Steven Taylor makes a point about grading that I should nail to my office door, or at least my Blackboard announcements page. It simply amazes me how much grade-grubbing I get, and my ex-students will generally attest that I am not a tough grader to begin with, at least on above-average work—I’m still not quite sure how I landed in the toughest 40% of graders at Millsaps, but I doubt it was through any conscious effort on my part.

To give an example: my methods class essentially got 20% of their final grade gratis and the average final paper grade (worth 30%) was around an 87; even with a somewhat tougher set of midterm grades, the class average going into the final is just over 90%. Granted, I don’t expect the average to stay above 90 after the final, but nobody who did the work and made an honest effort is going to get out of the class with less than a B-.