My Lost Weekend

This was written over a month ago after the midterm exam in my computer drawing class but I didn't get around to editing it until just now about six months later..

This past weekend will be my Lost Weekend.

Film and literary historians will recognize the reference to the 1944 novel by Charles R. Jackson and the Academy Award winning movie of the same name made the following year.  In my case, the central problem obliterating all else in my case was 3 classes worth of midterms, not alcoholism.  At this point in my life, the trauma is in grading, not taking midterms.

As with the protagonist in the reference, the problem is my own character flaw: I want to be perceived as grading fairly.  Grading correct answers is easy: students get full credit and I'm on to the next answer.  Incorrect answers requires much more time.  For the course involving AutoCAD, I annotate each incorrect drawing  (incorrect or missing dimensions, lines not meeting correctly, or other technical errors), save a screen shot of the student work, and post that image to the grade book in the course web site to leave a clear record for the student and myself.

It takes a loooong time.

There was a particular problem on the final which could be an easy two minute job if you knew the trick.  The trick was covered in class, described in the book we use, and to make things even fairer, I posted a video online with the midterm so there should be no doubt how the drawing should be structured.  After all the midterms were submitted online I asked who in the class had watched the video.  Nobody.  Sigh.

So dispiriting.

Some  drawings had kinks where curved lines met where supposed to join seamless. Did the students not see the problem? 

(I fantasize about adapting Jack London's comment that after he's completed a piece he looks at it.   If it's good he sends it out.  If it isn't he sends it out.  (A web search couldn't find a reference to this quote.  A Jack London scholar/devotee couldn't place it either.)  Maybe, in those courses which there are written assignments I can just hand out slightly lower grades based on the quantity of buzzwords and wait for the students to complain.)