Wednesday, April 22, 2015

End Comments

Thank you for your paper.  The assignment required five pages of analysis of one of the texts we read this semester through the critical lens of your choice.  Your thesis is "Jane Austin is boring."  This well may be: I am unfamiliar with her work.  Jane Austen, on the other hand -- boring or not -- is worth analyzing.  I wish you had.  F.

I found your introduction absolutely amazing.  I didn't think so many sports metaphors, meaningless platitudes, and irrelevant "attention getters" could be crammed into such a short paragraph.  From "Have you ever tried to get a girl to notice you?" (Nope) to "Shakespeare takes it to the next level and leaves everything on the field" (level of what? field of where?  Agincourt?  But this isn't Henry V; it's Much Ado).  You have clearly given a hundred and ten percent, full heart, open eyes, what would Jesus read, and so on, and so forth.  D.


There are three typos in your first line.  You don't give a fuck.  Why should I?  I have now spent more time and thought on this comment than you did on the paper.  F.

You have quoted a sentence verbatim from the goddamned dictionary, without quotation marks.  Now I have to decide whether I should give you an F for plagiarism, or an F because it's the only sentence in the paper that is in what I recognize as a form of English.  The plagiarism F requires more forms.  You win.  F.

This is a really, really good paper.  It's insightful, intriguing, and fresh.  I've never read a more succinct but penetrating analysis of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.  I would love to give it an A.  But we didn't read Portrait in this class, and asking around, I discover that my colleague Prof. Sniffles taught it last year.  And he concurred that this was an excellent paper, an opinion he has held ever since he gave your girlfriend an A for writing it.  Goddamn it.  Where's that form?  F.

Thank you for prefacing your excuse for your late paper with "I ain't gonna lie."  It's comforting to know that you think lying is so common and widely accepted that you deserve a goddamned medal for telling me that, this once at least, you're not going to do it.  I don't accept late papers.  Why not?  Because I'm sick of reading the goddamned things and every time a lazy little puke like you doesn't turn one in, that's another free twenty minutes I can spend watching old episodes of Frasier.  F.

I read your paper.  Then I ran it through the plagiarism checker, and Googled some random words and phrases.  I checked some old syllabi from colleagues in the syllabus database, to see if any of them have taught the same books recently.  I read your paper again, and searched for some new phrases, trying again to catch you in Google.  And then I realized.  You wrote this.  And it's good.  You actually read the books.  You analyzed them.  You formatted the paper correctly, and not only did you proofread -- you revised!  Really revised, for organization and clarity and argument.  How jaded am I, that when I see what ought to be my expectation, I assume that you cheated.  I'm ashamed of myself.  A.

I read your paper.  It looked familiar, so I flipped up through the stack.  Hey.  This last one I gave an A to . . . oh, son of a bitch.  Where's that form?


12 comments:

  1. This is some excellent, old school smackdown. A

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  2. This is some excellent, old school smackdown. A

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  3. The above represents some superlative, superannuated humiliation. A

    [What?!? But I changed all the words!!! And I don't have to put A in quotes, do I?]

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    Replies
    1. These are some of the most advanced, retired humiliation. that

      [What? ! ? But I modified totality the words! I had to place a bid, is not it? ]

      Delete
    2. To achieve the above, I took Cassandra's comment through Google translate into Spanish, German, traditional Chinese, French, then back to English. Even so "But I changed all the words" survived unscathed; I had to hand-edit.

      Delete
  4. These learned writings recall an ancient group of fish swimming in the same direction in a coordinated manner and comprise heroin chick feathers. The first letter of the alphabet to you, Prof Chiltepin.

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  5. Christ, you people are funny! I'm sitting here cracking up at each comment. My wife, the lovely Mrs. Beaker Ben, asks me what's so funny and I can't even begin to explain.

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    Replies
    1. Anointed one, personages are of the humour-oriented! Reclining in situ here am I disintegrating in the face of the individuality of the remarking. My spouse of the cisheteronormative female role, the amorously Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus Pyrex crucible Ben, interrogates the party of the first part as to that which is of the not as expected and I am lacking in ability regarding the initiating steps in order to impart knowledge unto another.

      Delete
  6. On my drive home, I was wondering if anyone would get it or if I'd jumped the shark. Can't wait to see how THAT looks plagiarized.

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  7. During one’s journey domicileward, one was curious as to whether other readers might comprehend the issue; alternatively, had the selachimorpha been vaulted?

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  8. Ever since the dawn of time, mankind has strived for better and better smackdown, and this has lead us to the high quality snark we see in the world around us today.

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  9. I will be fully honest and say that I do some of my best shark-jumping on the drive home. 99% of the work I do on the drive home is listen. It is heartbreaking to imagine my work on the drive home not being a part of my future tenure dossier -- as a kind of scholarship that 'counts.'

    ReplyDelete

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