I pulled an all-nighter to write my first college English paper, on an electric typewriter. The paper was on Beowulf and I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. I got a disappointing B on it. But it wasn’t just a B. It arrived with the phantom of another grade; for my professor had blotted out the + or – next to the B with such thoroughness that no amount of holding the paper up to the light could determine whether she had demoted or promoted the paper from its initial assessment. For many years afterward, until I came across the essay again while packing for a move, I recalled the grade as a B-. I had graded myself down out of a sense of failure.

Last week, I returned the first batch of essays to my students, giving them their first grade in my class (and since they’re all freshmen, possibly their first grade in college). I dread that moment in the semester when the honeymoon period comes to an end. Before that first grade, everything is potential and possibility. We have animated discussions in class; everyone’s on board with arguable thesis statements and the importance of analyzing evidence; everyone’s eager to impress me and each other. The stories with which we begin are enigmatic, ripe for interpretation. Even when they write their descriptive drafts with messy structures and undigested examples, they get ample feedback from me and we meet for a one-on-one conference, so it’s kind of like a do-over. The time between the draft and the final version seems to stretch out into the bright future of promised happy endings.

When the grades—mostly B’s and C’s—are handed out, when the coaching ends and the judging happens, there’s a distinct change in our relationship. Precisely because of the extensive coaching that precedes the judging, the shift is painfully palpable. There’s no teaching assistant to blame, no big lecture hall of 200 students to serve as a buffer; if the students can’t hide, neither can I. On the day I hand them the papers, I have to brace myself for that inevitable loss of innocence. It can be a difficult process of adjusting to new expectations, especially for students who have been so praised and rewarded for their efforts all through high school. But as much as I wish the honeymoon could last, I know the grades mark a necessary transition. The real learning can’t begin until the grade concretizes the stakes and gives them a measure of the distance they must travel. Still, I hate it when it happens right in front of me—I want students to leave as soon as I give them their essays, but some of them always linger and do the flip then and there, scanning the stapled sheet at the back for that letter, and then struggling to keep their poker faces and avoid eye contact. The suspense is too much, the knowledge can be crushing.

In grading that first stack, I’m bracing myself not just for that moment in class, but for everything that will follow: the challenge of continuing to motivate, to push their thinking, to demand ever more complex skills, to make them believe in the process. As I’ve written here in an earlier post, there are broad categories of students I’ve identified in my years of teaching, and the way the students respond to the evaluation of their first performance is a good indication of which category they fall into. I’ve got a good bunch of kids this semester, I think. As far as I can tell, they seem to have bounced back and are still engaged, still willing to try, though they might like the course just a little less. I tell them not to fetishize grades (even though I know they will), I tell them if they focus on learning, the grades will follow, I tell them that they’re being evaluated on one performance and that they are expected to improve, I tell them I grade the words on the page and don’t factor in mushy criteria like “effort.” I don’t know how much any of this sinks in. I’m sure they wish I would grade them on effort because they all worked so hard, not realizing the condescension built into such a practice.

This year, I’m not only grading my own students’ essays, I’m also helping new faculty with their comments and grades, making sure the grades are normed to the standards that we’ve set in the writing program, and that their comments are appropriate in tone and focused on the big issues of thesis, analysis, structure, rather than sentence-level correctness or style. To ensure a consistent quality of feedback, we recommend that instructors reflect back the student’s main idea, point out the main strengths of the essay, and then, explain the 2 or 3 weaknesses of the argument, with specific suggestions for improvement. The opening lines might look something like this:

If the structure is predictable, even formulaic, the details of the comments give students a sense that the instructor actually read their essays and took their ideas seriously. It’s a laborious process, producing this feedback, but because such extensive responding to student writing is one of the cornerstones of the program, and it helps with consistency and fairness in grading, we insist on it.

But it takes a while to internalize the standards and feel confident that one’s evaluations are right, and the grades, fair. There weren’t any big discrepancies in the grades; for the most part, everyone was on the mark, if a little uncertain. What’s interested me in this mentoring process is how often instructors wanted to fall back on the criterion of “effort” to evaluate an essay—not so much in wanting to reward effort and bump up a grade, but in wanting to penalize a student for lack of effort. They would enumerate the essay’s obvious weaknesses, and then add, “and I also just felt like this student didn’t try” or “I don’t think they put the work into this that I wanted them to.” Perhaps it was a way to alleviate their discomfort in giving the essay a lower grade. Or, an expression of genuine disappointment that the student didn’t fulfill the promise of their draft as the instructor had hoped. I discourage them from saying anything about “effort” in their comments or using that as a criterion for grading. Because you simply can’t know for sure, I say, and telling them they didn’t try might feel like an accusation. Why invite the adversarial tone?

The difficulty of grading is that the students are tied up in their work, and it’s hard for us to separate the two. We can’t like all our students, we’re influenced by the subtle dynamics of classroom interaction—who talks more? Who seems more interested? Who says clever things? Who emails questions and comes to office hours? And of course, our egos are tied up in their work as well—we want to transform their writing, and by extension, them. Behind the complaint about lack of effort is the fear about our own failings—why didn’t I inspire you to try harder? Why didn’t you listen? Why don’t you like me?

The longer I teach, the more I aim for a kind of ego-less teaching. I still laugh and joke with my students, and I still want to inspire them. But I try not to take anything personally. If a student resists, I don’t imagine that he is resisting me, but rather the prospect of trying something new and failing. If I take myself out of the equation, I find it easier to be generous and more patient with them. Some students still get under my skin, sometimes I still have the “Dead Poets Society” fantasy. Reality usually reasserts itself.

The day I hand back the first essays is still unpleasant; there’s just no way around it. But I don’t agonize as much as I used to the night before. I wonder if my professor agonized over that B. She was a seasoned teacher already, so I doubt it. Still, now I appreciate the deliberation that went into that little blot of ink.