Grading student work, like writing parking tickets or leveling property tax assessments, is not employment for the tenderhearted. No one enjoys grading assignments. The classroom itself is often a joyous place, with instructors and students striding together toward some enlightenment, but the evaluating of tests and essays and research papers turns those same instructors and students into adversaries, often leaving bitterness and hard feelings on both sides. What makes things sticky for the instructor is not just the subjectivity of the whole process but also the dazzling multiplicity of factors that clamor to be weighed before each grade is assigned. Semester after semester, I find myself buffeted and sometimes unmoored by my own shifting assumptions and expectations regarding the students and their relationship to the curriculum. I fail plenty of people, but it’s a struggle. There is something in the human psyche that shrinks at sitting in judgment of another’s efforts. I suspect that grading has been a sore point for teachers since Ichabod Crane hit the tenure track.
