking out my window at the garden on my deck. Roses are blooming. My scallions are coming up as well as mesclun greens that will be cut for tonight’s salad. There are teeny-tiny closed flowers on my cherry tomato plant. The cukes and peppers are going in this week. Serrano. Baby belles. And then there’s the dill and the basil and the mint.

I think I will make some mint tea and sit outside for awhile.