Marking Hell

April is the cruellest month. T.S. Eliot said it. I doubt he was referring to academics for whom, at this time of year, PhD means "piled higher and deeper." But he might as well have been. And so the stack of essays beckons and repels all at once. You drift toward it because you have to, but you really don't want to wade through piles of mediocre writing. It's the essay that earns a "C" that takes longest to grade. The writing is poor, the argument lost in the expression, if it exists at all.

I had a roommate once who told me about getting an essay back from one of her profs. Every time she strayed off topic or was just trying to fill in space with words that said nothing of significance, he would draw a little shovel in the margin of her essay.

Since then, I've always wanted to draw those shovels.

I haven't had the guts--I write the sentences of explanation instead.

But as the printers of lottery tickets tell us, everybody's got a dream.