Two moments from the life of a composition instructor
Two moments from the end of the semester that illustrate why my job is sometimes frustrating:
Students had portfolios due at 4 PM on Friday. I got to work on that day to find an email from a student sent at 10 PM the previous evening. It said (in short) "What's this portfolio thing about again? I forgot. Can you email me back tonight--I have practice until 3 tomorrow." Unfortunately, I and several other instructors do not read our email while watching Letterman. This also comes after a week of in-class review of this assignment.
The second item comes from a portfolio itself. While talking about the ways that he improved at revising, one student wrote (again a more or less): "I did a really good job of revising my essays this semester. As you can see from the draft and final I included, I made many good changes. For example, I added a title to my final draft. This made it easier to tell what it was about. I also made a lot of other good changes to this paper." Now, we do a lot of talk about what makes for substantive revision in my class, and adding a title is definitely NOT included.
Luckily, these examples are the exception, not the rule. But it's still rather frustrating at times--though strangely humorous as well.