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I just marked two essays for the same module - these were left over from a divvying up to co-workers, and there's another ten or so which were late which I won't burn the midnight oil over. Both of them had sentences I wanted to type into Google and I'm not sure I've much to teach either. But one of them is as high a first as I dare and one is as close to a fail as I dare go without having to do paperwork. I see bright things ahead for one of them.
Tonight, after a weekend of prevarication, I marked a batch of essays.
Students are their own worst enemies - increasing numbers are printing out single space and (I'm not sure why this annoys me but it does) on both sides of the paper. Italicising film titles (like I do on the lecture slides) seems to be out, save for where it is also in quotation marks, and those students who also italicise every quotation, date and reference irrespective of the source or its need to be italicised.
Too many of them are simply writing about a film (although at least aren't just summarizing the plot) as if the question I've set is just for the sake of my health. Which clearly it isn't. If the question is on the sublime, cognition, estrangement, define these terms. Maybe even use them occasionally.
Given the library resources (an atrium big enough to house 94 double decker buses) it is hardly surprising that dead tree references are rarer then hen's teeth, but despite precise instructions Kuhn and Redmond tend to be quoted rather than Bukatman or Sontag who wrote that chapter. If any of the students - notice that word there, any - had come to see me, I might have been able to point them towards the secondary literature on Blade Runner, The Matrix, Dark City. Some of it is on JSTOR.
And a special prize to a student whose six quotations were all taken from the lecture, despite all being from sources readily available on line thanks to Google or Gutenberg.
Students are their own worst enemies - increasing numbers are printing out single space and (I'm not sure why this annoys me but it does) on both sides of the paper. Italicising film titles (like I do on the lecture slides) seems to be out, save for where it is also in quotation marks, and those students who also italicise every quotation, date and reference irrespective of the source or its need to be italicised.
Too many of them are simply writing about a film (although at least aren't just summarizing the plot) as if the question I've set is just for the sake of my health. Which clearly it isn't. If the question is on the sublime, cognition, estrangement, define these terms. Maybe even use them occasionally.
Given the library resources (an atrium big enough to house 94 double decker buses) it is hardly surprising that dead tree references are rarer then hen's teeth, but despite precise instructions Kuhn and Redmond tend to be quoted rather than Bukatman or Sontag who wrote that chapter. If any of the students - notice that word there, any - had come to see me, I might have been able to point them towards the secondary literature on Blade Runner, The Matrix, Dark City. Some of it is on JSTOR.
And a special prize to a student whose six quotations were all taken from the lecture, despite all being from sources readily available on line thanks to Google or Gutenberg.
Then you get the essay which is stuffed to the gills with quotations - indeed you plan to made a note of some of them yourself for future reference (but probably won't get round to it). The referencing system is a little to pot, but still, there's the festure in that direction.
Alas, the essay is 2,500 words, but only about 150 of them are by the student. The rest is quotation. Each paragraph is a quotation, with an occasional comment by the student. And then a paragraph at the end claiming to have prven something when in fact I've just been shown the evidence at random.
A fail, I fear. A hardworking student, but did the wrong job. *Sigh*
Alas, the essay is 2,500 words, but only about 150 of them are by the student. The rest is quotation. Each paragraph is a quotation, with an occasional comment by the student. And then a paragraph at the end claiming to have prven something when in fact I've just been shown the evidence at random.
A fail, I fear. A hardworking student, but did the wrong job. *Sigh*
"Spielberg is a notorious film director."
"Hitchcock is an infamous director."
To me, Al Capone was notorious, Jack the Ripper was infanous.
OK, Spielberg is a notoriously sentimental director whose films reunite fractured families, Hitchcock was infamous for the way he treated actresses. But that's not what they mean in their essays.
Fatty Arbuckle, maybe he was notorious. All sorts of scandal about him. Mostly slander, mind. And maybe Ed Wood Jr or William Castle were infamous.
But at some point these words have come to mean well-known.
"Hitchcock is an infamous director."
To me, Al Capone was notorious, Jack the Ripper was infanous.
OK, Spielberg is a notoriously sentimental director whose films reunite fractured families, Hitchcock was infamous for the way he treated actresses. But that's not what they mean in their essays.
Fatty Arbuckle, maybe he was notorious. All sorts of scandal about him. Mostly slander, mind. And maybe Ed Wood Jr or William Castle were infamous.
But at some point these words have come to mean well-known.
I knew it, I just knew it. ( knew what? )
Edit: And now a phonecall from a student who wants to have a breakdown of their marks so they know how much work to do on their resit so they can scrape a pass. I can't find the marks in the pile on my desk, so they criticised my organisation. This from someone several months late in handing two essays in. Harumph.
Edit: And now a phonecall from a student who wants to have a breakdown of their marks so they know how much work to do on their resit so they can scrape a pass. I can't find the marks in the pile on my desk, so they criticised my organisation. This from someone several months late in handing two essays in. Harumph.
Edit: ( And there's more... )
I got called a dude on Saturday night, or, rather, Sunday morning. It's an occupational hazard that I'm going to run into students when I'm in town; it's a small place and I suppose they have as much right to be here as I have. As long as they let me get on with my stuff, and don't expect a bonus tutorial. In High Wycombe a couple of them worked in Tescos and I'd always end up at their till with a basket full of Reduced to Clear items. Ooops. 
Faintly embarrassing. There were some who used to hassle me for marks at the bus stop, but they got short shrift, and eventually learnt that they could at least ask how I was first.A couple of months ago in the Bell and Crown, a first year student asked me whether her friend should apply for the job of head of department. This was hardly sensitive, given that at the time our head of department was terminally ill, although still very much alive and considered to be still in the post. We hadn't even begun to talk about replacing him, and we still haven't, some weeks after the funeral. But most of the time they're content to let you get on with your stuff, although perhaps E was right to say he wonders about the wisdom of being seen inebriated in public by them. I'm not convinced I have any authority to lose, and, after all, they're all supposed to be adults. I'm trying not to let it cramp what little style I have.
One problem is that there are a lot more of them than there are of me, and I certainly don't recognise half their faces. Unless they are looking bored, in a row with others looking bored, of course. So someone or other said hi to me outside the Bell and a couple of weeks ago, and I've no idea who it was, but I made nice back. I almost always see someone I know at the Orange Street Music Club, but they tend to be the smarter kids, and are fun enough to hang around with. Some of them are friends of friends, anyway.
The weird thing is when, as happened on Sunday, they feel the need to yell out "That's my lecturer!". It's not so much the implication of ownership, as the strangeness of them wanting other people to know. Why tell the world? So it was on Sunday - "That's dude's my lecturer!".
NW was amused. "They called you a dude, man," he said. "You're a dude."
Maybe I have to consider the possibility that I'm popular with them. H'mm.
Meanwhile today we had a powercut( Uh? )
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