Day 14: Grading Blues

Day 14: Grading

A note to all students, former students and potential future students: your professor is a biased, exhausted individual. He will do his best to give your work the time and care it deserves but the idea that all academic work is judged in the light of a perfect meritocratic system is an illusion. He is sorry. He wishes it were otherwise. Nothing happens in a vacuum, though, and he hopes you will accept his best effort.

Grading objective tests is easy. Check the “true” that ought to “false,” mark every “c” that should have been an “a” and you’re done! No questions, plenty of sleep. The world of essays and short answers is not so neat. I try to keep myself accountable by making up a list of what is necessary for different grades on a given question and how significant a given omission might be. Even that only takes me so far. The same essay read first or twenty-first may very well get a slightly different score. Is there a huge difference between 18/20 and 19/20? Perhaps not, but it bothers me to no end.

The author can be an even worse problem. There are some students I just want to give the benefit of the doubt. “Oh, she seems like she’s trying really, really hard. I think this is really good for her.” So patronizing. It’s far less common to react negatively to an individual and want to ding them unnecessarily but it doesn’t matter. Upping one student’s score unfairly makes the other’s look worse by comparison. In the end I have to flip over the corners and grade without even looking at names.

This is a terrible entry but it’s very late and my eyes are very tired. Good night to you all.