Grade me...Please!
I WANT MY GRADES AND I WANT THEM NOW...So far I have two - Evidence and Civ Pro II. Professor Legal Research has now had eight weeks to turn in grades. Professor Business Associations has had five weeks. What can possibly be taking so long?
I heard a rumor that professors are fined $200 a day for each day they delay after the deadline, which is five weeks after the exam. I don't believe this for a second. I think there are no consequences for not meeting the deadline which is why so many profs don't bother. What a great system (if you're a tenured law prof)!
posted by some guy @ 1:35 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
How long do you want the prof to spend reading your exam. It took three or four hours to write. Is it worth, say, 20 minutes to read? If so, multiply that 20 minutes by 150 exams (average prof teaches two classes, I'll say averaging 75 each, although some people may have only 20 students in one class, while others have two classes of over 100).
At 20 minutes each, that's 50 hours of reading. You can't do more than four or five hours of grading in a day without going bonkers. So that's ten solid days of grading -- if you are super efficient. Now allow some time for, maybe, Xmas with the family. The kids are home from school and might like a little attention. The annual AALS conference -- the biggest lawprof conference of the year -- is the first week of January. Whatever you do, don't catch that annual cold. Take weekends off for good behavior. Add some time to prep next term's classes, tweak the syllabus...and five weeks doesn't look like much any more even for the average load. And if your student load is more than average...
...or how about those profs. who can't "grade" multiple choice exams in 5 weeks...
One of my profs didn't bother to enter our grades either-- and it was a pass/fail class w/nothing to correct. He just didn't feel like it, I guess. I have 150 students per semester and I don't feel like grading their papers either, but I just do it on time (and yes I complain about it) and I have never heard of the four hours a day limit w/weekends off grading schedule... but I guess you have to earn that!
K
One of my professors was so lazy, he told his secretary feed the multiple choice exam into the grader - and she was so lazy, it took her 5 weeks to do it! This seriously happened at UM, no joke. (Just ask sections A&C from last year.)
Professors should expect to spend 40 hours a week grading papers after exams. Some schools get grades in before spring classes start. Afterall, teaching isn't much work when you've already made up lessons plans from the previous year.
While I understand Prof. Froomkin's reasoning for professors with large classes and/or bluebook exams, it doesn't hold weight for two categories of professors around here (Coral Gables):
1. Those profs who give multiple choice exams and still take 5 weeks to start grading... err, I mean grade them.
2. Those profs who don't have exams or papers (I think like Some Guy's research class) and whose classes finished before Thanksgiving, yet who still don't have grades turned in by January 19th (today).
The best excuse I can think of for the latter is laziness, the worst.... well, is not appropriate for a blog like this.
It would be interesting to see whether it makes a difference in students' grades if a professor takes a lot of time to grade exams or just blows through them. I would tend to think not based on the relative consistency of mine and my friends' grades.
It isn't the throwing the exams down the stairs that takes so long, it is gathering them all up and remembering which tests made it to the bottom and which tests stayed near the top. Go look at the exams that take extra long, I bet you will see shoe prints on them. This is because the profs simply leave them on the stairs for days. Most have their houskeepers clean them up.
Of course Professor Froomkin is defending this practice - as of right now, he's still one of the grades some of us are waiting on.
I understand it is a time consuming process, but this is ridiculous, and it hurts UM students. After 2nd semester last year, I considered transferring, and was delayed because of grades - each school informed me that I was the last person to submit a completed file. If other professors at other institutions can have their grades submitted in a timely matter, why can't UM?
Currently, I have an employer that is asking for my transcripts, and they can not understand why mine are taking so much longer than those from candidates at other schools. I half-jokingly tell them that everyone is on "Florida time" down here.
Something needs to change when the delay in grades begins to affect how competitive UM students are.
Transferring is a crazy, tough thing to do. It's just a hard thing to do personally, good grades and everything else aside.
Agree about transferring - I was accepted at other schools, but when I realized that I would have less than 2 weeks to get back to Miami, move everything to the other side of the country while trying to find a new apartment, and then go through another orientation, I decided against it.
Of course, if grades had come out quicker, maybe my whole time-frame would have been longer. Maybe it's a UM conspiracy to keep people here....
The other UM is taking just as long.
LF
I want to amend my comment regarding Prof. Froomkin and how long it took to finally get his grade (which arrived today). It was worth the wait - I don't mind waiting for the good ones....
On another note - still am waiting on one grade. This is getting crazy.
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