Oh, I had such high hopes...

SO...I've fallen a little behind on blog posts. I was so certain I would spend spring break catching up on everything and gearing up for the big push to the end of the semester, but instead of chugging Coke and plodding through the entire stack of essays in one go, I ended up chugging Pepto and washing sheets all week (thanks, gastroenteritis).

However, I did get through enough essays to get a feel for what they're struggling with this time. Yes, they're having trouble making the page limit, but I was pretty clear after the last round that a paper not making length would not get a full grade, so at least they know what they're in for. The main issue with the essays is that many of them fail to take that final step of saying what the author is trying to achieve with the manipulative language. They give a lot of examples of manipulative language, and they do a good job of analyzing the different kinds, but they just don't seem to look at the bigger picture of WHY and to what purpose. They also seem to have a hard time distinguishing between looking critically at something a person has written and actually criticizing the writing or personally attacking the author. I always hated it when professors wrote "So What?" at the end of papers, but I think I may go get a sticker printed up (and while I'm at it, I'll get another one that reads, "Introduce your quotes!").

As for the TBA day, I handed out a half-sheet of paper with their mid-term grades, as well as what I was missing from each of them. I ended up answering questions about those for about twenty minutes or so, and then I let them go (although I did tell them if they wanted to stick around and workshop for the last thirty minutes, they could, and then they could go print up their revisions and get them to me before I left the Writing Center at noon. Nobody took me up on the offer, which tells me they were too sick of their papers to deal with them anymore).

Overall, the papers have been of a better quality--especially in the organization department--than the first round, which is encouraging. Let's hope the rest follow suit.