A not-so hypothetical situation:

I don't know how many of you who read this blog teach, but this is what I'm facing today and I don't know what to do.

Say you give a writing assignment in your class. The paper making the assignment is brief, but, you think, clear. You are asking students to design a hypothetical experimental situation.

You give the students several weeks to write what amounts to a three-page research paper.

You collect the papers. (And grudgingly accept late the papers of the people who "forgot them in their truck" or "forgot them in their apartment" or "printer broke down" or who didn't come to class, or whatever). And you sit down to read them.

And you find that about half the class has spectacularly misunderstood the assignment, and have done far less than what you asked them to do.

Do you

a. Grade them down, figuring you answered questions on the assignment from the people who WERE THERE when you made it, and it's their fault for not attending class

b. Reconsider, decide maybe you weren't abundantly clear in the assignment (even though you were) and grade less rigorously than you planned

c. Grade the danged things on their own individual merits and don't compare the people who actually met the requirements to those who didn't

d. Say "to Hell with it all" because it's nearly the end of the semester, you're tired tired tired, you've been neglecting some v. important fieldwork because of stupid meeting horsepucky, you still have final exams to write, and just slap a decent but not great grade on each one after having quickly read them through just to be sure no one put in a sentence like "I made a doody" to check to see if you really read them.

e. Get really angry, scream at the class for not doing what you asked them to, tell them to redo the assignment and hand it in at the final exam, thus giving yourself even more work during a stressful time.

I don't know at this point but part of this afternoon's task is to get these things graded. I'm leaning towards c., with the possibility of removing 5 points (this was a 25 point assignment) for those who didn't do what I asked. I don't know. I'm just sick of the not-attending-class, not-following-directions, doing-it-my-way-because-that's-easiest crowd. I've looked at the assignment again and I think I was abundantly clear in what I wanted. Then why is what I got so different?