I do not want to read your final papers ...

[ashling]

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-would-rather-do-anything-else-than-grade-your-final-papers

....

I would rather go back to the beginning of the semester like Sisyphus and recreate my syllabus from scratch while simultaneously building an elaborate class website via our university’s shitty web-based course content manager and then teach the entire semester over again than grade your goddamn Final Papers.

....

I do not want to read your 3AM-energy-drink-fueled excuse for a thesis statement. I do not want to sift through your mixed metaphors, your abundantly employed logical fallacies, your incessant editorializing of your writing process wherein you tell me As I was reading through articles for this paper I noticed that — or In the article that I have chosen to analyze, I believe the author is trying to or worse yet, I sat down to write this paper and ideas kept flowing into my mind as I considered what I should write about because honestly, we both know that the only thing flowing into your mind were thoughts of late night pizza or late night sex or late night pizza and sex, or maybe thoughts of that chemistry final you’re probably going to fail later this week and anyway, you should know by now that any sentence about anything flowing into or out of or around your blessed mind won’t stand in this college writing classroom or Honors seminar or lit survey because we are Professors and dear god, we have Standards.

****

I do not want to read the one good point you make using the one source that isn’t Wikipedia. I do not want to take the time to notice that it is cited properly. I do not want to read around your 1.25-inch margins or your gauche use of size 13 sans serif fonts when everyone knows that 12-point Times New Roman is just. Fucking. Standard. I do not want to note your missing page numbers. Again. For the sixth time this semester.

*****

[Tobin S.]

1. Sounds like it's time for a career change.

[Downwinder]

2. That's OK. I didn't much want to write one.

It was not my idea.

Misery loves company.

[Phentex]

3. I found some poetry I wrote for one of my classes...

it was SO bad. I mean BAD BAD. I felt like I should contact my professor and send her flowers just for not ripping it into pieces and throwing it away. I imagine her reading it and trying to find something nice to say. And then possibly needing a drink to finish. I mean, she had to give me a GRADE for it!

Poor lady.

I can understand your frustration.

[mnhtnbb]

4. It is humorous

I passed it on to a newly tenured professor I know at UNC.

[malthaussen]

5. I guess times have changed since I was teaching...

... and I taught remedial English for entering freshmen.

-- Mal

[hunter]

6. I feel sorry for all the professors and teaching assistants who suffered my madness...

... and very thankful for the few who recognized it for what it was.

I once turned in a paper that was pure gibberish, just after I'd changed my meds, one med some newly approved oral steroid that's not used anymore. I was feeling pretty good actually but my professor took me firmly by the hand and escorted me to the student health center nevertheless.

Of course the first thing the overworked, underpaid, and largely inexperienced student health center staff thought was "LSD" or "'shrooms" or something similar, so they put me aside to sleep it off. At some point, I'm not sure when, a doctor who knew me stopped by and figured out it was the change of meds, I'm guessing now the steroid.

Modern medicines are so much better than the meds I suffered when I was young. I haven't had to visit an ER for asthma or crazy since the later 'eighties. Before then I was a frequent flyer.

Another professor got me back into school the second time I'd been "asked" to take time off, or else... The first time was for fighting with a teaching assistant. When I went back to school after the second time-out the professor whose TA I'd fought with was now a dean, and skeptical, even with recommendations from one somewhat celebrity science professor, and a promise from another prominent science professor to look after me.

I retook the class I'd fought with the TA in and got an "A." I didn't fight with this TA, but he wasn't strung so tight.