So it's that time of year again. A big pile of essays were dumped in my pigeonhole and I have two weeks to mark and correct over 100,000 words. YAY!

What's currently getting to me is that I'm reading the same essay over and over and over again (although a couple of people have managed to do it well). It seems like, instead of thinking about writing an interesting essay or even making an argument, the students have asked themselves what content they understand and what is the easiest way to include that content. As such, I keep on going through many words that say little at all.

I kinda get the impression that this way is how they are taught to write at A-level - with absolutely no critical thinking whatsoever, just the churning out of content that they heard in the lectures. What's even more depressing is how few turned up to my office hours for help on the essays. :-s

Anyhow, how's everyone else getting along? Any fun gaffes to share?

I think I'm in a good mood today as I've found them all surprisingly good (first year essays). Or maybe it's because I was told I was being too harsh in my marking last week (second year lab reports). No howlers so far, but lots of criticism in the lab reports about the task being long, boring and repetitive and the participants might have resorted to pressing buttons at random! (an admission of guilt do you think?!)

i find that they just regurgitate what was said in the lecture, with no critical evaluation, just descriptions of theories, with no supporting evidence. Ours are also asked to give case studies - and they have ALL used the one from the lecture :-s

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To be fair, do you not remember being an undergrad? Get the work done ASAP to a reasonable but probably not anywhere near excellent standard and you can get to the pub. That's what I was like anyway. Of course they haven't done a load of extra reading to find a good case study! At least half of them don't care about that module much and prefer other areas of the subject and of the few that do care - well they still want to finish the assignment quickly. I did very little reading outside of the lectures in my degree (MEng Mechanical Engineering) and I passed quite easily with a 2:1. I also rarely went to a lecturer's office, I went to my friends on the course first and it was only if we were all stumped that we descended on the lecturer! Turn out for tutorials was always about half the students (well it was for the half I went to). I often think that maybe I should have applied myself more, like I would if I was doing it now, but then I remember how much fun I had and decide the minimum effort was actually a good choice...

I appreciate it doesn't make it any more fun to read the same essay 30 times though! I've happily avoided any marking so far (despite it being in my contract as an RA) and I plan to keep it that way :-)

maybe we bring to it what we had to do in undergrad, because in my undergrad, if we didn't provide lots of evidence and read widely around the subject etc you would only scrape a pass (e.g. 41%)

Maybe, I suppose Engineering is somewhat different to humanities, but I still think many of them will just be doing the minimum so that they can get it done. You must have done that before surely?

Well, I never went to lectures or seminars, I found them dull and because everything was available on the net, I didn't see the point - I also had a habit of staying up til 4am every night, so couldn't get out of bed for 9am, 10am, or even 3pm lectures. Instead I put all my time into doing the assignments and revising, so using the online material as a guide and then reading around it. So whilst I was severely lazy in some aspects of my degree, I worked in my own style, which got me a good result in the end :p

Have a look at the flipped classroom (google it) it basically advocates doing things exactly how you did. Seems to make sense.

ooh I had a look at that and it looks like how I run my lectures - but now I have a name for it!

I'm marking late essays today....it's like they failed themselves. One had a 20 mark deduction - I knew within the first page they weren't going to overcome the deficit. Okay, onwards with a 15 mark deduction one....

Hah, it got 29 (not after the introduction). Wow, that's the worst mark I've ever given.

At least I know why the marking scheme distinguishes between a fail and a bad fail now.

I know it must seem crazy to all of you sitting behind a stack of sub-standard essays, but I have always dreamed of the day when I get to correct a student's work! (formally that is, not to help out a friend) :$

Naturally the reality of it is much less exciting, but I hope that some day soon I will get the chance.