I have been entering grades, which is a stressful process. All of those people on the cusp. Why are there so many people on the cusp? Clearly, I need to give more Ds throughout the semester to avoid this cusp problem. Do other people have this cusp problem? Do other people assign too many 70s and 71s on papers because they shy away from assigning big fat Ds and flag-waving Fs? Do other people feel terrible assigning Ds and Fs? I have no problem being very stingy with the As, but I am too generous with the Bs and Cs, methinks. I need to work on my bell curve.
One more set of finals to grade. . .
And I am much less grumpy now. I started thinking I might be low on iron, so I went and got a burger yesterday. And fries. And a coke. Something did the trick.
3 comments:
I'm stingy with the A's too. I don't usually feel bad giving D's if they're earned (they tend to go to students who have poor attendance; little participation; assignments that neglect directions but are "complete" in the sense that they look like an attempt at something with a beginning, middle, and end, as opposed to something obviously unfinished). It's more the C-pluses that give me pause. "But I worked so hard this semester, couldn't you bump me up to a B-minus?" is how the e-mail goes.
I so don't envy the grading stuff, though I do miss class discussions. (Getting paid to talk about literature and writing! Wow!)
My trick was to average the paper grades for cusp people and let the paper grade average decide which way it should go. My rationale was that though good grades on other stuff is great, the papers should weigh in most heavily in lit or writing courses.
I do hate grade conflicts so most of my course planning was focused on having enough back up plans that nothing was or needed to be negotiable (not that it ever worked very well).
Good luck! And congrats on being almost done! Finals such a breeze after oodles of papers.
Hang in there, GEW!!!
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