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[roarheels]

I recently argued vehemently with my advisor for whom I am a T.A. that a group of students deserved a retest. I am known for being a particularly hard grader, going so far as to fail students on tests (this never happens at my uni and last semester all my F's were changed to D's). So when I suggested a retest I received a cross eyed look. Funny enough, I myself had a seminar paper returned to me three days later in which the prof said that the material presented was ungradable. First time this has ever happened to me in my life. This prof is well known for being a difficult grader, yet his comments were simple "ungradable, please rewrite" I got an A on the rewrite. Perhaps I had some premonition that this would happen (the seminar paper was in an entirely different field with an entirely different writing style), but it was funny how much I needed the same break I was giving. It was also a good lesson in never becoming to haughty

[minnesotan]

Instant karma.

[hollow_man]

My own view is that it is remarkably foolish to become a tough grader any time before tenure. It's simply not a battle I see as worth fighting.

[grasshopper]

TAs notoriously mark harder than profs. They tend to hold the undergrads to the same standards that they're being held to as graduate students.

I'm especially bad at getting up in my students' faces about writing papers at the last minute. Don't even ask me how many times I've written conference papers, by hand on scraps of paper, while travelling to the conference.

[mfaer]

TAs notoriously mark harder than profs. They tend to hold the undergrads to the same standards that they're being held to as graduate students.

I've also seen this work the other way.  Because many grad students in my field (English) make A's on their own papers (w/ the occasional B), they tend to apply the same "standards" to their undergrads, thus giving far too many A's.

[roarheels]

I mark strenuously for my uni because 90% of the people in field are beginning retirement. These profs no longer really care (I recently saw a B given for a 2 page paper that was supposed to be 10) and do not really want to deal with academic cheating issues (I have caught two students but my profs have chosen not to pursue). I graded the first year the way I was graded in undergrad, and this produced mostly C's. This is funny because my undergrad is considered to be no where near the level of my grad. Essentially, I had to learn that at my grad uni all students do well because all students expect to do well. The department has made it hard to make a C- stick, or else you risk teaching appointments in your third and fourth year (we have a funny way of distributing these based on your evals). In short, I just had to learn that everyone gets B or A here and that is the deal. It makes life pretty easy in the end, and it liberates me to focus on the really good students because the bad ones never complain (hey the get B's anyway).