Much Like a Mogwai...

...shouldn't be allowed to eat after midnight, I shouldn't be allowed to grade papers after, say, 4am. At this time, I do not retreat into a mucousy coccoon and emerge later with more scales and a shock of white mohawk. Instead, I write things on papers that might make my students question my togetherness, my--O how to put it eloquently?--my I'm-not-crazy.

I graded final drafts of my students' argumentative syntheses tonight, far too late as unity would have it. My process consists of referencing previous drafts of papers while grading revisions. I look over the old draft real quick like just to refresh my memory of how well-off or doomed-off the student is. I usually flip right to the back page to read my maniacal, red-penned end comment. The following is one of my end comments for which I have only a faint recollection:

"Tweak things further to make this paper feel driven by your argument. Right now, it feels like more of a critique of a subject, as in:
Here's an orange. I think oranges are great.

Instead, your paper should feel like:
I think oranges are great. O here's an orange. Isn't that great?

Does that make any sense?
Jared"

While I don't really remember writing this, I remember thinking "I'm going to have to remember this."

When I more-or-less unconsciously end-comment in this fashion, am I doing this student any good at all? Was I to begin with? I think, maybe, the orange example might have helped: She's an A-student. Sometimes, though, I think I might be better off dousing myself with water, watching my spine bubble and spout larval eggs that will later, after sufficient incubation, spawn bizarro multiplications of myself. But that's what teaching's all about anyway, right?

Mace...out