10. You don't double-space. You KNOW that I take formatting points off when you don't double-space. Double-space does NOT mean space-and-a-half. We've discussed this.
9. Your printer ink is not black. You KNOW that I take formatting points off when you print in blue, purple or green. You also know that if your print is pale, smudgy grey, I will stomp on your paper in a rage. I told you this in class, twice. You need to change your printer cartridge if you want to get an A.
8. You send me your paper by email only. Let me explain this policy again. If you do not place your paper directly in my hands - if, for example, you slide it under my office door - you should email me a copy to confirm the time you submitted it. The email, however, does not replace your hard copy. I can't print everyone's paper - do you know what printer ink costs? Of course you don't. You don't print your assignments.
7. You don't send me your paper by email. Ok, let's review. If you did NOT email me your late paper in addition to submitting the hard copy, I don't know when you submitted it. The term is over; I'm not sitting in my office waiting for your paper to shoot through the crack under the door.
6. You didn't follow the structure guidelines. You wrote numbered paragraphs instead of an essay, or an essay instead of numbered paragraphs. You answered in point form instead of full sentences. You handed in a collection of random thoughts that you printed directly from your Hotmail inbox. Yes you did - the Hotmail logo is on the top of the page!
5. You haven't answered the question. Let me be clear: this paper is great. It's insightful and well-organized and even funny in parts. What's more, you being who you are, I'm pretty sure you wrote it yourself. The problem is, you didn't do the assignment. You wrote a very good paper about the texts we studied that has nothing to do with the question(s) you were asked to address. This paper is going to get a failing grade, and this is going to keep me up tonight.
4. You didn't proofread after printing. You've repeated your introductory paragraph halfway into your essay for no discernible reason. There also seems to be a page missing.
3. You didn't proofread at all. I've been reading your work all semester, so I know you're capable of writing comprehensible English sentences, but in this paper you have frequently left out important nouns, switched from present to past tense and back again (ALWAYS WRITE ABOUT LITERATURE IN THE PRESENT TENSE. How many times do I have to say it?), misspelled "their" and "friend" (sometimes your spell check really does know the answer; all you have to do is look at the computer screen) and forgotten to capitalize. Were you on drugs when you wrote this?
2. You copied parts of your paper from the Internet. I'm not even going to discuss this with you. Zero.
1. You didn't write this paper. I don't know who did. You didn't copy it from SparksNotes or a classmate. You simply handed the guidelines over to someone - either your girlfriend or an essay mill or someone who owes you protection money - and he or she wrote it for you. Now I have to call you into my office and sit you down and either try to trick you into a confession or quiz you on the paper content or announce that, regardless of the fact that I have no concrete proof, I know you didn't write this and you're not getting credit for it. The depth and breadth of my rage about this is inexpressible. No matter what delightful experiences I've had with my classes this semester, this is what I'm going to remember. What's more, I fully expect you to drag me through mediation and/or grades review, so this situation is going to escalate over the coming months. I'm tempted to pretend I don't notice that you didn't write this. But I'm not going to pretend I don't notice, and I'm going to be sorry.
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Comments
The worst part is, I had them work on first drafts for this one, in class, over three classes. And some of them just didn't show up for those three classes. And then they'll be surprised when they fail.
If there is one thing that will drive me to quit my job, it's the grading. No matter what I do, no matter how detailed the guidelines are, I get a bunch that...well, it mystifies me.
Are college papers better today than they were, say, thirty years ago, before the advent of computers?
Here's why I ask. I remember when I was in college (around '78 - '82) the physical act of having to type a paper was quite daunting. Errors were hard to catch and difficult to correct. And if you missed one sentence on page 3 you might have to retype the entire paper from that point on. Footnotes were very difficult to get right. And typing multiple drafts of the same paper was very time consuming.
Cut to today. Errors are relatively easy to find and correct. You can insert lines or paragraphs with ease. Footnotes are automatically formatted. When including material from other sources one can often do that by copying and pasting.
In other words, today, the whole task of writing a paper is vastly easier than it used to be. A ten page paper used to feel like one of the labors of Hercules. Today it would feel like a very modest achievement.
So I'm wondering -- given that writing a paper is so much easier than it used to be, as students can spend more time on research and developing good ideas and less time on the act of typing, has that translated into better-quality papers?
