"I choose not to choose life" Irving Welsh-Trainspotting

I would like to take this point to apologize for not being all that web savvy. I don't know how to do html formatting or any of that. So that accounts for the ready made blog format and the lack of underlining and so forth. I'm working on it, people, I'm working it. If you would like to send helpful formatting tips, they will be accepted. Maybe not implemented but certianly accepted.

Ok so I finally started to grade papers, and now I know why I avoided it for so long. I always start off with hope. The hope after three years of teaching is that the papers won't be so bad that they will make my eyes bleed. I've only read three so far, and I can feel the red tears welling up as I type. I gave them student samples of the format I wanted, we discussed how to go about writing such a paper and what to include, I gave them a dozen hypothetical examples. I gave them a typed lengthy description of exactly what I was looking for in a paper. And do I get something even vaguely resembling what I asked for? No. The worst part is even the simplest part they screw up. They have to buy the MLA guide, and so I require that all works cited pages be in proper MLA format. (This is a university wide requirement, unfortuantely some of the teachers are rather relaxed about implementing it. However the student complain about having to buy the MLA so I try to make it worth their while every chance I get.) I've checked all the papers. Not a single one in MLA. It says in my syllabus all papers must be MLA format, it said in the paper description it has to have MLA format, on all their previous papers I made it clear they were being docked points for NOT following MLA format, and do they take five minutes out of their day to check MLA formatting? No. It makes me weep for the future.

And this is what has made me lose faith in humanity. After a year of teaching, I commented to a fellow teacher "You know, I've lost my faith in humanity. That's it." His response was, "You had faith in humanity?" And I told him, "I didn't think I did, but apparently I was wrong. I always believed that people, if properly motivated, could open a book and actually look something up.Take five seconds out of their day to get something done right." What I failed to take into account is that the proper motivation for opening a book these days is an electric cattle prod liberally applied to the nether regions.

And it's only one. Imagine how rosy and idealistic, I'll be after my second class.