I received one more essay via e-mail today, which means I'm only missing essays from a handful of students rather than half the class. Not bad, eh? I haven't asked for any excuses, but they've offered them readily enough. My favorite: "Every time I sit down to send my essay, I forget how to spell your name." Ha. So this is my first rant: How can I even begin to grade a paper I don't have? Enlighten me.
I feel your pain, Emily. The first read-through was a painful experience, as I kept slapping my hand on my forehead. I realized pretty quickly that I haven't taught them much--and definitely haven't covered citations thoroughly enough (I thought five times ought to do). A few are grasping the concept, so I guess the key is constant repetition. Incidentally, a member of the Collective Brain wrote a beautiful paper, and when I start to get frustrated, I look at her intro to make myself happy again. Woooo! Go, Brain! You did it, girl!
My personal pet peeve--and major rant--is about drive-by quotations.
INTRODUCE YOUR QUOTES, PEOPLE!
During the workshopping I pointed these out right and left. The students were doing a great job of finding them in each other's papers, and I seriously thought we had the quote concept licked. I'm still finding them, though. It's like they can't help themselves. Oh, yeah, we're going to cover direct quotations again. And again. And again.
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