Grind grind grind
Just finished grading about 60 exams this evening. (In case you're wondering, that graphic above is from the solution set I'm writing up for the exam; it shows temperature distributions through the thickness of a wall assembly). Man... I feel like I'm a really inefficient worker, like I should have been done a lot faster. Unfortunately, one of the questions was set up so that the answers ended up all over the map, and I had to recalculate the first portion of the answer using their incorrect assumptions to grade the second part fairly.
I find it depressing to grade exams--I know what it feels like to totally choke under pressure, to miss an important instruction, or to start using the wrong equation, and end up flailing in completely the wrong direction. Or to see the students make dumb math mistakes--"Nooooo! (T1 – T2)^4 ≠ T1^4 – T2^4!!!!," and therefore getting answers incorrect by orders of magnitude (analogous in wrongness to "Noooo! Using the Alien as a bioweapon is not a terribly clever idea!! Look at the last three movies that you tried it in!"
I know that I'm supposed to be throwing my sympathies behind the teaching side of things, but I feel a fair amount of sadness when a bunch of people whiff on a question, while a change in wording or formatting could have pushed them on the right track. One problem that I've always mulled is that academics are typically people who were at the top of their classes. Being a person who has worked like hell to get a C in one class, failed multiple classes, and taken an academic leave of absence, I end up having a lot of sympathy for students who are screwing up, instead of the Darwinian, "Well, they didn't learn the material, so that's what they ought to be getting." Please note that I don't think all academics have this attitude, or that I don't think it is sometimes justified. It's just often the polar opposite of my viewpoint, and I have seen it on occasion.
Anyway, the repetitiveness of the task, and the association with the unpleasant stress of taking exams makes me very sure that I don't want to go into teaching for a living.
posted by Bats @ 11:24 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I found it... startling, the first time I helped grade exams for a large (freshman) physics class, to realize that the more correctly you do the problem, the less attention the grader pays to your answer.
Just realizing that there were problems I had spent long and painful effort on, back when I was in that class, that I'm sure nobody but me ever really read, because the grader saw I had the right answer, skimmed the work for the right general approach, and gave me full points.
Also discovering that the students the graders like best are the ones that get the problem totally and completely wrong. Because they're the easiest to grade.
I try to keep in mind that grading is meant to be evaluative, not punitive. When I'm teaching I do try to give a lot of feedback on what needs to change, how to change it, and where to get help, and I have the leeway to sneakily weight later grades higher if my students figure it out. And I try to detach praise for what's done right from the actual grade; when my students pull their act together halfway through the semester and get a B- instead of failing, I'm proud of them and I tell them so.
But sad as it is to see someone really struggling in freshman comp and not making it, wow, it's a lot sadder to see them in a junior year English class, still unable to use a quotation properly. Because that kid is kind of screwed.
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