Over the last few weeks I have realized two things about teaching. First of all, I absolutely love teaching! Love, love, love! Secondly, I hate grading. I am required to give them a certain amount of assignments split between in-class and take-home, which creates an exorbitant amount of grading on my part. In fact, I have been doing nothing but grading for the last three weeks, and will be doing nothing but grading for the next two weeks with only a one week repose before beginning again.
I don’t mind reading their papers. In fact I am quite happy with how much of the material they understand. I taught them the concepts they are supposed to be getting, and introduced them to different literary works, and thus have done my job. But someone down the line was supposed to teach how to write and at some point dropped the ball. So I read their papers and they can explain Nietzsche. Great! But then they don’t understand how to use correct tense, verb form, or punctuation. Crap! How do I grade?
Do I grade them down because they don’t know that “he say that we don’t just not admit to doing something but we also deny that we even want to do it and our memory help us forget our sin that way because we pretend that we would never do that” is not a proper sentence?
(The above is in reference to the quote: “‘I did that,’ says my memory. ‘I could not have done that,’ says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually the memory yields.'”)
I only quoted one sentence of her paper, but the rest is definitely an admittance to understanding. The concept is reiterated there, as Nietzsche intended. In fact the entire paper demonstrates a grasp on the themes discussed. But the writing… oh the writing…
What am I supposed to do with this??