I'm not much of an authority on this question, as the only college papers I read thirty years ago were my own. I'm tempted to say that papers are worse now, because the ease of writing and editing results in less care. Also, the internet has made plagiarism so much easier that the incidence has risen dramatically. I suspect, though, that, in the balance, the quality of papers is about the same. Careful students are careful, and lazy students are lazy. This has always been true.
I'd be interested to know what other teachers - especially more experienced ones - have to say about this.
True, there are students who work best that way - I have some who get much higher grades on their in-class papers than their take-home assignments for that reason. The majority, however, really need to spend that extra time editing and proofreading, and they don't.
Bless you Siobhan - you actually care about what and who you're teaching!
Yes, I care about them to the point that I want to throttle them, but I care more about my own sanity (and poor old eyes) I'm afraid. It's not that I don't understand why they do this stuff - I've done many of these things myself. It's just that I want them to stop doing them regardless.
I want to throttle the teachers who came before me for some students who gave them A's for work that wasn't edited, wasn't proofread, and doesn't make sense to try to read. They've been told that what they wrote was fine when it wasn't, so they have come to believe that they can turn it in that way. As if anyone would leave the house with their clothes unbuttoned, their hair in tangles, their zippers open, and their face smudged, but all too many students will turn in papers that are in the equivalent state of disarray.
To be fair, I sometimes have different priorities for different papers, so I can see why some students think anything goes. But when I've given them detailed guidelines and they still don't follow them, I lose my mind. That is, I used to lose my mind - now I just slash the grade. What else is a teacher to do?
11) you did the bare minimum and think you deserve an A for it. Quit asking me what the minimum requirements are and strive to actually get over the bar, as high as you can.
If only there were more mothers like you, and fewer mothers who call/write emails (lady, your son is 18 - your opinion of the situation is irrelevant) to ask if I can't be a bit more understanding.
Honestly, if my students fulfill all the basic requirements, they often get A's. I rethink this policy frequently, but the scarcity of basically competent papers means that I'm so grateful when they've simply done what they're supposed to that I want to give them hugs, and brownies, and letters of recommendation. I know this is excessive, so I confine myself to giving A's.
Ah, corporal punishment. Those were the days.
Frankly, I never understood the obsession with form over content. But, a rule is a rule, no matter whether or not you believe it's irrational.
'Course, I wrote a bunch of girlfriends' papers too, so not all suspicion is unfounded.
Exactly. In fact, every so often a friend admits to me that he/she plagiarized and/or assisted plagiarism in high school or college, and I have to hold back from smacking him/her.
When you read a student's papers over an entire semester, it's not to hard to recognize one he/she didn't write. It's not a question of "this paper's really good." It's a question of, "all your other papers have been abysmal, and this is university-English-major good."
The papers I "wrote" for others were in English. She translated a piece from Russian for me, I helped her compose the paper in English, then she still had to translate to Russian. I still don't regret it, as the point of the class was Russian language, not English composition, or toner color.
It's been 30 years. I forgive you
His papers were seriously awful and didn't even come close to meeting the required minimum page length (keep in mind this was an academy and such thing are important there). After each of the first two papers I called him into my office and spoke directly to him: "You failed this assignment. Let me remind you that should you fail the writing portion of this class, you will fail the entire class." When he handed in the final paper, it was as horrible as the first two and not even half of the 10-page requirement. Can you believe he had the audacity to drop by after the grades were released and ask me why he had failed? To this day, I can't figure out what he was thinking or, more accurately, what he wasn't.
Thanks for the fun read as it brought back great memories for me, even if some of them still make me scratch my head. . .
I, REPUBLICAN Sayeth ... so it must be 21% true
--"If you did not write it, you must give credit where credit is due."
--"My last name is spelled N-O-L-T-I-N-G. Do not turn on "auto-correct" on your computer, because it will change that to N-O-T-H-I-N-G. I will knock off ten points for misspelling my name. Once again, not just being mean. If you misspelled your potential boss' name on a cover letter, you probably wouldn't get the job.
My name is on every single handout and syllabus for this class. You have no excuse for not spelling it correctly."
--"I am not married, nor do I have a doctorate, nor am I a professor. I am either Miss Nolting or Ms. Nolting. I am not Mrs. Nolting, Dr. Nolting, or Prof. Nolting. I am only Mrs./Dr./Professor NOTHING on an unintentionally ironic level."
Rated.
