Grading and the professor’s turmoil

The term just recently ended at Winebrenner and UF and I just spent day and night grading papers.  Grading is one of my most dreaded points of the term.  It is when I, the guy who tries cultivating a relationship with students throughout the term, have to sometimes become the bad guy.  It is also the point at which I get little sleep and start pulling out my hair.  What I find is a menagerie of papers and not all are equal.  Every classroom has a range of students whose skills fall widely across the spectrum.  Some are really good and I can tell the student put a lot of time into the process.  However, there are plenty of papers that I have to step away from before giving a final grade, just to make sure that I’m grading fairly.  This is particularly true of really bad papers.

I’ve thought about writing a post on what I want my students to know about grading, but never have.  Fortunately, someone else did and it’s spot on (HT: @jrdkirk).

I do not pull punches when I am reading papers. I try not to be hurtful, but I have no interest in lying to you. Everyone’s work could be improved. Part of my job is pointing out where your paper could be better.  Continue reading at Mary Shore’s blog, Balancing Pose.