TGIF

I am SO ready for this week to be over.

It's true that there were no classes on Monday or Tuesday. But while my students were enjoying their four-day weekend, I was frantically grading in order to submit my mid-term grades on time (as well as attempting to complete all the other items on my never-ending to-do list).

And when they returned to campus, the flood began.

On Wednesday, I had to speak with/counsel the two students who failed the research paper. Why did they fail? Because the point of the assignment was to compare two texts and in both papers, only one text was addressed. (And this was after I posted a two-page document of instructions.)

And another student (who really should drop my class) made an appointment to discuss hir progress. This student neither showed up for the appointment, nor cancelled it. (This student is still registered in my class.)

On Thursday, I had a steady stream of students coming to my office asking why I had docked marks on every question for which they did not receive full marks. Every question and every student.

And today, I managed to keep my temper for an entire forty-five minutes as one student politely, but firmly, insisted that on each of the questions where s/he had not received full marks that I should, indeed award those marks.

Why? Because this student did know the answer. S/he hadn't put those answers on the exam pages, but since the student possessed this knowledge and knew what s/he had intended to say, then, even if it wasn't clear on hir test paper, I should have awarded marks not according to what was actually on the exam pages, but according to what the student had intended to say.

I ultimately added one mark to the total exam grade. Which works out to an increase of 0.004% on this student's final course grade.

I am SO ready for this week to be over.