your TA horror stories

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I'm a TA.

I just graded a freshman research paper on media conglomerates. it was about news corp and fox news. all the works cited were from foxnews.com, including an op-ed that "puts Paul Krugman in his place."

D for you! (oh don't get all david horowitz on me, it sucked otherwise buhleeeve me)

give me your stories (either being a TA or being taught by shitty ones [or fonts of bonhomie and efficacious service such as myself]).

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Thursday, 16 October 2003 05:26 (twenty-two years ago)

(T&A jokes immediately marked down to C-)

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Thursday, 16 October 2003 05:30 (twenty-two years ago)

at least it must've been amusing to read!

― Little Big Macher (llamasfur), Thursday, 16 October 2003 05:31 (twenty-two years ago)

oh my sides.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Thursday, 16 October 2003 05:33 (twenty-two years ago)

"...known for its unbiased, less liberal reporting" gave me a smile, tho.

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Thursday, 16 October 2003 06:07 (twenty-two years ago)

When I was in college I wrote this really long song called "Let's Kill The TAs". In went into fairly gruesome and ludicrous detail. My TAs weren't really that bad, though.

― Chris P (Chris P), Thursday, 16 October 2003 23:28 (twenty-two years ago)

I have 70 papers on Hitler to grade this weekend.

The first one I looked at, at random, cites three different websites from other schools' classes (it's a response paper; they're supposed to cite from the assigned book on Hitler). The only other citation in that paper is from an article in the Atlantic about 9/11.

― Tep (ktepi), Thursday, 16 October 2003 23:48 (twenty-two years ago)

It is rather sad that a lot of kids now must be effectively cheating and using Google instead of doing proper research. Literacy rates are dropping alarmingly even in Australia which has always been pretty good with literacy. I blame SMS.

I'm a bit disappointed this thread isnt longer - I know there must be a few of you out there either TAs, teachers or even uni profs/tutes maybe? Mike I'm looking at you ;P Y'all must have some hideous bad essay/homework stories.

― Trayce (trayce), Friday, 17 October 2003 00:09 (twenty-one years ago)

My worst Writing Tutor horror story was back when I worked for UNO's learning resource center, before it was rebudgeted and turned into the Writing Center (more work, broader job description, promotion, pay cut, a horror story in of itself). All of the professors in the English department were required to teach at least one composition course, because there were just so many of them; one prof in particular resented this so much that when he got tired of grading papers for the evening, he'd simply scrawl either B or F on each of the remaining ones, with no comments, explanation, etc. -- many of the students came to us asking why they'd been given an F for, you know, competent work. I got in trouble repeatedly for telling them the truth instead of pretending to find some error they could look for the next time.

(The prof retired a couple semesters later.)

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 17 October 2003 00:18 (twenty-one years ago)

unbelievable. and wait, you got in trouble?

― g--ff c-nn-n (gcannon), Friday, 17 October 2003 01:13 (twenty-one years ago)

Yup -- my boss (who was replaced when we were rebudgeted) had become extremely apathetic, and took the official "it isn't your job to correct the professor" tack instead of backing me.

― Tep (ktepi), Friday, 17 October 2003 01:29 (twenty-one years ago)

I once had a student (pre-med, alas) who, after getting back his first paper, which I had given a B+, I think, said to me, "This is unacceptable." I said to him, "And whose problem is that, yours or mine?" To his credit, though, he did really work to improve his subsequent papers. (He still only got an A- for the course. The course was called 'Narrative,' and the first day of class he asked what "narrative" meant.)

― Prude (Prude), Friday, 17 October 2003 01:56 (twenty-one years ago)

In that same class, someone else wrote that Bone in Dorothy Allison's Bastard out of Carolina was "not a girl, not yet a woman." And without citing the source, might I add!

― Prude (Prude), Friday, 17 October 2003 02:15 (twenty-one years ago)

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