# Marking University assignments... How boring! **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 18, 2004, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440 "2004-11-18T11:28:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Lars\_Aruns](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c68b51/32.png) [@Lars\_Aruns](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lars_Aruns)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/1 "2004-11-18T11:28:38Z")
There, I’ve just finished marking a large bunch of undergraduate assignments. Allow me to just say… How BORING! Well, at least they pay me a decent amount… Is there any PhD student around doing marking? Well, it does say “Mundane” and “Pointless” on the top… ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/2 "2004-11-18T11:34:57Z")
Been there, done that, raged at the idiocy of students. Apparently the fine art of writing a sentence is dead. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/3 "2004-11-18T11:37:48Z")
Been there, done that, and yep it’s boring. I found about 5 in every stack of 30 actually had something interesting to say. The only time I really had fun was when I caught one of them plagiarising - they’d lifted several paragraphs straight out of a subject dictionary, without noticing that the author of the article was her professor :smack: :wally ---
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/4 "2004-11-18T16:05:14Z")
You know what would make it less boring? Just give everyone the top mark. Then you don’t have to read them, and you’ll be really popular! Unless, of course, you have those pesky moral things… 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Angua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8baadc/32.png) [@Angua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angua)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/5 "2004-11-18T16:09:38Z")
Been there, still doing it. I’ve had more than one student tell me that 2x1=1. Would you believe I’m teaching degree level maths for physicists? ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/6 "2004-11-18T16:14:14Z")
I’ve got 105 undergrads this term. I feel your pain. I use a worksheet that divides the grade into mechanics and content. I have a grad student grade the mechanics. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/7 "2004-11-18T16:15:27Z")
I have to say, though, Google makes catching plagiarism much easier. Mostly because those that are too lazy to write their own papers are usually too lazy to do more than Google for relevant material and cut and paste from there. The spouse was tutoring a student last year who was working on a specific essay but who was also, shall we say, “academically challenged”. I did a quick Google, pulled up the most prominent site on the subject and told the spouse “I betcha she uses these paragraphs verbatim and without citation.” Three weeks later, guess what turns up in the student’s essay? Classic. ---
**Author:** ![ultrafilter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/3d9bf3/32.png) [@ultrafilter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ultrafilter)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/8 "2004-11-18T16:54:09Z")
I used to grade programming assignments. A bottle of vodka and some old Metallica goes a long way towards making it manageable. ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/9 "2004-11-18T17:09:27Z")
Ways to amuse yourself: o Keep a list of interesting misspellings. The professor’s name will usually appear in many amusing variations. o Be ever-vigilant against plagiarism. Google even mildly suspicious sentences. Be sure to examine all the hits carefully! o Here’s a handy time-saving idea! Write your most common comments backwards on the palm of your hand in water soluble ink. (My fave: “its=possessive of it. it’s= it is!”) When you have to add that comment to a paper, just lick the appropriate comment and press firmly on the paper. Re-ink as necessary. o When grading problem sets, with a little effort you can usually figure out exactly what button they pressed wrong on their calculator, and mock them—er, I mean, let them know, so they don’t make that mistake in the future. ---
**Author:** ![Angua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8baadc/32.png) [@Angua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angua)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/10 "2004-11-18T18:33:44Z")
I really really like your last suggestion **Podkayne**. I must remember it. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/11 "2004-11-18T20:05:06Z")
My brother’s lecturer had a pad of red ink and large rubber stamps with things like ‘Bullshit’. ‘Rubbish’, and so on. Apparently it made marking much more interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/12 "2004-11-18T20:10:49Z")
> [@](#): > > Keep a list of interesting misspellings. Those are the best. I have a kid in my Brit-lit survey this semester who turned in a paper with the arresting sentence “Sir Gawain is modest and humble to the point of self-defecation.” :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Manatee](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/50afbb/32.png) [@Manatee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manatee)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 11:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/13 "2004-11-18T23:23:33Z")
