Oct 26, 2009

Student Reports

So today I began the arduous task of marking the 40-odd reports that have piled up on my desk over the last few weeks. It isn't actually that many and I could probably do it in about 2hrs if I could abide all the stupidity that is ingrained into so many of them.

Don't get me wrong. Some students are a delight to teach, fun to talk to and very intelligent. But there is always another end to the spectrum. Where the student ignores your instructions, cuts themselves and bleeds all over the lab. Or simply falls asleep in the fume hood (ask MSG). Anyway, it might seem that with these students that their reports will follow a similar pattern in which they neglect to read the instructions on writing up the report.

However, this is usually not the case. Where you may have a sociable, smart student in the lab it is often the case that they are sloppy with their reports and neglect to read the instructions carefully. Which is a shame as they are only marked on their reports. Conversely, the crazy ignorant student somehow garners enough knowledge of the English language to produce a decent report.

This isn't the case for all the students and is just an extreme case but it often makes me laugh, then cry then repeat the process as each surprise appears. I hate to admit it but by the end of this marking session I will probably be a deranged quivering heap incapable of human conversation. This is most likely also going to be due to the lack of assistance we have from teaching staff who lump the pracs on us and tell us to mark them without a marking scheme. I mean, sure we know how to run the prac, but c'mon, that means we have to actually do some work and figure out some answers. Seriously, don't these guys know we have blogs to write and facebook to check.

Just to make matters worse I have to feel sorry for the students who get poor marks so that I go back over the damn thing to see if I missed something only to find out that 'Nope, he's just an idiot' or 'nope they didn't just fill out the answer sheet and now I have to go read through the whole thing to find their answer'. I swear to god if the chemicals don't kill me this probably will or at least age/jade me to something more like the PhD students I remember coming through as an undergrad.

1 comment:

  1. Apparently this post was initially too racist for MSG. Well mate, just because it involves people from other races doesn't mean it isn't true.

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