In Case of Papers

Papers, papers, papers—finally I am done with papers. The semester has ended. The next time I’d see them again would be in August, the beginning of another school year. What a relief.

Don’t get me wrong, I love papers. It’s what I do. My books and blogs are, in essence, papers. They have a purpose; a beginning, middle, and ending.

But some of those papers turned in to me by my students, for grading, were not written like papers. At best, they were a hodgepodge of phrases, words, and paragraphs cut and pasted from the Net.

That’s where coffee came in—a booster, a waker-upper for me to give these papers sensible comments and fair marks.

One of my outstanding students, R, who writes good papers, must have read my thoughts. She gave me this gift last Christmas, the first one I received during the season. I broke it open each time I received a paper.

By coincidence, this became empty at the end of last school year. Exactly when I didn't need coffee to perk me up anymore.

I teach in a university that delivers UK diplomas and degrees. If you’ve gone through the British educational system, you know that it centers on writing papers that require critical thinking based on research, called academic underpinning.

Unfortunately, this digital age of brevity, one-liners, and short attention span has made writing, thinking, and researching tedious—requiring focus and lots of time—and therefore a challenge for students who loathe all of the above.

Result: badly written papers. Or should I say, very long “unwritten” papers.

I am writing another book during this lull between the last school year and the next. It’s a kind of paper that needs no coffee. My cup is already brimming over with grace.

It's been a bright and breezy break!