One of my colleagues told me that a parent showed up at his office at the end of the term with a basket of homemade baklava. She then asked him about the origin of his family name, and when he told her, she said, "Oh, we are from the same region! The same village maybe! I will bring you more baklava tomorrow, and my daughter, she will pass, yes?" There was no way in hell the daughter was ever going to pass, but no matter how forcefully he explained that he could not accept bribes, in baklava or any other form, she left the basket with him and showed up the next day with more. The daughter failed. There were some very tasty Parent Comments on his RateMyTeacher profile that semester.
I don't know. I don't know. They have been allowed to get away with it until now - or at least, they haven't done these things hand have still ended up with a 59.5% at the end of the course and get to move on, so they figure they're not important.
Not funny making me do a spit take. . .
@Siobhan
My favorite standby comment to all my cadets was: "I am assigned as your instructor for this class. I have a job to do. My job is to assess how well you write on a subjective level and how well you follow the assignments on an objective level. That's. . .my. . .responsibility. Your responsibility is to do the best you can on each assignment or exam. . .or not. If you don't, which is clearly your choice, then you have to own up to that responsibility. Perhaps you chose to polish the upperclassman's boots and belt buckle last night instead of completing your paper. I'm okay with that choice--doesn't hurt my feelings one bit. However, do not assume that I should give you a break because I won't. I will tell you that those boots and belt buckle look great, but your paper does not. And that, dear cadet, is MY job." Strangely enough, most of the cadets "got" it.
I don't doubt that they got it - clear, succinct, and in language they can understand. I may adapt your speech for my own purposes, if you don't mind. (I will, of course, document my sources.)
Speaking of my father, he's a physics professor, and over the years, parents have brought him a 13 layer rum cake (I can't begin to tell you how awesome that was), a dozen frozen wild ducks, and multiple "your money's no good" dinners when owners/managers of restaurants realized that their kid's physics prof was in the building. But, to paraphrase what a Texas legislator once infamously said about lobbyists,"If you can't eat their dinners, drink their booze, and f-- their women and still grade against 'em in the morning, you got no business in teaching." That rum cake was particularly fantastic.
That Texas legislator got it absolutely right. Unfortunately, many administrations have decided that the complications of accepting rum cakes, booze and women from college students and their parents, and then giving them Fs, are not worth it. I more or less have to agree, although I do like rum cake, and baklava.
I think that's just it - it's too easy. The easier things get, the easier we expect them to be. Brings to mind Louis CK's rant on Conan O'Brian a while ago:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETv3NURwLc
Example -- I'm currently unemployed, and many of these jobs I apply for require answering essay questions as part of the application process. Recently for one job application I wrote a five page essay describing my understanding of best practices in contracting, procurement, and materials management. It took me about six hours, start to finish.
Using the "technology" of thirty years ago it would have taken me all day to write the first draft on paper. And then it would take a few more hours to revise the paper draft, and I would have ended up with a sheaf of paper with stuff crossed out and arrows drawn all over the place. Then it would have taken a couple more hours to type the thing up. And then I probably would have done another typed version for the final copy. My guess is that the whole process would have taken at least twenty hours over two or three days, and the final product probably wouldn't have been as good because I would have gotten tired of fiddling with the damned thing.
So using the computer I'm at least three times as productive, and I end up with better content, and a better-looking essay. If I needed to I could have included graphs and pictures with almost no additional effort.
For that reason it seems to me that college papers would have to be better today than they used to be, and if they aren't something has gone very wrong.
Something has gone very wrong.
Or else, technology affects us in ways we don't predict. I mean, we have refrigerators. We didn't use to. You'd think refrigerators would mean less wasted food, because we can prevent food from spoiling much more easily. I don't have data at my fingertips, but I'm willing to bet a lot of money that we waste a lot more food now than we did before there were refrigerators.
Improved technology was supposed to make our lives easier and bring us more leisure time. We all know the outcome.
We expect things to have predictable results. They rarely do. Students with computers should write better papers than students without. Some students write better papers than they would on typewriters. Some write worse ones because they are not obliged to be as careful. Most students, I suspect, write exactly the same mediocre papers regardless of the implements they use. Mediocre in a different way, but of more or less the same quality.
My alter ego is Catfish Girl. I won't get into it.
PS. One of my colleagues wears a cape - that is, an academic robe - and plays "Pomp and Circumstance" on a boom box as he enters the classroom. I'm not kidding.
Wow. That article makes me want to tear my eyes out.
