Perhaps the biggest issue I’ve been struggling with in my short time as a DI has been the difficulty in getting students to take assignments seriously. It is clear that there are some students who give themselves plenty of time to respond to the Brief Assignments, and who produce thoughtful, clear, well-written writing. But the VAST majority of writing which I have graded thus far seems to be decidedly rushed and superficial. How do we get students to put in some effort? I’ve had many grading days where I literally have to walk away from the computer to keep myself from going insane. The gross generalizations, stereotypes, racist comments, sloppy writing, lack of proof-reading, and overall poor performance, all seem rampant amongst freshmen. I understand that I cannot expect them to be perfect in their use of grammar, sentence structure, and phrasing, but spelling errors? Incomplete sentences? Spell-checkers come standard with every single writing program these days, so why aren’t they being utilized?

I had one student tell me that they’d had “many problems with shits in the past,” to which I felt the urge to reply “see a doctor about that.” I know that’s just a mistake and the student didn’t actually mean it (I’m almost 100% certain he/she meant shifts), but a quick read-through would probably have caught it. Another student explained to me that there are many differences between males and females, and there have been many studies to support this. I hit the floor on that one. But seriously, how do we get these students from writing like this to writing like, well, writers? Is there some magic point in time where they all realize it’s time to step it up? Or are the majority of them doomed to remain in the inappropriate stage forever? I find it hard to believe that they can’t improve, but how do I get THEM to believe that they can? Or even care?