Grading and Greed in Giddy Grove (Part I, Written April 2016)

I am a Senior Lecturer in the Liberal Arts College of a big state university. Boasting a law school, b-school, med school and lots of highly ranked departments, we operate on a sprawling campus of staggering natural beauty and cutting edge architecture. We’re also known as a “drinking school with a basketball problem”, nestled in a college town so devoted to the university that the word “college” features in its name. A faculty brat, I enjoyed attending big U myself and did the whole “privileged” – to use the limousine liberal term dejour -- deal with going Greek, taking honors courses, and studying abroad. Loved it. I hit the Ivy League for my PhD and was delighted to sidestep the publish or perish tenure clock and accept a teaching intensive position at my alma mater.

I love my job. I teach a variety of courses, lead study abroad programs, work with smart “kids”, and hold prominent positions in faculty governance. I don’t spend as much time writing as I’d like to, but I do still enjoy making stuff up. Here in our English department, we get to study a number of satires, dramatizations, and short stories based loosely on small nuggets of possible fact. This work work right here may be a satire. Just as during the writing of the oft assigned “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift, no babies were actually eaten (hopefully), while writing this, nor did I actually have sex in the main administration building (probably). This is pure satire and parody. It’s not a narrative on lecturer exploitation or sexual harassment. It’s more like an effort to raise questions about the way that the conversations and struggles that faculty, administrators, and students have about grades impact life and learning. I think it’s about grades.

For perspective, the only time I ever gave any thought to my GPA as an undergraduate was when I came perilously close to falling below the 3.3 needed to maintain my honorific 50% tuition academic scholarship. I paid a lot of attention to grades that year and ended up graduating with a 3.59. This was high enough to get me some pretty medals and certificates. I coach my current students to believe that grades are not important. Better grades, certainly, offer you some enhanced opportunities. A 3.8 may help you land a more highly paid first job than a 2.3. The difference, however, between a 3.12 and 3.25, or between a C+ or a B- on a physics quiz, is minimal. The very worst hell for a student, in my view, is the attainment and maintenance of a 4.0 into their senior year. Those people go insane. Every blog post, every exam question, every participation point becomes, in their by then obsessive-compulsive world-views, matters of life and death. I know this from recent experience.

For nearly twenty years of teaching I literally never received anything less than a 6.0/7.0 on my “quality of instructor” teaching evaluations. Across over 150 classes, my scores stayed over, often well into, the sixes. I became fixated. I never dreamed of arriving even a minute late for class, all papers were returned within the week, all grades were carefully explained to be clear that I was not at fault for any score less than A. No matter how physically or mentally sick I might feel, I showed up at class ready to perform with my make-up done, a smile on my face, and a cheerful, other-directed, attitude. To be vain, I truly was an outstanding instructor. To be fair, some of my accolades arrived through effort and work, others through psychological, genetic, and economic predispositions.

My education was superb. I had received top notch training in both history and rhetoric. I had at my disposal a vast wealth of knowledge and experience before I ever arrived in a classroom. My “field” of “the history and literature of the cultural intersections among religion and psychology” genuinely fascinated me. I was avidly passionate about the theories and ideas that I studied and adored sharing them with others. Verbally expressive, I never lacked for a clever illustration or surprising anecdote to help my students grasp challenging concepts. I also genuinely loved my students. I’d honed a world-view that melded New Age spirituality, positive thinking, and humanistic philosophy that lead me to really believe that an exchange of happy energy would improve all human (and animal!) encounters.

The cut-off for Phi Beta Kappa was 3.6. I deal with that loss by rarely thinking about or acknowledging the existence of Phi Beta Kappa, or really dwelling much upon grades at all. This strategy served me well for nearly 30 years.