I try to be vigilant, but there's no doubt that some of them slip through. What's more, it's completely exhausting to deal with the problem. I know for sure that many teachers just ignore papers they know the students didn't write. And there have been a couple of instances when I've been just uncertain and tired enough that I said "fuck it." We can't be superheroes. We do our best.
As I wrote to Won't Someone Feed the Cat: the world needs many, many more parents like you.
So on behalf of those of us who can now meet deadlines (in spite of our slacker ways in college), understand the importance of proofreading, and finally "get" the usefulness of many techniques we may have blown off in school - THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU DO. You may be reaching more than you realize.
I know someone who during the early 80's wrote term papers for athletes at the University of Wisconsin. Had her own office there and everything. Put her through school. Her title was "tutor."
I'm sure this is a practice that no longer happens ever ever ever, particularly in Division 1 college sports.
I often ignore what my boss at work is freaking out about at the moment, in favor of doing what I feel is important, and I'm one of the most productive and valued employees on my team. Sometimes you just have to throw out the rules and do your own thing. So long as they do it well, they should be rewarded, not punished.
With *2 I can't go into detail but had a graduate student who copied 60% of the paper from the website AND gave me the website address as a reference. I don't know why either. Sometimes people who do the wrong thing want to get caught?
And finally you are kinder than me allowing students to use email as a date/time stamp. If they want to turn in a paper late I give them until the end of the day the paper was due. They have to turn in a hard copy of the paper to my real mailbox before the department clerical staff goes home and locks the office doors. They also only get that privilege once. After that their issue is obviously no longer an emergency but a tendency towards procrasitination.
It helps to require all students to take a rough draft through revision that must be attached to the final draft. Of course they can plagiarize that too but their planning has to be more long term.
Aren't you glad the semester is winding down ;0)
I confronted both students after notifying the two instructors involved, and they quickly admitted that they had, in essence, copied from each other word for word, including incorrect idiomatic usages (which is what caught my eye originally). Why? They were international students whose culture had taught them that imitation was the best form of flattery. In other words, they had no clue what they did was considered plagiarism. In fact, each expressed surprise that they weren't rewarded for their initiative.
I think the university wound up failing each for that particular class but allowed them to stay in school.
Is there something wrong about wearing a cape and laughing maniacally?
You were deathly ill? Get a doctor's note. Can't afford a doctor? The student health center is free. If you're not sick enough to need a doctor, you're not sick enough to use that as an excuse. If you're TOO sick to get to campus to see a doctor, you need to be in the emergency room.
And yet they looked at me like I had three heads...
I'm teaching a mini-session now, and had an exchange in class with a student who somehow wanted spelling and grammar not to count on their in-class writing and kept trying to talk her way around that. "In other classes, we get time to read over what we write before handing it in." Me: You know you have twenty minutes, so you can plan to have a minute or two for that. Nevertheless, I agreed to call a five-minute warning. (There's a large clock in the class room.) Even then, she persisted, until I finally asked, "What else are you hoping to accomplish by pursuing this?" No response.
Another thought--I can't help but think that plagarism is good training for modern journalism. I recall two reviewers on opposite sides of the country using the phrase "faux-Jamaican patois" to describe the speech of a Star Wars character when the new ones came out. Sheesh. Like no one would catch that.
This is exactly the kind of message a teacher needs to hear, even if it's not directly from her own students. Thank you.
Craig: if it were up to me, any kind of plagiarism would result in expulsion. But it doesn't. Even repeat offenses often don't. Colleges need bums in seats.
Existence: Absolutely not. I assign the topics I do for a reason - they are meant to reflect things that students are supposed to have learned about throughout the course. For example, in the paper I was thinking of when I wrote #5, the student had written an excellent analysis of one of the novels, but the task was to synthesize understanding of at least two of the novels. She got a 50%.
Mal Beck: Thank you!
I cannot possibly enumerate here all the instances I've had like the one you describe for #2. It's too disheartening.
As for the email time stamp, we used to have a system whereby students could get their papers time-stamped at the print shop, but understaffing means that they will no longer do that for us. The email backup is a compromise.
I know there are many teachers at all levels who are struggling to get this stuff through kids' heads. In some cases, it's working.
