Grading Papers

Nothing profound, just a declaration of the simple fact that I despise grading papers. Grading papers, especially badly written compositions, is the bane of my existence.

I mean, I know Spanish isn't their first language. I know. It's not mine either and I make mistakes all the time. But it's like, why are you using made up verb endings? There's no excuse for that. That's like expecting "My friend and I swauuck in the ocean" to make sense.

There's also a tendency for beginning students to directly translate. I understand that, I used to do it myself. If it were that simple of a case, I'd take my red pen, underline the directly translated phrase and write "TRAN" right above it. But how about if I have no earthly idea what you're trying to say? Mi amigo vacaciones Costa Rica para ir las maletas. My friend vacation Costa Rica in order to go suitcases. Really? So, now writing a composition means taking a bunch of random vocabulary words from the chapter, stringing them together and keeping your fingers crossed that they make some semblance of coherent thought?

I don't even want to think about the exams that I'm going to have to grade next week. Here's to a fruitful review day!