I Wonder... What Was I??

I am currently 18 papers into my pile of 50, 12-page undergrad papers on the concepts of harm reduction, why it may be a sound drug policy, and how supervised injection sites encompass these ideals (or do not... depending on their stance).

This is my second term marking this course, which is entirely based on written essays (no tests of any sort) and I have come to recognize a few different kinds of students...

The Overachiever: This student includes a table of contents with their term paper. They send me e-mails asking if its ok if they go OVER the word count, and include pages of references when their required reading list for the unit was less than 10. These students argue with me when they get an A and feel like they should have received an A+.

The Underachiever: This is obviously, the opposite to the student stated above. This student only signs onto the web site once or twice a term... and only when an assignment is due. They only read (if anything) the abstract/conclusion of an article, not caring about the information that led the author to such. This student continually hands in work that is only 50-75% the required length for the assignment, with less than half of the readings included in their references, and lines like, "criminal prohibitions on drug use don't work", in their papers... without any sort of reason why or additional information. They don't bother to read over their paper before turning it in, so I see things like, "Marijuana prohibitionis notworking", or "Boyd said that ". It's ridiculous.

The Underachiever trying to LOOK like an Overachiever: These students are fun to spot. They are the ones who write a horribly philosophical paper that, in the first reading makes you feel stupid for not understanding all the big words and complex lines of reasoning they are using... but, after a second reading, you realize they are not saying anything, probably are best friends with a thesaurus, and only used support from the course materials (or any material for that matter!) only once or twice per page!

The ESL student who cares: There are a LOT of Asian students at SFU. Some of their families have been here for generations and they are just as "Americanized" as their peers, and some are first generation and still struggling to conquer the language. I have a number of these students, and sometimes their papers can be quite difficult to get through. However, there are some who care about their writing and appear to try really hard to get the translations right. Occasionally you can tell that they missed something important in the readings, or mistook the definition of a word, but, for the most part, their papers are clear and (somewhat) easy to get through. I assume that these students ask for help from their native English-speaking peers.

The ESL students who do NOT care: They students are (excuse my French), a pain in my ass. Their papers are jumbles of words put together in sentences that have no foreseeable meaning. I have to read lines over, and over again correcting grammar, spelling, and punctuation as I go just so that I can understand what they are trying to say. I make comments on their papers that they should find someone to read over their papers so that they don't lose marks for clarity and grammar, but, time and time again I get the same, jumbled papers... and they never come to me asking for help.

The Middle of the Roaders: I think these are my favorite students. They are the ones who generally get Bs and are o.k. with it. They read the required material, write the required papers at the required length, and, if they have a question, they ask. Occasionally they through in a little humor or personal anecdote... they are not worried about the academic consequences of such (some professors don't like this sort of thing), but rather they want to make the paper more enjoyable and entertaining. Believe me... after hours and hours of reading the same arguments over and over again (because MANY people never steer TOO far away from regurgitating the information in the reading material), I look forward to these anecdotes and a little bit of entertainment!