cake or death?

[lolaraincoat]

I had intended to do a year-in-review post, plus also complete a lengthy exegesis of Spike Lee's New Orleans documentary When the Levees Broke (to sum up: wow, wow, wow) but instead I am grading. The second-year survey class is making me suicidal again. We've had the by-now traditional references to "slaves who were badly paid" in the midterms and oh so many more facts which are not. Many of their essays have begun with the dread phrase "In today's society" despite my repeated and specific warnings that if they used that phrase they would be cruelly mocked in front of their peers. They all seem to agree that while everyone has a race, only women have gender; in fact, one student made that idea (and I use the word loosely) the basis of his paper's argument. I have to get through seventeen more of these essays before tomorrow morning's class. Or I guess I could just kill myself now. Augh!

Comments

[laughingrat.livejournal.com]

Is it possible to drag them out and set them on fire? The students, I mean, not the essays. Or do you think they will learn better when they get older?

Only women have a gender

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

Um, look at this as a teaching opportunity? Think of how you could crack their little, wee brains right open! Come on. It will be fun!

[sanj.livejournal.com]

Remember, if you end it now, THEY WIN. Hang in there. For us. Please?

Gah.

[hederahelix.livejournal.com]

Since the dawn of time, students have written craptastic essays. In this comment, I will discuss the three major ways that students write essays that are not interesting. First, there is the cliched opening sentence. Second, there is the lack of anything resembling a varied sentence structure. Third, there is the creation of words that do not exist. Sprinkled amid the real gems however, student papers also rely heavily on misplaced modifiers then there are the run on sentences of doom which continue on and on and on like the Energizer bunny commercials of course it is possible that in Canada you no longer see those commercials, and miss them (much like the student missed ample places to put a comma, but lo, no, we get an extra in the middle of a compound predicate.) In conclusion, I'm not sure what the schools are teaching to a student, but they really need to spend more time teaching them about essays, and apparently unclear pronoun references.

I'll stop now, but I feel your pain. I find it helps to perform dramatic readings of said papers to my girlfriend. She has not yet waded through reams of the things, and she gets quite properly indignant when they do stupid things.

My personal favorite was when her first reaction to a bad piece of work from last term was "Wow, that's not chauvinistic." Because, sadly, I have become so inured to the low grade sexism of 18 to 20 year old creative writers who think that shock value is good that I didn't even notice it on a conscious level.

And another thing...

[elphaba-of-oz.livejournal.com]

Many of their essays have begun with the dread phrase "In today's society" despite my repeated and specific warnings that if they used that phrase they would be cruelly mocked in front of their peers.

I'm looking forward to reading your descriptions of the cruel mocking. You have threatened to cruelly mock them in front of their peers. Failing to fulfill your threat equals teaching them that authority figures are inconsistent and unreliable. They will leave your tutelage one step closer to being scofflaws and anarchists. As a responsible educator you cannot let that happen.

[stillwell.livejournal.com]

Ah, the yute of today's society!

[fishwhistle.livejournal.com]

Your students have come up with some doozies (yes, entertaining for me!) but I'm not quite convinced yet that any of them have ever topped "the Earth is, in part, transparent," which I got on an astronomy exam once. Or the one astronomy student who, when I asked them a question about where the sun rises during a particular part of the year, said it rises in the west.