John and I watched Sleepy Hollow (1999) tonight. It is true that Johnny Depp’s “spitting goat” face gets tiresome, and there are a few odd Keystone moments (especially when, as he hurtles towards a tree on a runaway carriage, the Horseman almost does a comic double-take – it is a shame he had no face, or he may have slapped his cheeks in cartoonish dismay). However, in terms of atmosphere, pure unacademic enjoyment and re-watchability, I find this movie a knockout. Bless Tim Burton, bless The Depp, and bless all the Tim Burton regular players.
The main reason I watched this tonight was that it was a kind of tribute to the end of my Teaching Assistance for the term. Being a TA, I find a great deal of sympathy for the Horseman. Especially tonight.
Since I wrote my last update, I received an email from Dr. G., for whom I TA. It turns out that the 75% average I pulled on my last batch of marking was too high, and I needed to reduce it by at least 2% (but preferably 5%). There went my relaxing evening, at least for a few hours.
For those of you who have not TA’d, and thought school was a place where achievements were rewarded liberally and blindly, I will pause. You see, there are generally established averages expected in courses. For example, in first year courses here at WLU the class average should be about 69%-70%, a C+ or a B-. Ideally this means that the standards should be set so that an average paper gets a C+. This often means that, despite having fulfilled the basic assignment requirements, many papers get a C or C-, so that the exceptional papers can enjoy A’s. Thus, many C papers have not done anything wrong, per say, they just weren’t exceptionally good.
As a result, TA’s must march to the tune of the prof by hacking cruelly at so-so papers, and if the prof thinks we are marking too easily all hell breaks loose.
As was the case tonight.
So there I was this evening, hacking and burning as many papers as I could. Papers that I had nothing against, really, but which I had to beat back simply to meet my quota. I started to feel something of what bounty hunters and the guys who work the nail-guns at slaughter houses must feel. I started to wonder if Dr. G. would at least supply me with extra vodka rations to ease the pain of my horrendous, assassin-like duties.
The problem was that many of these papers were genuinely very good, or at least not bad, so I was loathe to drop them. However, according to my prof, even if all of them were excellent then the majority should still get C+. Even in a class of bright people, an average paper is still an average paper (even if it would be an A in a class of idiots).
So my batch is now down to 73% (70% when all the people who didn’t hand one in get their zeros added). I am not too distraught, as a wee bit of what I cut back was the charity cases (those students who are on the cusp of failing barring 100% on their exams), and many of these didn’t really deserve even the 60%s I had given them out of pity.
But the whole process makes me uneasy. First of all because this prof is currently marking my own paper (the Groucho one), and I know that he thinks that B/B+ should be the average in grad classes (yikes!). Second of all, because I don’t like doing dirty work for other people.
Crane was, in the legend, a schoolmaster. But he was able to discharge his duties with justice and charity. I educate, but I am not allowed to be charitable.
Like the Horseman, I haunt the dark and take off grades whenever I get the chance. I do the bidding of a fiendish master who holds power over me and forces me to be as ruthless as he wants.
I am the Horseman.
And I want my freaking skull back.
By which, of course, I mean either my degree or a SSHRC. Either of these things would win my freedom …
And if Depp could be around to save me, I wouldn’t complain about that, either.
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