Then one evening, I rolled onto my back and luxuriated in how the new Asian carpet in the Senior Vice President for Faculty Affairs' office felt against my body. We passed a joint back and forth casually when he began ruminating, “too many students think that all they need to do to get an A is sleep with the professor.” Seeming to be so self-evident, his remark lingered only briefly in my thoughts.

By that time, I was winning some teaching awards, instructing a popular course on the history of madness and psychiatry, working with honors students and sweeping faculty senate elections – yes, in the College of Liberal Arts at our school, competition actually exists for seats on senate. No, not competition to avoid being pressed into service, actual vying for election. We like notions of self-governance. One day an email passed through my inbox regarding the college’s desire that we grade rigorously and always be sure to reward hard work while penalizing slackers. I barely registered the email but do remember reflecting on some of my hardest workers.

There was Eunjong, who reverently put every word I said in class into his notes, in Chinese, before going home, translating them into English, figuring out the assignment, composing the essay in Chinese, then painstakingly translating that into English. I tried to help, but we did struggle to understand each other’s English. I suggested that he try stopping in the writing center where they could review his papers. He returned the next day looking crestfallen. He had tried to explain the assignment to the tutors at the writing center but they hadn’t understood it. I emailed the center with a copy of our assignment and Eunjong willingly went back the next day, and the next, and the next, and everyday that followed.

Eunjong was but one example of the students who warmed my heart with their dedication and genuine excitement about learning and practicing new skills. Eunjong added well-pronounced words to his vocabulary on a near daily basis. I may return to this, but for now will jump ahead. Just jump. This reflects the extent to which I'd put any worry into the followng decisions at all. I'd been an extrardinary lecturer for ten years. I hadn't even been aware that promotions existed until our trusted department leaders suggested I apply. Never had the department seen a faculty member excell in so many innovative and novel ways: politically, pedagogically, educational pedagree, breadth and depth of courses taught, accolades, publications, and general good will and cheer glittering through all of my interactions like sparklers. I was a shiney, happy jewel in the department's crown and one they were proud to celebrate with a promotion. This was the highest honor possible: I would move from being a "lecturer" to a "senior lecturer". I might, or might not, receive a 3-5% raise. I would stay on a one year contract. But I didn't mind! I was just looking forward to seeing the letter that the Dean would write to tell me what a wonderful job I was doing. He had started deaning when I was a sophomore undergraduate in the college. Somehow, that made his approval even more important than that of others. After all, if anyone could see how very much I'd done for so very many years to become a real scholar, an educator, a graceful negotiator, and a valud colleague, he would. I was late for the meeting that spring to, I imagined, stop by and learn the details of my promotion (would it be a 3.5% or 4% raise?). As I chatted with the staff I heard more than the usual number of friendly comments about my outfit or jokes. For the first time, I wondered if I really knew how things worked at big U.

There on his desk was my letter of application and painstakingly curated teaching dossier with a hastily scrawled note from the dean on the top: “grades too high, please inform of promotion denial.” Both program heads expressed condolences and kindness. Their patience and warmth stay vivid in my memory. Naturally, I did what dozens of disgruntled faculty had done before me: burst into tears, declared that the dean hates me and insisted that I would be immediately quitting faculty senate and all university service work (posthaste!). I stumbled from our building, bummed a long-since-quit-from cigarette off an undergrad and sat on a bench sobbing incoherent messages into my therapist’s answering service. I had been dissed. The college campus was one still tightly bound by notions of honor and hierarchy. This wound to my ego stung.