Mal Beck: I will refer you to the following story which is eerily similar to the incident you describe, the only difference being that both students submitted the papers to ME:
http://siobhancurious.wordpress.com/2007/10/02/another-cheating-story-part-one/
http://siobhancurious.wordpress.com/2009/03/29/the-limits-of-compassion/
5. You never say in plain language, over the course of eight pages of single-spaced 10 point font, what the point is.
4. You've given a meandering brain dump rather than an analysis.
3. You've left out supporting material, including major references; alternatively, you've wasted an entire page on references in a non-survey paper.
2. You haven't told me why I should care about your work, and the result is that I don't care about your work.
1. English is not your native language. It is mine, unfortunately for me.
This is a bit tongue in cheek, and it's a bit off-topic for Siobhan's excellent post, but I was just thinking about what bugs me...
http://siobhancurious.wordpress.com/2009/04/01/if-you-use-this-phrase-in-your-essay-you-will-fail/
I'm a lawyer, and I know 90% of my clients are lying to me. But if I assume that they all are, I'd better find a new line of work. There's just two sides to every coin. For every kid that isn't following instructions, there's one that's doing it on purpose because he thinks the instructions are stupid, or because he'd rather argue the other position on a paper, or whatever. I imagine that good teachers would realize the difference, while the jaded wouldn't.
Please realize that I'm not saying students don't make up bullshit excuses to get around due dates, attendance requirements, or whatever. The discussion just reminded me of a situation from my past, and that not all teachers/professors walk on water.
Wow. I read your cheating incident from the link you provided, and I did have echoes of deja vu. Eerily similar, indeed. The primary difference in my case was that I never had to go to any mediation since the two students involved readily admitted their complicity, innocent as it might have been.
On the side bar of effective teachers, I was always considered a good writer in high school, and in my final semester there, my English class was introduced to a student teacher who would teach us until graduation. She was cute as hell, and given that I was the typical testosterone-influenced teen, "what a bonus!" I mentally shouted. She turned out to be the toughest teacher I'd ever had (and would have until grad school). She bled all over papers. She challenged us. She would say, "You think you know how to write? You haven't seen anything until you get to college." Though her name is now a foggy memory, I am forever thankful for her nose-to-the-grindstone approach. . .oh, and for her mini-skirts, too.
I just finished teaching a dual-credit( I am a college instructor for a local college) course for a local high school . I began in the spring semester, after the previous instructor left. The students were used to receiving As and bouquets for whatever they turned in, and were horrified to receive Ds and Cs for substandard work. One student asked me if I knew English was her second language, and was visibly upset when I said that yes, I did, but this course did not have an ESL track. I am so tired of hearing "Why should punctuation/grammar/syntax/formatting matter if you can understand what I am saying?". How about - because of the lack of proper punctuation/grammar/syntax/formatting I CAN'T understand what you wrote.
I simply don't accept late work. It is in my hands by the end of class, or it's a zero. End of discussion. I tell them they can send it via parent or carrier pigeon, but it had better physically be in hands. I also don't give retests without firm evidence of a dead relative or hospitalization. I once had a student bring me a note from the ER - the only problem was the time stamp said 14:20, and the test was 8:00 a.m. He didn't know that I was a military brat.
I also had a case when I was teaching AP English where 2 students in a class of 15 turned in papers which were identical except for one sentence. They wanted to know who had turned them in, since obviously I couldn't figure out on my own that they had identical papers. I get particularly peeved when students assume I'm stupid.
It's a struggle, but I have a file of notes from the students I taught in private school. Once they hit college, they were very grateful for my refusal to let them slide by with sloppy work.
I had a student cheat in a creative writing class this term. Really? Come on now! I couldn't find it but you know, I knew. So, FAILED.
Perhaps someone will write an article about the wrong-doings of those in the teaching profession! As a former HS science teacher, it took a great amount of time and effort to "un-teach" all of the misconceptions and out-right fallacies that other teachers had taught my kids.
I love your posts. Thanks for your perspective!
I'd love some advice. I'm not an educator (but I fully appreciate how difficult your job is). I'm a mom of a soon-to-be middle-school kid, and I edit books for a living. I'm always torn when I "help" my son with his work. Do I point out all the errors before he turns it in, so it looks to a 5th grade teacher like the kid's editor-mom went at it first, or do I leave all the errors there so the teacher knows what my son's real work looks like?
I'd like to drill all those grammatical rules into his head, but it's not fair to let him turn in my corrections as if they are his own work. But it also irks me no end to see him not find the errors.
