A Report. By Specs, age 23.

The Spring quarter is over and I'm chugging through my students' final papers, grading them and tallying up their final grades. It's a numbing task. I fluctuate wildly between being impressed by what these students have produced after a ten week boot camp in cultural analysis, and hanging my head and renouncing any belief in my own ability to teach. I'm doing the latter at the moment. Here are some numbers for you: Papers about women in advertising: 3 Percentage of those which come to the conclusion that women are being exploited by men: 100% Papers about Christianity: 1 Papers with obvious Republican/Conservative bias: 4 Papers with obvious Democrat/Liberal bias: 1 Papers that claims FOX news is a "respectable" source: 1 Percentage of papers that still got A's because I'm grading easy after the exam took up all of my teaching-prep time: 75% But there are bright spots. I worked intensely with a couple of students who were very interested in their topics (and their grades), and their papers have turned out wonderfully. Working one-on-one (or one-to-one, as we're supposed to say -- it's more PC) with students is absolutely the most rewarding thing I do, and I wish more of them would take me seriously when I tell them to come see me with questions and problems. One of my ESL (English as a Second Language) students left me a note on the last page of her paper. It's things like that that make my hardened, bitter heart melt just a little, and help me keep believing that teaching might be a good way to spend the rest of my life.* *As long as I'm not teaching Freshman English Composition. I can only take so much.