Still, I went back to work the next day and the students were just as funny, curious, and engaging as ever. Colleagues were friendly and comforting. Gossip simultaneously amused and horrified: An assistant professor who was denied tenure spray painted, “The Dean Sucks Cocks” on the dean’s office windows and tweeted that the dean was having an affair with the provost. A distinguished professor was disciplined for doing lines of cocaine in her office, during office hours. An associate professor was detained at an airport for refusing to stop smoking pot on an international flight. Two senior professors, in a fit of Marxist enthusiasm, broke into the college online governing documents and declared that the lecturers were treated like slave labor. The lecturers, rather than rallying to class warfare, were offended and complained to department heads. The African Americans Studies Department filed a bias complaint. The basketball coach was fired. Professors sobbed openly in classes because the basketball coach was fired. Students rioted and flipped over cars because the basketball coach was fired. We began a new system whereby all university community members received text messages whenever anyone was sexually assaulted. We received far, far too many texts. Students, faculty and staff alike checked into and out of psych wards and mental hospitals – some for tragic reasons, others simply to rest. I considered that but cultivated a Xanax habit instead. Eventually spring arrived and the sun shone again on giddy grove.

Urged to attend a sort of remedial workshop for bad girls and boys about “Grade Norming”, I was advised to give pop quizzes and pour through the readings to find obscure references so that even the good students would have opportunities to do poorly on evaluative exercises. I learned to vigorously enforce an attendance policy that penalizes students for any and all lateness or absence, regardless of reason, again enabling even the best of writers to achieve nice low scores. We also talked about the importance of giving as many bad grades as you can early in the semester. I remain unclear as to the logic there. I left feeling that I’d simply been given very rudimentary lessons in gaming a system. As a National Merit Finalist and big time finagler, I’d been gaming exams and systems for years. Thinking about Eunjong all of a sudden, I didn’t feel much like playing.

I got back into my routine of attending rounds of Very Important Meetings. At one such event the dean commenced a rant on the “outrage” of instructors giving so many As whenever the students seem to be downtown at the bars till all hours of the morning three or four nights every week. It was actually four or five nights, if memory from my own school days serves. What I wanted to say then, but new I couldn't without the sarcasm oozing through, was that if the dean continued to send me mean letters telling me to give fewer As, the As I would be taking away would not come from those students in the bars.

The majority of the students in the bars tended to be like Ted and Rich. Ted belonged to a fraternity and did indeed spend many a night – and thousands of dollars -- out on the town, but his pledges delivered him to the door of my classroom building each morning. Regardless of the beer lingering on his breath, Rich had his essays completed on time. They tended to be full of vivid imagery and solid moral exhortations based upon his fascinating work with his dad in Doctors Without Borders in Honduras. Honed by years at elite secondary schools and stimulating dinner conversations, Ted’s writing was clear and incisive. If, somehow, someway, Rich had made it through prep school without picking up a few basic grammar mechanics, he had developed the confidence to stroll into the writing center and ask for help, or even to hire his own tutor to fix any mistakes. If, by chance, Ted forgot to finish an essay on time and had his score lowered, his mom might give me a call. Awkward, but I could convince her that the low grade was deserved and that, truly and ultimately, it wouldn’t impact Ted’s bright future anyway because he would call upon all of his many resources to make sure that his final grade in the course remained solid before heading off to his internship or semester at sea.

Ted and Rich were Teflon. If I wanted to give more low grades, I would need to explore alternative targets. I started trying to do my due diligence. If a pre-med honors student showed up at my office hoping to be added into my already full class, I sent that smartie with her propensity for good grades right out of my life. Who needs that kind of intelligence screwing up my curve? When Wendy came down with food poisoning and missed two weeks of class only to return twenty pounds underweight, I considered penalizing her participation grade, but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. When Joyce hyperventilated during her first public speaking presentation and passed out on the floor, I thought about giving her an F – after all, consciousness is sort of a baseline quality of passing work. But I let her try again the next week. She cried when the class gave her a standing ovation after a successful speech. My heart was warm, but the sounds that seemed to be coming from my ego were becoming more shrill. The meaningless honorary title that came with so little palpaple gain had, once denied, become priceless to me. I was becoming obsessed. I had to find ways to lower these grades.

