4 down 6 to go.
Ok - partially through with grading theses.
2 of the ones I have graded are glorious. One of them I'm going to nominate for the prize.
The other two? Er... um... non-glorious. One was so non-glorious it made me angry.
I have also become the not-so-proud owner of 22 undergraduate RWL papers to grade. Bleah.
I do have to say this for grading papers. It has made me an absolute MASTER of saying "this paper sucks" in a really nice way. I mean, I can look at a piece of shit and extract the only glimmering piece of tinsel that the cat swallowed at Christmas and somehow wrap everything up with that tinsel as a bow.
This niceness is causing, however, frustration. We have to be nice ALL THE TIME and can't ever let the student (even if he/she has obviously written this paper at 4am high on methamphetamines and smack and the paper smells faintly of urine) see our solid professional demeanor crack.
But in private we're saving up all that bitterness in the "comments that could have been."
Thus, today I am donating my comment space on this blog to you all - to write the comment that should have been written on that horrible paper where you were nice. To let loose that one bitter, cutting snipe that would have reduced your student to tears and possibly suicide.
Think of it as our suicide prevention day.
Just to get the ball rolling, I'll post a few here:
Dear student,
This paper sucks like a whore at carnival. There is no thesis - not even by the end when most people come up with at least some lame-ass attempt at a coherent idea. If I had to choose a metaphor for your structure, I would choose a deceased morbidly obese man who has been floating in a lake for a few days getting puffy. Let me explain: the idea was over-large to begin with, but with the addition of all the watered-down prose it ballooned full of all the hot air you were blowing and is now so offensive to see it makes me want to vomit. Please resubmit when you think of something to say.
If you have any questions, contact the professor because I am too tired to talk to you,
Me
OR
Dear student,
I would like to say that the ideas in this paper are gems that you just need to show off in a nice structural setting, but I would be lying. Your ideas are more like chips of flint. They're opaque, uninteresting, dangerous, and can in theoretical extension (and the addition of a little tinder) hurt someone. Although I find your immature and vaguely misogynistic and racist style and word choice appalling, it is nothing compared to the horror that is your introduction. Don't bother rewriting it, you'll never learn.
Go away,
Me
OR
Dear student,
Although I love cotton candy, marshmallows, and fresh-out-of-the-dryer terrycloth towels, not everything fluffy and insubstantial is good. Your paper is a perfect example of this phenomenon. It's fluffy and insubstantial, but somehow I'm not smiling. Please remove everything that you lifted from "A Woman's Book of Empowering Phrases" and your fifth grade book report and resubmit with a thesis.
Thanks,
Me
Ahhhh. I feel better. You can too! Post!
2 of the ones I have graded are glorious. One of them I'm going to nominate for the prize.
The other two? Er... um... non-glorious. One was so non-glorious it made me angry.
I have also become the not-so-proud owner of 22 undergraduate RWL papers to grade. Bleah.
I do have to say this for grading papers. It has made me an absolute MASTER of saying "this paper sucks" in a really nice way. I mean, I can look at a piece of shit and extract the only glimmering piece of tinsel that the cat swallowed at Christmas and somehow wrap everything up with that tinsel as a bow.
This niceness is causing, however, frustration. We have to be nice ALL THE TIME and can't ever let the student (even if he/she has obviously written this paper at 4am high on methamphetamines and smack and the paper smells faintly of urine) see our solid professional demeanor crack.
But in private we're saving up all that bitterness in the "comments that could have been."
Thus, today I am donating my comment space on this blog to you all - to write the comment that should have been written on that horrible paper where you were nice. To let loose that one bitter, cutting snipe that would have reduced your student to tears and possibly suicide.
Think of it as our suicide prevention day.
Just to get the ball rolling, I'll post a few here:
Dear student,
This paper sucks like a whore at carnival. There is no thesis - not even by the end when most people come up with at least some lame-ass attempt at a coherent idea. If I had to choose a metaphor for your structure, I would choose a deceased morbidly obese man who has been floating in a lake for a few days getting puffy. Let me explain: the idea was over-large to begin with, but with the addition of all the watered-down prose it ballooned full of all the hot air you were blowing and is now so offensive to see it makes me want to vomit. Please resubmit when you think of something to say.
If you have any questions, contact the professor because I am too tired to talk to you,
Me
OR
Dear student,
I would like to say that the ideas in this paper are gems that you just need to show off in a nice structural setting, but I would be lying. Your ideas are more like chips of flint. They're opaque, uninteresting, dangerous, and can in theoretical extension (and the addition of a little tinder) hurt someone. Although I find your immature and vaguely misogynistic and racist style and word choice appalling, it is nothing compared to the horror that is your introduction. Don't bother rewriting it, you'll never learn.
Go away,
Me
OR
Dear student,
Although I love cotton candy, marshmallows, and fresh-out-of-the-dryer terrycloth towels, not everything fluffy and insubstantial is good. Your paper is a perfect example of this phenomenon. It's fluffy and insubstantial, but somehow I'm not smiling. Please remove everything that you lifted from "A Woman's Book of Empowering Phrases" and your fifth grade book report and resubmit with a thesis.
Thanks,
Me
Ahhhh. I feel better. You can too! Post!
5 Comments:
Dear Student,
You must have mistaken me for a third grade language arts teacher--your inability to put a subject, verb, and object together in the right order is amazing in its magnitude. Unfortunately, this is an advanced writing course, so I am going to proceed in my comments as though you actually understood the concepts of the course. (...) In short, student, this paper feels a lot to me like you plagiarized most of it, and pulled the remainder off the body of the two bit encyclopedia salesman who had the bad luck to come to your door last night.
-Me
By
Al, at 9:54 AM
Dear Student,
This paper would be enormously improved if you could manage to be less stupid. For your next paper, I suggest that you investigate ways to overcome your innate dumbassedness. And possibly proofread at least a paragraph or two, because your misused homynyms are making me very cranky.
Good luck,
--S.
By
Anonymous, at 5:34 PM
nice!
Continue the bitter tide, people - post!
By
katie, at 11:52 AM
Dear Student:
While your one-and-a-half-page extended metaphor of the hyena eating the zebra was entertaining, your paper has sapped my will to live. That said, you should perhaps be aware that metaphors often have tenors--that is, they tend to have something to do with the topic at hand. What the hyena and the zebra had to do with Moliere was, I'm sorry to say, beyond me. Please don't think of me as a misanthrope. It's not that I don't like you, although I don't. It's really that this document you have perpetrated shows not only that you haven't read anything we've covered in this class, but that you wouldn't have a point even if someone shoved one up your obnoxious arse.
With much love,
Your RWL Writing Intern
By
J, at 2:02 PM
Snazzy. I'm loving the misanthropy!
By
katie, at 6:33 PM
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