Rant: Grading Papers

[cards2468]

So this semester I decided to TA so that I can afford to eat. Well, there were openings for Mechanics of Solids Lab and Fluid Dynamics Lab. I expressed interest and ended up being penciled in for all of the labs: 2 MOS Labs and 2 Fluids Labs. Then they asked me to be the grader for the Statics class and then also for the Mechanics of Solids Lecture.

I agreed to Statics because it's usually a normal size class with only 1 assignment a week and they're usually short and the work is usually pretty easy. Turns out this class is 50 students (a lot for an engineering class here) and their homework has been about twice a week and 8 pages long. The MOS Lecture class is about 30 students and 4 pages long. So I spent my Sunday grading about 520 pages of work. To top it off I get to find out how dumb these kids are. So many stupid mistakes I have to keep correcting on every paper plus they're all unorganized and hard to read.

Sorry about that, but I just needed to blow off some steam. At least I get paid per hour with grading, maybe I'll reward myself with steak sometime this week.

[Jocephus]

i hated grading papers when i was teaching this spring...and i only had 2 classes to grade

my two classes were intro classes and man...and not to sound like a prick, but there are some dumb people out there...usually freshmen though

[cards2468]

i hated grading papers when i was teaching this spring...and i only had 2 classes to grade

my two classes were intro classes and man...and not to sound like a prick, but there are some dumb people out there...usually freshmen though

Last semester I taught a freshmen level Physics Lab course and it was a pain. There's a specific way to write a lab write-up and most of these students had never been exposed to lab write-ups before the class. Plus many of them were just idiots. They'd randomly leave out entire sections all the time. Most of them didn't understand that you can't use personal pronouns in a lab writeup. 1 brilliant student decided to use actual names after losing points every week for using words like "we" "me" "I" and "us". I'm just way too nice to be a teacher. The lowest final grade I gave out in that class was a B when a few of them really didn't deserve to pass.

[Jocephus]

i was a pretty bad frosh too...lol

[cards2468]

To add onto the complaint, I gave back the Mechanics of Solids hmwk I graded over the weekend. I was told to take off 4 points if they crudely hand-drew a plot they were required to make rather than using excel or a plotter or a piece of graph paper, as they were instructed to do. About half of the students failed to follow directions, and were penalized accordingly. Now they're all complaining to the professor that it was unfair and that they didn't know they were supposed to do that. Why won't these damn kids just learn their lesson and move on? A homework grade doesn't affect your overall grade much at all.