Busy Work

I hate busy work . . . we all k now what that is . . . we were given it in grade school . . . color by numbers . . . vocabulary word searches . . . writing definitions multiple times . . . in high school we had reading summaries and worksheets . . . and that's where busy work should have stayed. In K-12 . . . it should not be in the college classroom.

THIS IS COLLEGE!

I'm sitting here looking at this pile of busy work that i must "grade" as a Teacher's Assistant . . . and it's pissing me off. Why am I grading someones NOTES? They're notes! These are grown ups . . . if they can't take satisfactory notes by now then poo on them. Why am I wasting my time grading their scribble scrabble notes? Why am I grading someones essay brainstorm . . . it's a BRAINSTORM! FOR THEM! not for me! why do i care if they properly connect this bubble to that bubble? Huh? It's their essay! Do you know how manny times I've coherently brainstormed an essay? probably never.

You know why I'm grading this crap? Because it's the BUSY work that they've set up for EVERY STUDENT taking this course (all sections . .. hundreds of students). It's what I like to call a factory syllabus . . . everyone follows it. Instead of focusing on just getting the essays done by whatever means suit the student, they must go through these steps that may or may not fit with their own personal writing process.

The essay stuff doesn't even bother me as much as the need to grade READING NOTES . . . huh? is this college? is it?



I have more to rant about but I suppose I will save those things for when the semester is over . . . lets just say, that this TA gig is going to be very interesting . . . having a rough start this time around.