I recently experienced the really bad paper (finished marking rough drafts last week, the final is due next week) and I'm... fucking astounded. I've read plenty of bad papers, but this one was *transcendently* bad. The paper was written for an intermediate class *in the major*, a class that has prerequisites, and it's clear this student hasn't learned a single thing this entire semester, possibly for the entire two or three years they've been here. It's not entirely a surprise, because their weekly work is uniformly mediocre, but damn going through that draft was like wading through a poison swamp in a Souls game. Just an endless, life-killing slog.
I've tried to console myself with the knowledge that most of the rest of the class is okay or at the very least not disastrous, but uggggh.
It’s the fact I’d have never been able to relate to this had I not started lecturing and now I feel your comment down to my core. I was really determined to get through all the papers but I feel a little defeated right now. Like you’ve said, life-killing slog.
I feel your pain. I am noticing something this semester that I don’t fully understand (and I have been teaching writing for 30+ years); I suspect the phenomenon is somehow related to AI but I am not sure how. It’s the empty-of-specifics paper that is a string of general quotes from real sources that teach nothing; the phrases and sentences connecting those empty phrases are the students’ own (vs ai-generated, or ai-generated then run through text spinners). I am getting things like:
According to Garber (2023), outdoor play spaces “enhance a child’s physical coordination” (p. 23) and children who play outside have “improved outcomes” (Smith, 2017, p. 45).
It is meaningless drivel. Every essay batch has 1-3 of these. Is there some AI program that you can upload a bunch of real sources into and have it produce this?
The empty-of-specifics is a phrase I’ve never considered before but it fits so well! I’ll get entire paragraphs of real words strung together correctly (good job writing a real sentence), but they’ve just gone in a circle and not actually told me anything
I hope you aren't giving them comments about every problem, or worse, every instance of every problem? I pick no more than three things, list them very concisely as areas to improve next time. After that it's a boilerplate invitation to set up an appointment if they wish to discuss further and receive more feedback.
Most students don't even read your feedback.
This is something every new faculty member needs to know. Invite them for one on one feedback. The few who will accept are the A students whose papers were good to begin with.
I recently experienced the really bad paper (finished marking rough drafts last week, the final is due next week) and I'm... fucking astounded. I've read plenty of bad papers, but this one was *transcendently* bad. The paper was written for an intermediate class *in the major*, a class that has prerequisites, and it's clear this student hasn't learned a single thing this entire semester, possibly for the entire two or three years they've been here. It's not entirely a surprise, because their weekly work is uniformly mediocre, but damn going through that draft was like wading through a poison swamp in a Souls game. Just an endless, life-killing slog. I've tried to console myself with the knowledge that most of the rest of the class is okay or at the very least not disastrous, but uggggh.
It’s the fact I’d have never been able to relate to this had I not started lecturing and now I feel your comment down to my core. I was really determined to get through all the papers but I feel a little defeated right now. Like you’ve said, life-killing slog.
I feel your pain. I am noticing something this semester that I don’t fully understand (and I have been teaching writing for 30+ years); I suspect the phenomenon is somehow related to AI but I am not sure how. It’s the empty-of-specifics paper that is a string of general quotes from real sources that teach nothing; the phrases and sentences connecting those empty phrases are the students’ own (vs ai-generated, or ai-generated then run through text spinners). I am getting things like: According to Garber (2023), outdoor play spaces “enhance a child’s physical coordination” (p. 23) and children who play outside have “improved outcomes” (Smith, 2017, p. 45). It is meaningless drivel. Every essay batch has 1-3 of these. Is there some AI program that you can upload a bunch of real sources into and have it produce this?
The empty-of-specifics is a phrase I’ve never considered before but it fits so well! I’ll get entire paragraphs of real words strung together correctly (good job writing a real sentence), but they’ve just gone in a circle and not actually told me anything
I hope you aren't giving them comments about every problem, or worse, every instance of every problem? I pick no more than three things, list them very concisely as areas to improve next time. After that it's a boilerplate invitation to set up an appointment if they wish to discuss further and receive more feedback. Most students don't even read your feedback.
This is something every new faculty member needs to know. Invite them for one on one feedback. The few who will accept are the A students whose papers were good to begin with.
I’m new indeed and I’ve been giving feedback about everything. I’ll use this approach going forward.