What I wanted to write on the paper I just graded:
It's okay to write your first draft when you're stoned out of your mind, but for the love of Pete, please proofread it at some point before you turn it in. I feel like I have a contact high just from reading it on my computer screen.
What I wrote:
Please edit for clarity.
Yup. I have to do that edit on my last round of grading.
ReplyDeleteI need a macro that strips "what were you thinking?" from my comments.
That's one reason I love this site--we can safely share our unedited first drafts of feedback.
DeleteAs a discussion question I sometimes write "What did you think about...?" on the board and then erase the "What".
DeleteProbably not advisable on an actual paper, though.
I would also erase "about" and anything thereafter.
DeleteOnce during my third-semester physics course for engineers, a 20-year-old white guy with red eyes and in dreadlocks, wearing a tie-die and Birkenstocks, and smelling of burning rope and patchouli, walked into the final exam 1 hour and 15 minutes late. He seemed genuinely surprised that he'd mis-remembered the start time, even though it had been announced in class over a dozen times. I wanted to scream at him, "QUIT SMOKING THAT DOPE!" but I did not.
ReplyDeleteYup, this guy was studying to be an engineer. It almost makes the standard variety less annoying, doesn't it?
DeleteI dunno, Frod. I'll take the amiable stoner over the tightly-wrapped bundle of armchair-libertarian, geek-misogynist, injured entitlement. Er, not that I used to work with engineers or anything.
DeleteYou're assuming this stoner is amiable, Frankie. He sure didn't smell that way.
DeleteI knew there was a reason I rather like working with foreign-born and/or first-generation engineering students. The ESL issues are more than offset by the considerably lesser frequency of the characteristics described above (although all are familiar, especially the armchair-libertarian part. The students I find really confounding are the ones who claim both libertarian and conservative Christian identities -- at least for this admittedly liberal/progressive Christian, that combination just doesn't compute).
DeleteWhenever I'm grading papers, I remember a quote from Ginger Baker: "Because I was so wicked in my youth, God is keeping me alive and in as much pain as He can possibly manage."
ReplyDeleteThe first plagiarized paper I ever got (back when plagiarism required real work in the library, and detecting it required the same) was on pot legalization.* The phenomenon has repeated itself several times since.
ReplyDelete*The student insisted that he'd had a philosophical discussion with one of his other professors about ownership et al., and was just following the guidelines on which they'd agreed. I'm not sure whether that discussion actually took place, or, if so, what fueled it, but as a young female professor with apparently much less authority and/or coolness than the other professor, my only recourse was to send the case to the honor council, which I did. I think the student ended up with a note in his file, which, at that particular school, actually would have led to real trouble (i.e. at least suspension) had he plagiarized again during an undergrad career that would include several major required papers, so fair enough.