I am evil. I have no soul

[robinturner]

Long-suffering readers of this journal will be familiar with how I get to choose funky themes for my English 101 courses. What I might not have mentioned is how the theme of the course tends to influence the way I behave. After all, I am immersing myself in a subject for ten hours of lessons and God knows how many hours of reading papers every week for fifteen weeks, which is enough to make anyone a bit obsessive. So when I was doing "Theories of Happiness", I was generally bright and sunny. "Decoding the Matrix" had me walking around in an ankle-length leather coat I'd had made just because I'm the kind of sad nerd who likes to look like a character in The Matrix. While doing "From Homer to Xena" I was resolutely martial for two semesters.

Now, doing "Monsters Among Us", I am teh 33vu1!!!11 For example, when a student was begging grace to hand in her assignment late, presenting various excuses, my response was "OK, I believe you. It's just that I have no sympathy." When she persisted, I said "Look, I'm evil. I have no soul."

Actually, that gives me an idea for how I can explain the discrepancy between the happy, jokey and generally kind-hearted person I am in class and the low grades and nasty comments usually found in my feedback on assignments. In class, I am (usually) Robin. However, when presented with a student paper, particularly one with a lot of grammatical errors, I lose my soul and become the sadistic vampire, Robinus.

On the other hand, to show that I haven't quite immersed myself in gleeful evil yet, here are some comments I refrained from writing on the last batch of essays (which were about zombies in Haiti).

[To a student who wrote something like "Zombis must not eat salt. Because, if they do they become concsous of there wrechted conditoin."]

"Go and eat some salted peanuts. Now."

[To a student who managed to write "the" as "de".]

"You may be talking about the Caribbean. This does not mean you have to write like Bob Marley."

[To a student who ignored my warning that philosophical zombies were irrelevant to the question.]

"You nearly convinced me of the existence of philosophical zombies. However, I remain unconvinced, because a p-zombie is supposed to display all the characteristics of a conscious being, and you have failed to do this."

Comments

[rainswolf.livejournal.com]

Do you teach grammar in some way?

On one hand I think it is somewhat unteachable. On the other hand, it's not fair to expect good grammar if students might not know the rules. It's a connundrum.

[solri.livejournal.com]

I have to teach a fair amount of grammar, because my students are not native speakers. In practice, I only get nasty when presented with the kind of grammar mistakes that show they haven't read their work before submitting it.

I don't think that grammar is unteachable, unless you have overly high expectations. With native speakers, I think it is reasonable that they should, after a year in high school, be able to punctuate correctly. With non-native speakers, I'm happy if they remember to put "s" on the end of verbs when required.

[ironed_orchid]

In class, I am (usually) Robin. However, when presented with a student paper, particularly one with a lot of grammatical errors, I lose my soul and become the sadistic vampire, Robinus.

All it took to lose his soul was a single instance of poor grammar. Perfect!

[solri.livejournal.com]

And here is a line quoted in infojunkies that made me do just that: "the Bush Administration is advocating for the liability protection to makers of the vaccine."

[ironed_orchid]

Argh.

It's the last class of baby logic today, and I have to teach them how to turn a complex argument into an essay with paragraphs. Should be a lot of fun.

I'm planning to use "It is better to be Socrates than a happy pig" as my thesis.

[latvianchick.livejournal.com]

This is perfect.
I'm teaching WWI this semester, and I caught myself buying a military-style jacket. I'm still [the grad student equivalent of] puppies and rainbows in class, though.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Don't forget to shout "Over the top!" when you start a mid-term.

[blorky.livejournal.com]

I'm curious about the essay question/terms. What were the students asked to write about?

[solri.livejournal.com]

They had a variety of choices, but this one was about the best explanation of the zombie phenomenon in Haiti.