Gimme a 'G!'

Wow.  I didn’t think it would be possible to have two portions of my life, one for 4 hours and another for 3 hours be dedicated to grading and yet not have any grading get done.  I should clarify.  I had a meeting last night to build a rubric for the essays that another TA and I are grading.  The other TA is new to the TA world, and a bit apprehensive of the task.  The TA is very competent, but very tentative about judging the students’ work.  So, rubric built, we move on to the meeting today with the prof about grading standards.  

It’s strange.  I’ve discovered that I’ve begun to grade with my gut.  I’ll read a paper and mark it up and feel that it’s a ‘C’ paper.  When we break it down, I’m still confident that I’ve given a good grade, and I can defend it if need be, but I don’t have to have a checklist of modular grading standards.  

For example, it’s vital that the thesis is clear and good, but I can’t say that “unclear thesis = C”, “clear thesis = B”, “clear and good thesis = A”

I don’t want to say that my grading is completely subjective, but I can’t, or at least feel uncomfortable trying to make it a mechanical process of numbers and checkboxes.  

I’m really happy that the other TA feels more comfortable grading now, and I don’t think the time was ill-spent.  I certainly learned a lot about grading from both the TA and the prof, but at the same time, I could have graded a lot of papers in that time.