A crotchety, cracked young man

The grading fun just keeps on coming.

Other than the one plagiarized paper, the papers I graded over the weekend were basically pretty good. I felt like I was able to engage almost all of them, and that the students had interesting things to say — or at least that they understood the issues and were grappling with them, which counts for a lot in a field like this.

But this is the story of a pretty-bad paper. Not a really bad paper like the plagiarized one, but a pretty bad one. It was about six pages long, instead of the assigned 8-10, and it had gigantic spaces marking out main sentences under consideration. The paragraphs were double-spaced, like they were supposed to be, but he did double-paragraph breaks on each side of these sentences. So consider a point where he could’ve written something like this:

According to Stevenson’s theory, ethical judgments are expressions of emotion. How can we

evaluate moral language in conditional sentences in which it is clear that no emotion

is being expressed? “If lying is wrong, then getting your little sister to lie is wrong.”

Stevenson has a difficulty with this utterance because…

Instead, he wrote something like this:

According to Stevenson’s theory, ethical judgments are expressions of emotion. How can we evaluate

moral language in conditional sentences in which it is clear that no emotion is being expressed?

“If lying is wrong, then getting your little sister to lie is wrong.”

Stevenson has a difficulty with this utterance because…

Bad form. And to be honest, the rest of the paper was a pretty bad paper, anyway. So I wrote him this comment:

A first observation: Your paper is short, and you obviously know it. Your large paragraph-breaks for short, centered sentences won’t fool anybody. If you really don’t have anything more to say, then just turn in a short paper. Don’t pad.

In the case of this paper, though, I think there’s a lot more to be said.

I then went on to give a bunch of constructive criticism, and finished my comments thus:

In the end, this paper seems pretty sketchy. You have some interesting ideas about specific points, but I’m not seeing the big picture. Take the points you make and develop them into a cohesive argument for some point of view. Some of what you say also seems to be grounded in some fundamental conceptual confusions, which I point to above. It seems sometimes as if you’re not taking seriously what it would be like if moral judgments did not have truth values.

Please feel free to email me or come by my office hours if you want to discuss any of this further. Writing philosophy is a tricky task, and almost everyone needs some help figuring out how to go about doing it. I’d be happy to work with you on that if you’d like.

I gave him a ‘C’. Papers were returned this afternoon, and the fun began. The author in question sent me this email (God, I’m quoting a lot in this entry. Sorry):

Jonathan

I would like to make a couple of points about your comments on my Midterm

1) My understanding is that it is University policy that Grad students do not grade the work of other grad students, so I’m not sure why I am reading comments from you.

2) Of course I am aware that my paper was short. A point of advice, don’t use midterms as a venue for condescending and patronizing comments. It is unprofessional and simply bad form. The spacing is an artifact of the computer automatically double-spacing, and my not double checking its actions. I am at a loss as to what I was attempting to fool you with by using “centered sentences.” Only children think that large spacing and font changes make people believe that papers are longer than they are, and given my five years of teaching experience as a graduate TA in two different universities and as a high school teacher, I think that I no longer qualify as a child.

3) I would be happy to further discuss my paper with either you or Dr. [professor]. I can not attend your office hours. Would either of you be available on Thursday morning? I am free for the entire morning.

This paper was written by a *grad student*? I had no idea. And he’s right, I’m not supposed to grade those. Apparently, he’s an environmental studies student or something. I have no idea why he’s enrolled in an advanced undergraduate philosophy course. Also, I have no idea why he wrote me such a bitchy email. Was I supposed to *know* he was a grad student with five years of teaching experience as a graduate TA in two different universities and as a high school teacher? And if he *was* such a thing, shouldn’t he know better than to turn in a paper with gigantic spaces like that? And, for that matter, to write a paper that was not the worst paper that was actually written by a student in the course? And am I supposed to respect him *more*, now that he’s told me he didn’t look and see what the formatting looked like before he turned the paper in? I took a moment to swallow my incredulity, then responded: (I quoted from the email above — I will omit from those sections, since it’s right there.)

Hi [name],

> 1) [text].

I also have that understanding of University policy. The reason I
graded your paper is that I didn’t know you were a grad student. I’m
not sure what the best response now is. I will copy this email to
Professor Dreier right away to ask him his opinion on the matter. It
may be best to have you re-submit a clean copy to him and have him
grade it, but I just don’t know. I am very sorry for the confusion,
and one of us will get back to you soon.

> 2) [text].

I’m sorry that my comments caused personal offense, especially if I
drew the wrong conclusion about your intentions. In my defense, of
course I had no way to know how much experience you have with this
sort of thing. The margins looked padded, and for all I knew, you
were a freshman.

> 3) [text].

I have a course at 10:30 Thursday, so I’d be free to meet before then,
maybe at 10:00? Alternatively, since there is no class Thursday, we
could meet during the regular class hour, maybe at 3:30. The latter
is more convenient for me, but if you prefer the morning, that’s fine
too.

Jonathan

Jamie has since asked that the paper be re-submitted to him, which I think is the right call. Situations like this make me nervous, though, because even though it wasn’t designed that way, my call is being second-guessed. I gave the paper a ‘C’ — if Jamie thinks it’s better than I did, that makes me look bad. I really don’t think he will, though. It’s not a good paper.

But basically: what an over-sensitive, bitter person. I feel bad for him. Still, no need to take it out on me. (1) My comments were completely fair. (2) I had no way to know he was a grad student.