Mostly students

I did get another little freelance gig for the Met, but I'm going to make myself finish the student essays first.

And it's a damned good thing I'm only teaching the one class, or I'd be utterly, completely sunk. It's that whole keyboard/spend-too-long-on-comments thing. But then again, I have only received eight essays--and I rather think at least one of those (Working Dad) won't make it to the end.

Working Dad plagiarized, by the way. According to Turnitin, 39% of his essay was plagiarized. And his "argument" was about which college his son should attend. (The plagiarized stuff was from a website about the values of a Catholic university education.) I hardly knew what to say to him. I do wonder what's going on with his mind: there are things he misunderstands that simply baffle me. Is he not reading? Not comprehending? Too distracted to know what the hell he's doing? All of the above?

One student tried to cover all four possible topics. {{buzzer sounds}} Thanks for playing, but you lose.

One student wrote two pages of random thoughts with no focus.

Those were the three I graded today--and I was unbelievably nice to the non-plagiarizers. The grades I give on the first version of the first essay are usually what I would consider very generous and students still receive them as horrifically insulting and demeaning. Well, sorry, but if you don't actually do what you need to do, failing grades would probably be appropriate, so anything above that is a gift, don't you think?

But I recognize that they are learning--and we're at the "they don't know what they don't know" stage: most of them simply have zero clue what a college paper should look like and have even less of an idea how to approach creating one. So, yes: I'm generous. Once they get my feedback, one hopes they'll have a better sense of what to do. But I just realized that I could have--and should have--provided a sample essay so they can see what a good, solid B looks like. I'm sure I've got one somewhere....

I'm also a bit concerned about one of the students who has not yet submitted her (I think her) essay. She's a pretty good student, so the fact that her essay hasn't been submitted yet is a real concern. I sent her an email--but then I decided to send a group email to the students who are not as good but who still have been hanging on up to this point but haven't submitted essays. It's my compulsion to keep them from drowning--if nothing else by pointing out where the lifeboats are. I doubt I'll get more submissions--and if I do, I might be kicking myself for making more work for myself--but I really do have a vested interest in teaching them, even when they don't do their part.

Well, whatever. If they don't submit by midnight tomorrow, they're out of luck on this one--and even if they do, I'll still devote Thursday to the Met project. My policy says I don't give comments on anything that's submitted more than 24 hours late, but if they at least make the attempt, I'll give them something; I'll just try not to devote quite as much time and attention to them as I have given to their peers who submitted on time.