Advice for the trying-not-to-be-a-helicopter-mom?
once in HS I wrote well written essay & the teacher took me out of class and accused me of not writing it. that unfair event is indelibly seared into my memory. he said, nobody has ever written like that in his classes. well, am I responsible for the mediocrity and shoddiness of others? I told him I did, and he backed down. is this any way to teach a class? maybe if he had ASKED me with respect.
do the words "false positive" and "false negative" mean anything to you, or did the PTB (powers that be) skip that part of your own illustrious education?
dont feel bad, the rest of the US has missed out on that lesson too. and hence, our years, now stretching into a long era, of political quagmire and dysfunction.
I sympathize. Really, I do.
I do have some advice about that. First, I'd talk to your son's teacher and ask what he/she considers to be appropriate parental help. If it's still not clear, you could try this: one way we encourage tutors to help students is to have the tutors underline student errors and have the students correct them themselves (I also do this with any student papers that are eligible for revision - I underline errors instead of correcting them.) The tutor can go over the paper with the student once corrections have been made, and help the student understand any errors he/she can't fix, but it is the student, not the tutor, who's doing the correcting.
Your attitude toward this is so responsible! I applaud you.
7. Don't ask for hard copy. If you want hard copy, print it yourself. The reviewer list for this document is 23 people, and the document itself is 173 pages long. Do you know how long it would take me to print and/or xerox that?
(Another would be "PLEASE don't provide proofreading comments. We have an actual editor for that. Technical comments only.)
It got so bad right before I got out of teaching that I wouldn't correct a paper past the second page. If students didn't care enough to proofread, I certainly wasn't going to expend the energy. Each semester, I inched closer to scrawling, "Die, O butcher of the sacred mother tongue!" on essays in red, red ink.
The only problem I see with this is that those who need to see it probably aren't reading Open Salon.
I remember a high school non-fiction writing assignment for which I received an A+ but also the comment, "I hope I can get you to write some non-fiction this year." I stayed after to tell the teacher that everything in the essay had really happened. She laughed and told me not to worry, that she'd found it very entertaining either way. She'd been my favorite teacher up to that point. It hurt my feelings that she could so casually call me a liar.
I tell my students, "Once I've had your paper for two weeks, you can harass me all you want. Until then, don't ask." They usually respect this, and if someone misses it or forgets and asks, I ask the class, "What's the rule about asking for your papers?" "Two weeks!" they cry.
Rubrics are invaluable, although there are always some students who will argue about anything. "I find you take off a lot of points for things that aren't important," one student spat, and then I had to do the whole, "I don't take off points; you EARN points" speech, which is always tedious.
Mistakes happen. I once told a student that he had gotten too much help with the rewrite of an assignment, and I didn't believe it was his work. He was very upset. I took the original and the rewrite home with me and examined them again. In the meantime, he wrote me an email telling me how hurt he was. Upon a third examination, I decided that, although it was quite possible that someone else had done the rewrite for him, I wasn't absolutely sure one way or another. I wrote him a note of apology.
Yes, teachers do things that hurt our feelings. I always find it interesting that people seem to carry those hurt feelings with them almost as tenaciously as they do the memories of bad things their parents did. This thread is a good example - a number of stories have come out about "things my teachers did to me," and the pain over them seems as raw as if it happened yesterday. Why is this?
As a teacher, and a human being, I have had to work hard to overcome the fear that every move I make has the potential to scar my students for life. Most teachers (there are exceptions) do their very best to be fair. They make mistakes. Sometimes they even say things that are really not appropriate (as in the case of the teacher you describe) but without ill will. The best we can hope is that someday, when our students grow up, they will have the capacity to see us as fallible human beings who were trying to help, and will not carry resentment forever over the false steps we inevitably make from time to time.
LOL! I'm so cranky these days, I just tell them not to ask; and the class cry when someone inevitably does ask is, 'DON'T ASK!!" I have had students ask me while they were bagging my groceries, in the gym where I work out, and--I AM NOT KIDDING--from the stall next to me in the bathroom. Part of making the students feel equal at our small college campus is that faculty and kids tinkle together. Okie doke--all posing stripped away, literally. But that little voice from the stall next to me chirping, "Hey, have you graded my paper yet?" is also the story I tell my students when I glower at them the first day of class. They gasp. They laugh. And so do I.
Sometimes I think it's just their way of making conversation. You know, like, if we don't go to the football games or watch Gossip Girl, what are they going to talk to us about? "I know - my paper! That's something we have in common!"
