New Blog at New Domain
A Slow Motion Move
Happy Thanksgiving
David Horowitz: Verminous Anti-Intellectual Hack
Incompatible Cleansers
Falcon & the Sailor Boy
Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork
Oregano, Thyme, Savory, Peppers & Potatoes & Plato
Feeling a Draft
Militant Christianists
Inculcating Christianist Ignorance
Agent Orange Reparations
Nancy Bauer (A Slow Motion Move)
jd (A Slow Motion Move)
Nancy Bauer (A Slow Motion Move)
Pascale Soleil (A Slow Motion Move)
MJ (David Horowitz: Verminous Anti-Intellectual Hack)
alan (Happy Thanksgiving)
Dan Biston (Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork)
jd (Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork)
Dan Biston (Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork)
jd (Stalinists Come Out of the Woodwork)
Dear Students · Apr 30, 08:29 PM
I know you have all been checking Blackboard’s grade book for your final grades & I just want to offer a few words of explanation & advice. I know you have been checking because I have received emails from several of you. In the old days, I had the luxury of a couple of weeks while grades were distributed by mail before facing complaints; now, before I have even done a final review & once-over & sent my grades to the Registrar, I get questions & complaints.
About the emails. When you are asking someone to A) consider that they have made a mistake, or B) grant you a favor for some particular reason, it is best to be civil. And, as you will learn out in what they call the “real world” the first time you suggest to your boss that you “deserve” a raise because you “worked hard” on the project, working hard & producing quality work are two different things. I admire people who work hard & in fact often do manage to reward concerted effort. But the “bottom line”—that’s a phrase you are going to hear a lot out there in that so-called “real world”—is that no matter how hard you worked you are going to be judged on what you can produce. A couple of years ago, for example, I put a lot of effort into a grant application to fund some travel & research I wanted to do, but the funding agency turned me down, offering specific advice about how to improve my chances next time around. I took that advice & the next time around they gave me the money. So, when you tell me that you deserve an A because you worked hard, I know where you’re coming from, man. I feel your pain. I’ve been there myself. Better luck next time.
Of course, I will be happy to consider possible errors in grading, even if they are subjective in nature, but you will have to make your case on intellectual grounds, not emotional. It may surprise you to know that I would prefer a gradeless system, but I suspect that most of you, like the university & like our society at large, would find that unacceptable. You want to be graded, you find it necessary to be graded, but you want the grade to reflect – what? – your effort? The problem is that I have no way of evaluating your effort with any sort of objectivity – which is what grading requires, certainly – so I must perforce rely on measures of your performance on tests, class discussion, essays, etc. Inadequate, I know. As I say, I’d just as soon be quit of the whole business. I’d like to be able to check one of two boxes:
- This student did the work assigned successfully
- This student did not do the work assigned successfully
But we have a passion for quantification in America, so such a system will never come into use.
Each transcript would carry a note that I would be happy to discuss the student’s work with prospective graduate school admissions committees, potential employers, etc. & to put my evaluation into writing. The fact is, that most of you, my dear students, do not make much of an impression on me, so in most cases I would have little to add to my basic evaluation. Imagine a possible conversation with an employer:
Employer: So, what can you tell me about Ms. X’s performance in your class [or as your advisee, etc.].
Me: For the life of me, I just can’t remember Ms. X. I see by my records that she completed all the assigned work, but I really don’t remember her.
Contrast this with another hypothetical conversation:
Employer: So, what can you tell me about Mr. Y’s performance in your class [or as your advisee, etc.].
Me: Oh, yes, Y. He was always in my office asking questions or pestering me for more information after class. Now that I think about it, I recall that he wrote a good paper on __ . Here, just a second, I asked for a copy of it & have it here in my file. Yes, a fine analytical mind. I’m sure he’d do well in your organization. Oh, & there was that time when Y said something in class that brought us all up short. Very original thinker. . .
If you don’t care about your education, how do you expect me to care about it? That’s the bottom line.
Later: Since posting this entry, I have received several more challenges to my grading of the course, including the charge that the course itself was “unfair” because it used film & video & because it required students to use an online discussion forum, among other complaints. One student complained that I gave him a bad grade because I disagreed with the conclusions in his final essay, so I guess I’ll have to count up the misspelled words, the sloppy sentences & weak structure of the paragraphs. Actually, I have forwarded the bias complaint to the appropriate dean, since nothing I can say will change the student’s mind.
Just a note, too, about process: In comments John Scalzi points out that the reviewer or professor is not in a position to measure how much effort went into the process, that the product is the evidence on which evaluations must be made. True. I am, though, interested in process both as a teacher & as a writer. I teach process & I regularly reflect on my own processes. Here is what you have to remember, though: Right process makes for right product. That is, mere effort is not sufficient.
* * *
should I worry about painting/assemblages from a poet?
did I miss something along the way?
thelrd in TEXAS
— Larry Davis 04/30/2005 09:19 PM #
How’re the bonsai?
— mrbs 05/01/2005 12:04 AM #
Should you worry? Nah, I’m just messing around.
— jd 05/01/2005 07:34 AM #
This is something I find myself telling writers and musicians who complain that I review I’ve written doesn’t take into account what they went through to make whatever creative thing it is I’m reviewing. My response is that I don’t really care about the process, I care about the result.
And of course, it’s something I have to remind myself about whenever I’m slogging through a project and just want to be done—i.e., not one’s going to have sympathy for me because I wanted to be done, they’ll just say “hmmm, this seems rushed at the end.” The irony, the irony.
— John Scalzi 05/01/2005 08:26 PM #