Worst Professor Ever

People say, “Don’t be hard on the New Kids [on the Block], Bill. They’re good kids. They’re role models.” When did banality and mediocrity become good examples for your children? They are demons sent to the earth to LOWER THE STANDARD.

–Bill Hicks, Revelations

If you don’t already smoke, grading papers gives you a great reason to start. Drinking would obviously impair your judgment, but then again I can’t imagine why the students would have a problem with that. A shot of Old Grandad can only improve your outlook on their carefully plagiarized term papers.[1]

Einstein famously said that insanity was “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” You’d think that would be obvious, right? But once you start grading, you’ll understand why Einstein was such a freaking genius. Most people will just keep doing the same thing – marrying strippers, eating McDonald’s eight times a day, doing shitty work – no matter what any doctor, lawyer, or boss tells them.

But you, the teacher, are expected to defeat human nature — and unlike them, you are expected do your best. You carefully choose just the right words (“This is lame” is not acceptable, pre-tenure), diplomatically addressing the failings of their work (“A paper requires a thesis. And a bunch of paragraphs after it.”), even throwing in a few compliments if at all possible (“Love the cover art, Billy!”). Good feedback takes a helluva lot of work, especially since you’ve got to worry[2] about all those learning styles – should you go verbal? Visual? Venn diagrams? Semaphore?

The result of all that careful obsessing? Nothing. Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nada. Students never listen, insisting on the validity of their own “outlook” on grammar – your, I mean, UR stupid insistence on not using text-speak is totally interfering with their, like, personal style and stuff. I’m not even kidding with this one: I can count on one hand the number of students who have improved as the result of listening to feedback.

Since grading already feels like you’re talking to yourself, it’s not too surprising when it turns into an argument with your own psyche, which says:  “Wow, what a monumental waste of time. Seriously, what are you even thinking, doing this shit? Give up now and go into real estate, or dog grooming, or anything else.” The best part? Unlike your students, you’ll get the message loud and clear.

You want to know something else that’s awesome? A student who tanks and assignment, or better yet a test. God, you love every failure and want to kiss test no-shows on the lips for all those easy zeros you put in your gradebook. No, not because you’re a horrible person,[3] but because the University keeps tabs on your grades. If your grades are too high they screw up the department’s average.[4] So you can’t help but feel a little relieved when somebody flunks spectacularly.

Meanwhile, no one actually believes in standards anyway. Equating an “A” grade with actual excellence in performance is totally negative thinking, dude. Big focus now on A’s for effort. What’s next, A for having awesomest idea ever, then sitting on your ass and not doing anything about it? And then there’s the positive-enforcement-only crowd : “Wow, Big Jim, that sure is a nice clean cut you put in that lady’s jugular. It’s a real shame we’ve gotta take you in for First Degree Murder.”

Sure, you’re tempted to give the sweet kids A’s for effort. But you’re also tempted to make sure those weasley little suck-ups get a lousy grade. Which is why you do neither. And sure, it’s good pedagogy to note what students did right. It is also good pedagogy to point out what they did wrong. That’s how high standards work, in case anyone’s forgotten.

Maybe the real problem is this idea that everyone should be going for an “A” all the time.  “A” experiences should be few and far between – things to be treasured, really, like a steak that’s better than sex, or haircut that makes you irresistible to potential booty. But most of life isn’t going to be like that.

There’s nothing wrong with getting a B. Hell, a genuinely good life is going to fall in the B range most of the time, and most people don’t even get that globally. Steve Martin once observed that being great was easy, because it was a statistical fact that you’d just have the mysterious days (we’ve all had them) when everything clicked. It was being good, consistently, that required work. He’s exactly right; getting a B is valuable in and of itself, and it still requires more effort than most punks put in. And yet, it was basically the average at Vanderbilt, and is also the average at most really expensive schools. Hmm, I wonder if the cost has anything to do with the grade inflation? Nah, not with the admin breathing down our necks all the time.

I really do mean it when I say a B is a good thing.  You walk around demanding an A of everything in your life and you’re gonna make yourself and everyone else crazy. But if you’re a boss, a manager, or a teacher, it’s your goddamned job to require an “A” game, even if people don’t rise to the challenge.

And I’m still not going to tell you something is an “A” if it’s not.

And if anyone dares whine at me about high standards being elitist (which many seem to assume) I will just point to a reality show: Tabatha’s Salon Takeover. Tabatha Coffey loves hair, and she won’t stand for shoddy work. Also, as anyone knows, even answering phones can be done with various degrees of success. A department store salesperson can be anything from adequate to excellent. An accounting clerk can achieve Platonic perfection in the ledgers or be completely incompetent. A garbage man can follow proper procedure to the letter or half-ass it.  Every task can be done well or done poorly. That is all.

This is why standards, and grades, are necessary. But having high standards for fifty-plus people per semester? And finding out they aren’t going to listen anyway? That’s a recipe for suicide. Especially since they’re going to get their own chance to grade you.