When they ask about it the class after they submitted it, if I haven't given the "two weeks" speech yet, my standard response is, "Oh my God, no. Are you kidding me?" That usually gets a laugh out of them, and they don't ask again.
Number 1 with you is No. 1 with me as well. I warn students by explaining plagiarism to them and then calmly telling them what will happen if they turn in a plagiarized paper. First, I will make getting them suspended my top priority in life and I'll run them through the bureaucratic ringer if I can't get them suspended. Then, I explain my views on sadism as an element of good teaching in the sense that good teachers provide a great deal of support for students who are engaged with the class but sadistically enjoy failing students who don't come to class, don't do the work, or plagiarize. I might also let slip that I played linebacker in high school and that I was a little bully on the football field who got thrown out of two games for dirty play.
Of course, some students still plagiarize despite (or because of) the intimidation. So I have to make good on these threats once or twice a year.
I'm more loose on my expectations about spacing, ink, and structure guidelines, due dates, and things like that. But I do require a hard copy from students who turn in their papers by e-mail. I just go nuts if I have to spend too much time in front of a computer screen.
Going back to Mishima666, I'd have to say that student writing is better than it was when I was in college from 72-76. At least my students are writing better than I did. I'm at a regional state university and plenty of my students are writing better than I was at St. Lawrence U (about 90 miles from Montreal) or my first couple of years of grad school. But I think that's more because we now require a lot more writing of students now than when I was in school. Taken altogether, I require my intro students to do 25-30 pages of writing a semester. It's hard to rememer, but I'm not sure I did 10 pages of writing in my intro classes. The same's the case with advanced classes. When I was a student, I used to do my 10 page papers the night before they were due. Now that I'm a professor, I make students do paper proposals, progress reports, first drafts, and second drafts and I'll push them into doing third drafts if I think the second draft is promising (or disastrous). Even if my students did each of these the night before they were due, they'd still be working four or five nights on writing to the one night I worked on mine. I can see where technology would help make this possible, but it's because the ease of the technology creates an opportunity to increase the work load.
Anyway, a thought-provoking post. Rated.
@Dennis--the college I went to, a lot of the students did leave the house that way.
Admittedly, I went to an artsy fartsy school (fine, Sarah Lawrence) where we didn't see grades on our papers, we got extensive comments. I found this extremely useful and far better than a letter grade. Even for classes, the profs wrote detailed evaluations. Grades existed, but you had to ask for them. And I don't know that many people who asked.
However, our classes only had 15 people in them and it costed like a zillion dollars to go there. Still, I'm just sayin'. It's a shame that the vast majority of profs have to put up with that kind of BS.
My essays certainly got better as a result of computers and my HS teachers put up with a lot of really bad typing and white-out and hand written corrections (and I couldn't write as small as the type on my typewriter.)
I also had a lot more sentences that were convoluted, as I'd tend to revise as I typed and if I had enough of sentence started, I'd finish it the way I wanted it to end, when I should have gone back and erased.
I got decent grades on my papers and never a comment about the problems that my mediocre typing and hatred of retyping caused.
Format matters a LOT more for by 6th grade daughter. Then again, when my kids saw a typewriter in a museum, they thought it was really cool, strange and interesting. I thought, God! How very, very glad I am that the computer was invented!
All I hear when teachers say stuff like that is, "It doesn't matter to me if you learned it, my convience is more important to your grade." It's ink. I understand that it's harder to read but it's a teacher's job.
I had a teacher who had a problem with pencil. If you turned in a paper in pencil, he'd issue an F without reading what the paper said. As rediculious as possible. Sometimes there isn't a pen to be had and sometimes the black ink runs out and there isn't a replacement at 1am or the family can't afford a refill. Does any of that change if the student knows or doesn't know the subject? I think not.
I wish teachers spent more time worrying the content than the look. I know it's hard to read the same paper over and over and over again but come on now, you assigned the paper.
It is possible to read a paper without printing it out. A teacher can even make notes using any word processor. I'd love to give you a lesson, if you want one.
Someday, you'll be looking for a job. (I'm assuming you don't have one now, because if you did, you would already know many of the things I'm going to say.) You will send your potential boss a resume in green ink with wonky margins, or you will email a resume when you have been instructed to submit one by mail, or you will otherwise ignore the instructions you have been given. And then you'll wonder why employer after employer does not call you back.