Then, one day, like manna from heaven, Crystal came into my life. Or, rather I should say, Crystal stopped coming into my life. In early November, Crystal just quit attending my honors course. She had only completed about 70% of the work with a near 90% average. Without the rest of her work, she simply would not have enough points to get anything other than a D. I did all the compassionate things – emailed her, urged her to drop the course, offered make-up work. No response. By the end of the semester, I was shocked to see her name still on the roster when I went online to enter grades. For the first time in over twenty years of teaching, I entered a D into an honors class roster.

My heart hurt for Crystal. It turned out that she was going through a nervous breakdown and dealing with severe mental health issues. I knew all too well, too intimately, too personally, the horrific pain of clinical depression, the terrifying confusion of bi-polar mood swings, and the awful shame of hiding wrist scars. Would my bad grade add to her sorrows? Happily, and conveniently, in this particular case, the short answer was “no”. I didn’t need to confront, right then, the ethical dilemmas – whether I had any right or obligation to adjust her grade for compassionate reasons or whether the only fair thing to do was to hold her to the same standards as the other students. According to Facebook, Crystal went home, transferred to a smaller school, and forgot all about her one bad semester at Big U.

Meanwhile, big changes were afoot in my world. That year the holidays brought great bounty. I could look at my on-line faculty activity report and see a bright and shiny low GPA for the honors class. Graciously, I accepted emails and phone calls from administrators and colleagues eager to congratulate me on my newly acquired grading skills and talents. I was rigorous. I had real standards. I was a D-giving-in-an-honors-class grading bad ass. At one holiday party – there was a tree with tinsel but of course the word “Christmas” would never be used in association with the gathering – an Asian graduate student whispered excitedly to me, “You give more bad grade, now you win promotion”. She was also eager to explain that, through thorough and time-consuming controlled experiments over several semesters, she and a friend in the Chemistry Department had discovered that “if you tell student no cell phone in class, they give you bad teaching rating on evaluation”. On the other hand, “if you give A and let students use Facebooks in class, you get good rating”. She was absolutely charismatic in her fascination with the strange motivators that seemed to govern American students’ invisible hands.

People around me were clearly learning and learning a lot. In some cases, I was actively contributing to and inspiring the learning. I could not understand how, in the midst of all of this glorious, wonderful, enlightening education, this drawing out from within of what is good and curious, this engagement with ideas and sheer wonder at the world spinning, we were proof-reading minutes about the latest Very Important Meeting of the Committee on Grade Norming. I couldn’t understand why I was pouring over my review letters from our department, desperate to avoid finding a critical comment about my grading scale (or a critical comment about anything really). Why did I devote so much of my precious life to the avoidance not only of insult but of even the mere possibility that an insult may or may not be inflicted in the future? Why was I so frantically desperate for attention, approval and compliments from every single dean, department head, therapist or random authority figure who passed through my life?

I couldn’t understand why I never married, abstained from sex for years on end, then crumbled when it was offered by a local patriarch in his administrative office with the Asian rug. I couldn’t comprehend any of it. But Freud sure could have. He could have written an entire case study on “Lily L.” and her all-consuming needs for external validation.

The case study would be particularly enlightening in revealing the modern university to be the sort of ultimate, systematic, mechanistic assault on one's ego that no researcher could have designed in a lab. The classrooms and tree-lined walkways where I'd literally taken my first steps and learned about writers and thinkers who would inspire me for the rest of my life seemed altered. A sinister pall hung over the campus as new constructions placed a sort of veneer of glass buildings around the historic campus center. I showed One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Next in my popular course on the history of mental illness and psychiatry. Chief's notion of the mental asylum as a vast machine, processing souls, breaking spirits, homogenizing, and grinding down hope until little remained to differentiate the life from the programmed levers seemed less an inspired metaphor and more like an imminent threat. It was too late.

End, Part I

A wonderful gift from my dear class

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Class field trips to the Penn State Arboretum.jpg Hot_ Oh yes.jpg But still lots of fun

Students hard at work deliberating! Very proud of them_)