Man.

Well, I graded the research papers last night. (Took me most of the afternoon and evening to do it). Worst batch yet. There were two out of the fifteen that were good enough to earn a high B or an A, but the rest were pretty horrible.

One person cited 0 sources. None! This was something I'd been harping on since the start of the semester. Several other people omitted an important part of the paper (either the abstract or the description of the results).

One guy, referring to an area where he did his study that was an artifically created lake, called the structure that formed the lake a "damn."

I had several freak-out moments - it happens when I'm grading writing, especially when I already feel lousy (see previous post, and also we've reached the stage of the summer where Satan himself would complain about the heat). I would SLAM the papers down on the floor, jump up from my chair (this is why I grade these things at home), and stomp across the floor muttering imprecations and maybe shedding a few frustrated tears.

It's because a lot of these violate one of my deeply held principles - when you are faced with a big project, don't "phone it in." These papers are worth more than any test this summer (save for the final exam). They've had the entire 8 weeks to do them, and while I know that's NOT a lot of time, they've known about them since Day 1 and I've kept reminding them about the papers. I've offered copious amounts of help, reminding them if they have a hard time finding background information, or analyzing their data, or whatever, I have 10 hours of office hours every week, plus I make appointments.

I know people are going to be unhappy. But you know what? I don't care. These papers made ME unhappy. I can't stand it when people "phone it in" on the biggest project of the semester...I can understand doing the occasional lab or quiz with less than ideal attention, we all have busy lives...but a person needs to learn to prioritize and go, "This is a big honking deal so I better do my best on it."

It doesn't help that a couple people who did the worse papers are people who consistently piss me off by skipping class and then acting unhappy when they didn't get some vital piece of information. They even got up and WALKED OUT OF CLASS after the short exam yesterday...they KNEW I was going to be covering the last bit of new material for the final. (Well, there's stuff I'm covering that's not in the book/not on the online material, so they're going to pay for it).