Or you'll get a job, somehow, and one day your boss will walk into your office and wave a memo you wrote in your face and say, "Didn't you go to school? Didn't anyone ever teach you how to format a document? Why didn't anyone teach you how to spell 'ditto'?" Or she'll call you into her office and say, "This is the third time I've asked you to submit a hard copy of a document to me, but you insist on sending them to me by email and expecting me to give my feedback that way. I have 75 documents to review, and I would like to correct them in the way that is most expedient for me. Everyone but you understands this. Why should I keep you on?"
Proper formatting is about consideration and respect. (And, in the case of double spacing, about giving your reader room to make comments and corrections.) My request that you format properly is only incidentally about my own convenience. It is also about the convenience of every single person with whom you will communicate in writing for the rest of your life. It is about you demonstrating what you learned - I am an English teacher, and formatting is part of what I teach you. It is also about you demonstrating clear, respectful, considerate communication. It is my job to teach you how to do this, so in the future, your employers, customers, employees etc. do not think you are careless and lazy.
If you don't show that respect and conscientiousness toward me, it makes me mad, but the most it's going to cost you now is 10% of your grade. In the future, it's going to cost you much, much more.
I'll chime in here too, in support of Ms. Curious. I am an editor for a small publisher. We have our submission guidelines on our web site. They're there for a reason. I am always amazed at the number of competent adults who want to write books who can't follow the damn directions.
The 12 point, double space, one-inch margins, Times New Roman are standards for a reason. In publishing, it means I can look at the length of a manuscript in pages and do a rough guess of how many pages in a finished book. If it's in a wonky font with wonky margins, I can't estimate. I shouldn't have to explain that on the web site, however. Just follow the damn directions.
Paper and ink costs money. If an author submits a PDF when we asked for hardcopy, that author is asking the publisher to spend money on ink and paper, just to read the submission. When a manuscript is 400+ pages, that's a lot of money, given the size of our slush pile.
As well as estimating book length, the double space layout means I can write edits on the page.
No, I will not read a submission on the screen. My eyes are tired enough.
I don't want the submission bound in a book printed by the local Kinko's. I can't take out a chapter and fax it to my boss, I can't run the pages through the photocopier. I want unbound sheets. I want a page number on every page in case I drop it. I want the author's name and the book title on every page. This isn't hard.
Again, just follow the damn directions. Not doing so means we will not give the author's submission the reading it might deserve. Not following the directions says "I'm more important than you" to the publisher from the word go, and tells me something about my ongoing relationship with that author. Can they meet a deadline? Can he work with me and not oppose every single change I propose?
College is training for life. There are a lot of rules in life that might seem arbitrary. Usually they are not. Find out what people ask of you, and do it, or you won't get the results you want.
A very clarifying real-life example; thanks for that.
If one of my employees gives me green ink, I'll tell him to change the ink in the machine. No biggie. I don't dock his pay or lecture him about it. It's rediculious.
If I got a resume in green, I might wonder but I'm not going to pass on a good person because their resume is in a strange color. I'm intersted in finding the best people, not the best inked people.
Your comments remind me why there is such a rift between the business world and the academic world. I used very little of the formatting in high school in college, even though that's why my teachers said they required it. I don't use any formatting I learned in college as a professional writer or in my business, even though teachers said that's why they required it. Turns out, my high school teachers had no idea what college would require and my college professors had no idea about the business/professional world.
In the real, non-academic world, bosses generally care less about the color of the ink. It isn't a sign of respect. My employees respect me by following my policies, doing great work and making my customers happy return customers. If they use green ink to do that, who cares. Having fits about the color of ink is a great way to drive the best people out of your business and offer inferior services to your customers.
It is your job to measure the amount of learning, not measure the amount of respect. I don't think it's necessary for me to respect my teacher if I turn in my work, learn, participate, and prove it to the teacher.
As for the publisher, that is a different thing totally. The publisher's job is not to measure what is learned. That is a teacher's job.
I love the copied paper bits (I google lines of text constantly and find them straight off wikipedia...they don't even try to be creative with their deception!) and the random thoughts & structure guidelines. I assign a formal essay, I get numbered paragraphs. How does this work?
Thank you--as I'm about to grade 100 research papers and 100 final exam essays, I needed the humor! And you delivered!
P.S. I've had students turn in a paper where only two pages printed and the rest of the paper wasn't readable because the ink had run out. I think students sometimes forget that their paper isn't the ONLY paper we are reading.