No time to blog: I’m grading my College Comp research papers. I have decided to mix them up to keep me sane. Every so often I have to sprinkle in the papers that I know will blow me over to keep my faith in my abilities to teach alive. I cannot tell you how many of the papers don’t even have works cited that are alphabetized!
Onward I grade.
*****
A great quote from the Dante Club, “’Till America has learned to live literature not as an amusement, not as mere doggerel to memorize in a college room, but for its humanizing and ennobling energy, my dear reverend president, she will not have succeeded in that high sense which alone makes a nation out of people. That which raises it from a dead name to a living power.” Matthew Pearl.
*****
I hate giving people bad news. I just had one College Comp student stop in for his research paper. It was an F. Mainly because he listed about 15 sources on his works cited, yet he only cited one of them in his paper. He wrote his paper on “Moby Dick,” yet he didn’t manage to reference that on the works cited either. His paper was interesting, but there was no organization to it at all. It would pain me more, but he was one who always thought he was so much smarter than everyone else and that deadlines and rough drafts weren’t necessary for him. Still, I didn’t derive any pleasure from his look of dismay at his grade.
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