The most hated of chores

I got up early this morning to hit the grading big-time. I sort of ignored it for a week while finishing up a paper of my own, but my students are anxious to know where they stand heading into the final exam. That seems pretty reasonable of them, so I promised to give it my best shot. Other than a couple of breaks to eat, I've been at it all day. My list of files (we use an online dropbox) has dwindled from 167 this morning (plus roughly 10 that people added during the day) to just 19 to go. But I've had it - those few unlucky students will have to wait for tomorrow morning! I aspire to someday be one of the mean full professors who gives all the grading to a TA.

Half the assignments were article analyses. I don't mind those so much - pretty straight-forward requirements that they either meet or don't and some general comment about the quality of the writing. The other half, however, are end of the semester privilege essays. The idea is to take everything we have learned about prejudice and discrimination and life chances throughout the semester, and write about how privilege has impacted their lives. Actually, some of these end up being pretty darn great for college freshmen. One kid opted for humor and compared stratification to being assigned a piece or set of plastic silverware to eat the burrito of life with. He even worked sporks into it. Some of them share an experience in life where they saw someone else discriminated against and realized life isn't fair, and most talk about how difficult it is to admit that they enjoy advantages other categories of people don't. There are the handful that don't think at all and just regurgitate the defininitions they've learned in class.

But then there are the ones that make me grit my teeth - the "poor me with no privilege in the world" essays, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of authors of those essays are white, middle-class, college attending students. We go through tons of stats through the semester looking at who actually fits the definition of poverty, how many of them actually are working poor, how poverty impacts different races differently, the myth of the welfare queen, and what standard of living government benefits actually provide. And after all of that, about 10% of students insist on believing that poverty is purely a laziness issue. Sociology isn't for everyone, to say the least. I'm sure these students wander around shaking their heads about silly, liberal Ms. Brame, thinking that discrimination and lack of opportunity still happens in 2008. I am pretty liberal, but I still don't think it's asking too much for a college student to focus on the benefits they've received in their life for 2 pages. Double-spaced, even!

Normally all this would put me in a really bad mood, but I've been playing Yahtzee while grading, and I just won 740 to 255 after rolling yahtzees on 4 of my first 5 turns. I'm just going to quite while I'm ahead. :)