Arrrrggggh!!!

And no, I don't title this post that way because it's "Talk Like a Pirate Day." I've been trying to grade papers, and it's been trying indeed. Sweet Jaysus but they're bad. Sucky awful bad.

The student mantra seems to be, "If I keep writing the same way, eventually the teacher will see how brilliant it is." Au contraire. I want to scream at them TRY SOMETHING ELSE! I don't much care what, just something different. Write a way you haven't written before, because you keep doing the same thing over and over, even when I tell you it's fucking wrong.

I know. I know. The logical, compassionate part of my brain reminds the impatient, cranky part that they are having to let go of a very tenuous security they have writing as they have done in the past--because it's all they know. Even when it never got them good results before, it's what they know. And I'm asking them to throw it all entirely out the window and try something not only very new but rather difficult. Every molecule in their bodies is screaming in protest. Ed said I have to break them down, and I do--but as I'm dealing out the grades that I honestly think their work deserves, I start to hate myself for the pain they're experiencing. I know, on a beautiful theoretical level, that it is up to them how they incorporate the experience: they can see it as just pain or they can see it as the ache and stretch of a challenge. But their little selves are so deeply tied up in how their work is evaluated, and they don't have the maturity yet to take the "ouch," take a deep breath, and then say, "OK, what do I have to do?"

So sure, I can feel terrible that they are experiencing my feedback as severe pain, pain with no reward--or I can simply be the dealer in harsh realities and let them grow up or not, as they choose.

But of course, it isn't so simple. I do not like hurting them; I want to help them. But I don't have time to do it slowly and gently. And I don't want them to leave me completely unprepared for where they may go next. Even focusing on the process is brutal--because they do not get the process at all, either. Not the process, not the end result.

And I sit here, having to read their turgid platitudes or their ham-fisted statements of the obvious and try to explain to them why what they have produced is not analysis, not critical thinking. Fuck me blind.

They're dropping like flies, too. The most worrisome is that this semester's Wonder Boy was not in class on Thursday, and I haven't heard a peep from him since about submitting his paper. I'm about to e-mail him and find out what's going on. I'd hate for him to get anything less than at least a B, but if he punts this paper, he can't get there.

Plus I'm tired. Not quite enough sleep last night, and although I feel pretty much fit as a fiddle (however fit that may be), I am still recovering from surgery, so my energy ain't what it might be. Gawd, Gawd. Well, speaking of taking a deep breath and saying "OK, what do I have to do?" that's where I am at the moment. And since I'm (unusually) not only posting from home but posting over the weekend, the answer is, stop working, feed the cats, and get some rest. For tomorrow is another day.

Unproofed, unedited, unread, raw from the brain, up goes the post.