I’m grading exams today. It’s not going well. In fact I had to go out just now to buy a new red pen, such is the quantity of red ink being used.
While grading I’ve got the new Morrissey album (Years Of Refusal) on heavy (and very loud) rotation…
The thing that most confounds me is why my students seem like they hardly try. I have 4+ office hours per week, am available via email and after class, and give them every consideration possible. For instance, even though I stressed I would not accept homework late I have been without penalty. I repeatedly urged them to study, had a review session in which I strongly hinted what to study (and blatantly said what wouldn’t be in the exam) and allowed everyone a double-sided cheat sheet.
And yet the exams are still, to be frank, dismal.
Unlike this Morrissey album, which at this point is all that is keeping me from unfettered rage. He’s 50 now, and his songwriting is at it’s peak. He has embraced his persona so magnificently, and an opus like All You Need Is Me is proof that he’s laughing at himself with us at this point. “You don’t like me but you love me either way you’re wrong.” – No Morrissey, you’re the one who is wrong about that 🙂
Each student pays for this course. Hundreds of dollars. How can they not care? Why do 15% of them never do homework? Why are the attempt at even the trivial questions so sloppy? How could some utterly ignore units when I reminded them several times during the exam “don’t forget units”?
“When I Last Spoke To Carol” is a song that reminds me of regret. The worst kind even – the regret of never saying what you wanted to (or should) say to someone now dead. I have a personal struggle with regret, in that it’s not an emotion easily felt by me. What happens happens (or so I say), but perhaps my difficulty with nostalgia is some sort of suppressed denial of regret?
My student cannot retake this exam. Tomorrow I will hear excuses and pleas, and the usual comments: “Does effort count?”, “Will you curve the grades?”, “Can I still pass the course?”. I will silently remind myself that I expected as much, even as I remind them I predicted as much. The easiest grade to get is the grade before the midterm. The hardest grade to get is after, which for most students will ultimately be the grade they need the most. I expect tomorrow, when I am perhaps a little harsh in my comments, a few of them will feel regret for perhaps not understanding how harsh I wasn’t with them before.
People learn from their mistakes I suppose. “That’s How People Grow Up” says Morrissey. We are (figurately, I hope) battered, beaten and bruised by little defeats, which strengthen us. Every semester I tell my students it often takes a poor exam performance for them to realize college is more serious than they have obviously been treating it.
They have a good teacher in me. They have to use that, and abuse that. All I can ask of them is they put half as much effort into this course as I do, but unfortunately all I expect from them is half that 🙁
(ps. My internet has been spotty this week, and I’m not sure if it’s back 100% at this point. Excuse me if I haven’t been replying to your emails…)