This Is Why Everyone Hates Grading

Grading my students’ final round of assignments has been a sorry mess. I’m not angry with my students for giving me wrong answers (which I respect) or writing about things that aren’t true (which I find amusing); I’m frustrated with them for being incredibly lazy. “I’m not angry, I’m disappointed” is the wrong type of vibe, because it’s more like I’m completely unable to understand where they’re coming from.

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I’ve been putting an enormous amount of energy into my classes. Competent teaching isn’t rewarded by most American universities, and “above and beyond” teaching certainly isn’t. I’m making interesting, fair, and accessible classes for the sole benefit of the students, but the work I’m doing feels pointless if the students aren’t motivated to benefit from it. If I’m going to keep doing this, I need to be more efficient in persuading students to take me and my classes seriously.

The strange thing is that I’ve never had this problem before, and I honestly have no idea why my classes this academic year have been so difficult (even before everything went online for the last six weeks). What I want to say is that I got a reputation for being “easy” and have therefore started attracting a certain type of student, but who knows? Since there’s no way to account for external factors, the only thing I can change is my own behavior and attitude.

This is why I’m working on concrete strategies to be less “kind” and “accessible” in the future.

Saber Rattling

I’m starting to think the lack of respect given to a professor who takes pains to be “kind” and “accessible” might be a cultural matter.

In cultures where social hierarchy is understood and valued, like Southern culture and Japanese culture, a calm and relaxed demeanor is generally perceived as a clear sign of authority, and the act of being generous is an obvious power play. Conversely, people who always seem to be neurotic or busy are perceived as having low status, and being unnecessarily strict is the mark of someone who has no real power or authority.

In my mind, saying something along the lines of “Yes, I can grant you a deadline extension” is a concrete indicator that I have absolute authority over a student’s life. If I can arbitrarily grant them a favor, I can just as arbitrarily use my power to make them suffer if I so choose. The implication is that there are no rules other than my own, as I am the highest and final arbitrator.

This happens to be true, by the way. At the moment I have no other “boss” or “supervisor” than the Commonwealth of Virginia. As indicated by my formal rank and title, I can essentially do whatever I want.

(To be extremely grim for a moment, I understand that many people were confused by how Larry Nassar, who sexually assaulted hundreds of students, was able to get away with it for so many decades despite so many formal reports. This isn’t a great mystery of human psychology; that’s just how the American university system works. If you called this system “medieval,” you would not be wrong.)

When I grew up in the South and lived in France and Japan, I never had any trouble with anyone understanding my generally chill attitude as anything less than a firm indication that I was in control. Even though I was younger then than I am now, I never had a problem with anyone mistaking me as “not taking things seriously enough” or “not being worth their time.”

To me, an overt display of dominance is the last resort of a weak and insecure person, but I’m starting to understand that this is what most Americans expect from authority. This seems absurd and inelegant, and I find the prospect distasteful, but I suppose I can teach myself to treat my students (and colleagues) like animals who constantly need to smell the testosterone in each other’s urine.

Being evil doesn’t come naturally to me, but I’m sure I can figure it out.