> [@Fretful Porpentine](#): > > Those are the best. I have a kid in my Brit-lit survey this semester who turned in a paper with the arresting sentence “Sir Gawain is modest and humble to the point of self-defecation.” :smack: I bet that’s hell on the old armor polish bill. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2004, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/14 "2004-11-18T23:25:47Z")
> [@Fretful Porpentine](#): > > Sir Gawain is modest and humble to the point of self-defecation It’s a relief to know I’m not the only one with that problem. :wally ---
**Author:** ![Giraffe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/giraffe/32/129_2.png) [@Giraffe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Giraffe)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2004, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/15 "2004-11-19T00:06:54Z")
> [@AngelicGemma](#): > > You know what would make it less boring? Just give everyone the top mark. Then you don’t have to read them, and you’ll be really popular! I had a quantum mechanics grader who did this. At first it wasn’t obvious, as we all did all the problems fairly thoroughly and thus weren’t surprised by our perfect scores. However, we were allowed to drop our lowest problem set grade, so on the last set I left several problems blank and peppered equations in other problems with nonsense variables and crazy leaps of logic (i.e. “I will determine if the operator is Hermitian by applying it to the squirrels outside and watching to see if any of them seem especially frisky.”) Got a perfect score on it, thereby single-handedly destroying the morale of my fellow classmates. See, the class was graded on a curve. My score proved that everyone was getting 100% on all their homework, and thus the only factor in our grade was the midterm and the final, thanks to our lazy-ass grader. ---
**Author:** ![Orbifold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/779978/32.png) [@Orbifold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orbifold)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2004, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/16 "2004-11-19T01:57:26Z")
I just stopped grading midterms just now. (I’m not finished, but I’m bored silly, so I’ll finish tomorrow.) So far, this midterm is turning out better than average: I haven’t had the urge to scream “Are you THAT stupid?” even once. (Then again, maybe I’m just becoming more jaded.) ---
**Author:** ![UncleRojelio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unclerojelio/32/3160_2.png) [@UncleRojelio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UncleRojelio)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2004, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/17 "2004-11-19T02:19:29Z")
> [@Fretful Porpentine](#): > > “Sir Gawain is modest and humble to the point of self-defecation.” [Related thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=287329) ---
**Author:** ![Angua](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8baadc/32.png) [@Angua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Angua)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2004, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/18 "2004-11-19T08:44:34Z")
> [@Orbifold](#): > > I just stopped grading midterms just now. (I’m not finished, but I’m bored silly, so I’ll finish tomorrow.) So far, this midterm is turning out better than average: I haven’t had the urge to scream “Are you THAT stupid?” even once. (Then again, maybe I’m just becoming more jaded.) Its probably the bcoming jaded. This is my third year of teaching maths, and whilst my students are still making the same mistakes as ever, I’ve lost the urge to scream “MUPPETS!” at them. Its either I’m becoming jaded, or as the boyfriend is guessing, the fact that my little brother is now one of them (don’t worry – I don’t teach him – he’s in a different class), they’ve somehow become humanised. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2004, 10:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/marking-university-assignments-how-boring/275440/19 "2004-11-19T10:12:32Z")
> [@Podkayne](#): > > o Here’s a handy time-saving idea! Write your most common comments backwards on the palm of your hand in water soluble ink. (My fave: “its=possessive of it. it’s= it is!”) When you have to add that comment to a paper, just lick the appropriate comment and press firmly on the paper. Re-ink as necessary. Hmmm…that _would_ save me writing “sentence fragment!” every three inches in the margins of some papers. I could also save time by making several photocopies of the section on semicolon usage from the style book and stapling it to the back of every paper. No one _ever_ uses them correctly. And it’s not just students; at the moment I’m revising old policy documents for a housing association and it’s like they were all originally written by Captain Carrot. Apostrophes are everywhere _except_ for possessives, and the use of commas seems downright random. Bewildering.