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May 04, 2005

Shock: Longer Essays Get Better Grades

... and shockingly enough, this rule applies to the SAT essay section as well.

Come on now. Is this news?

There's that old joke about professors throwing a stack of essays up a flight of stairs. The essays that fall the shortest distance -- the heaviest ones -- get A's. The ones that make it to the top get D's or C-'s.

The only thing that kept me from flunking out of every school I ever went to was my ability to write quickly, fluently, and interminably. I knew ass about whatever subject I was writing about, but damn, could I pad those bastards out with irrelevant asides about stuff I dimly remembered from other courses ("This recalls the invective of the Roman poet Catullus" or "Let us turn now to Bernouli's Theorem regarding expanding gases" or even "You don't know what sort of man you are until you look a rutting warthog right in his sex-crazed eyes and are forced to make the difficult decision between survival and animal-inflicted sodomy") and basically bluff the harried TA into thinking that somewhere in my blue-book epics I would finally reach a answer to the question actually posed.

Luckily, they stop reading after the first few pages. And past the first few pages, I was pretty much limited to recounting old episodes of Simon & Simon.

As any longtime readers of this blog can attest, I'm a big believer in the concept that quantity is easily confused for quality.

posted by Ace at 02:16 PM

Comments

"You don't know what sort of man you are until you look a rutting warthog right in his sex-crazed eyes and are forced to make the difficult decision between survival and animal-inflicted sodomy"

I choose survival.

Posted by: Pompous on May 4, 2005 02:25 PM

Seriously, Ace, does ANYONE want animal-inflicted sodomy more than life itself?

Besides you, I mean.

Posted by: Pompous on May 4, 2005 02:27 PM

DUDE--

it ain't true. Don't believe it.
Brief! Crisp! Bring it in under the page count! Take a position!

--A TA

Posted by: Tee-Aye on May 4, 2005 02:27 PM

Ace--

First off, this story reminds me of one of the greatest urban legends of all time. For me, it's right up there with "In a bathtub with no kidney."

Trust me, after visiting Tijuana, that's no legend.

Secondly, a true story from my oh-so-relivable college days. The poli-sci department made students take comprehensive exams after four years of school, to see what they learned.

But they didn't make them actually count for anything-- they were just pass/fail, and failure wouldn't affect your graduation in the slightest.

So, I took this as a challenge. If they're not going to waste any time grading these papers, I'm certainly not going to waste any time taking them.

I filled in two blue books with Top Ten lists, brownie recipes, short stories, bawdy limericks, sketches for a perpetual motion machine, and sample questions *I* would have asked smart-ass students instead.

Needless to say, my professors were not pleased.

Still got into grad school, though. No one ever has a sense of humor anymore.

Cheers,
Dave at Garfield Ridge

P.S. Oh, and one more thing: the comps counted after I left school, all because of me. An entire generation of Marymount University poli-sci students hate me without even knowing my name.

Now, THAT'S influence, baby!

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on May 4, 2005 02:32 PM

At one point I transferred from one university to another. The second school assigned 1-page essays. So the old techniques (more words = better grade) didn't work. Very tricky!

Posted by: James on May 4, 2005 02:33 PM

it ain't true. Don't believe it. Brief! Crisp! Bring it in under the page count! Take a position! --A TA

It is true.

Or, let us say, if it's not perfectly true (i.e., you really can't just write a bunch of nonsense and hope for a good grade based on verbosity), all those filled-up pages don't hurt, either.

Posted by: ace on May 4, 2005 02:34 PM

Ace is right as far as timed blue book exams go, since they're often graded in terms of a rubric, like:

" on question eight: three points if they mention Farragut and Norsworthy's refutuation of neostructuralism, four points if they call Bush a "jackass", another two points if they call him a "chimp", and one point if they make a coherent argument about psychofenianism."

So you don't really lose points for irrelevant stuff in those situations and you might even blunder into a few extra points.

But when you turn in a paper, it better be short and sweet. If you have an extra page over the page count, I'm going take it and wipe my A with it instead of reading it.

Mr. T&A

Posted by: Tee-Aye on May 4, 2005 02:45 PM

But when you turn in a paper, it better be short and sweet. If you have an extra page over the page count, I'm going take it and wipe my A with it instead of reading it.

Mr. T&A

Wait a second. That sounds suspiciously familiar...

Mr. Patterson?

Posted by: Pompous on May 4, 2005 02:59 PM

Kind of like the ACE OF SPADES blog?

Posted by: shit from shinola on May 4, 2005 03:09 PM

What can I say, Mister Shinola? I'm a visionary.

Posted by: Dave at Garfield Ridge on May 4, 2005 03:10 PM

I think I'm with Pompous on this one. Your teachers might have been reluctant to bring down the GPA of someone who seemed to value animal-inflicted sodomy more than life itself.

If I'd been grading your papers, I don't think I'd have bought it. Let's be honest: during animal-inflicted sodomy, you wouldn't be looking into the warthog's sex-crazed eyes.

Posted by: utron on May 4, 2005 03:18 PM

You couldn't have posted this BEFORE my son took the SAT??????

Posted by: Rightwingsparkle on May 4, 2005 03:24 PM

Seems like, with air resistance, the heavier papers would go FURTHER than the lighter ones.

I'm just sayin' is all.

Posted by: tachyonshuggy on May 4, 2005 03:48 PM

As an English prof heading into finals week, I guarantee that the last thing I want is a bunch of padded essays. Of course, I've also been told by my publisher that I need to double the size of my dissertation for book publication. Go please the world.

Posted by: WarrenM on May 4, 2005 04:58 PM

This doesn't surprise me...for the first 2 years I visited your site, I assumed it was a fan site for Motorhead. BostonIrish finally tipped me off that its not and that Lemmy nevers posts here. I greatly enjoy your site regardless although I still think adding some content on Motorhead wouldn't hurt.

Posted by: WindyCity on May 5, 2005 08:56 AM

He could have been looking into the eyes of a second boar while the first boar was still behind him.

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Posted by: lolo on August 16, 2005 04:15 PM

Posted by: mark on August 23, 2005 06:16 PM