Search this site

I’m grading graduate student research papers this weekend, from my course “Medieval War and Peace.” It’s a nice change from marking up freshman composition papers. There are fewer egregious grammar issues and more attempts to say something of solid merit.

Sadly, though, not everything is different.

For example, these graduate papers were supposed to be 20-25 pages in length. It turns out that about 25% of them do not meet this most basic requirement (that’s actually quite a bit higher than the percentage among my freshman papers). And two of them are not only short, but short even after font-padding (wherein the student oh-so-cleverly uses a wide-set font to stretch the length).

I take the last point somewhat personal, as it supposes (to my mind) that I’m an idiot who doesn’t notice such things. Alas, it seems I do.

Similar Posts

• Student Publication Success
• Why My Uniform Doesn’t Include Weapons
• Grading to the Rockies
• Reflections on Robert Jordan
• Former Student Fun

Comments