All that stands between me and Mexico are these final exams from “Introduction to European History” that need grading. Usually I prolong my final grading through the weekend, so I can settle down with a 12-pack of beer and make — and break — students at my leisure. But today I’m running around like my ass is on fire. I need to grade all my exams ASA-fucking-P. Not tomorrow, because I drive down to Tijuana to interview potential research assistants at El Colegio de la Frontera Norte. And not this weekend, because I’m spending it with Nooshin. I haven’t laid eyes on her in — god, has it really been a month? Not since she returned to Saman and boomeranged back again. She makes everything seem brighter, more vivid, mysterious with adventure. Too bad we met when our lives are unraveling, hers into a poisonous divorce, mine into a year of Mexican fieldwork and a dissertation that won’t write itself.

I begin my day of powergrading by trying to stamp out distractions. Enough food and caffeine in the apartment to sustain me? Check. Door locked and blinds drawn? Check. Cellphone turned off? Check.

Then I settle myself on my futon, still unfolded into a bed, and begin to sift the final exams into two piles — students taking the class for a grade, and students taking the class pass/fail. UCLA’s grade inflation makes it pathetically easy to sail through classes with a passing grade, so the pass/fail students only need a cursory review of their final exams. If they wrote their name on the cover and filled several pages with idiotic scribbling, they pass.

Unfortunately, only a few students are taking the class pass/fail. The pile of final exams that don’t need grading is dwarfed by the pile of final exams that do. Damn.

Next I subdivide the final exams of students taking the class for a grade, making piles based on their current standing after the midterm and research paper. After all, the best indicator of future performance is past performance. That leaves me with four piles — A students, B students, C students, and the bottomfeeders at risk of failing the class.

Well, actually five piles, but that’s my little secret.

As I’m subdividing the final exams, I’m setting aside the students who deserve special attention for whatever reason. Some are my best students, who I’m trying to nurture with detailed comments. I know they scrutinize every page of their exams and papers, scanning for the red ink of feedback, eager to actually learn. I was the same way when I was an undergrad. I can still bitterly recall every TA who mailed in the grading when I gave the classwork my all.

Other students are singled out for special attention because they’re on my shitlist, usually for their classroom behavior — or lack of it, if they’ve been skipping section, always a personal affront to the TA. Some also make the shitlist because of their moronic comments, like the fucking dork who used his research paper to praise Stalin for bringing law and order to Russia…through iron-fisted means like the NKVD, secret trials and executions, and that vast killing system known as the gulag. UCLA defends every student’s right to free speech, and technically I’m supposed to grade each argument on its own merits, but there’s nothing to stop me from getting all forensic on their asses. I soak their exams and papers in red ink, marking up everything — even misspellings and punctuation errors — and trying to make their pain downright Elizabethean. It’s the least I can do, I figure.

The last category of special attention students are the hapless earnest types, struggling with language barriers or just dumb as ketchup. They’re the ones who bomb the midterm and paper, but attend section religiously and always haunt my office hours, asking tons of questions in broken English and taking reams of notes, trying so hard it hurts — literally hurts — to grade them down. So I don’t. Instead I look for every flimsy excuse to grade them up, trying to help them crack into the 70s and bag that C. In my world there is such a thing as points for trying.

In order to speed my grading, I use a modified version of chess notation. Rather than critique something longhand, I just circle a sentence or paragraph and scrawl the appropriate notation next to it:

! - good
!! - great
!!! - outstanding

? - bad
?? - terrible
??? - atrocious

I mix and match for any unorthodox arguments that my kids make:

!? - risky, but I like it
?! - risky and I don’t like it
!?! - way out there, but I like it
?!? - way out there and I don’t like it

Then I tally up the exclamation and question marks. The more exclamation marks, the better the grade. The inverse is also true — rack up the question marks and you’re in for a grading smackdown.

Finally I jot some comments on the back inside cover in a heartfelt TA-to-student vibe, like this:

Tonisha, thanks for your hard work and dedication this quarter. I especially appreciate all the contributions you made to class discussion. Happy holidays and have a great new year! — Nick

In reality Tonisha is an opinionated airhead who acts like ignorance is her own personal birthright, but I just can’t bring myself to say something cutting. My mood is nothing but air and light. How fucking weird is that?

We’ll see if it lasts. One final exam down, 54 to go…