The week before last, my American Government Honors students took a test on the Presidency. The test included an essay question which was worth 25% of the total test grade. I don’t have a copy of the prompt in front of me, but the gist of it was:

Evaluate the relative strength of the executive and legislative branches. Justify your answer. (Translation: Who’s more powerful, the President or Congress? Are they equally powerful? Why?)

I spent two days grading the essays. Some of them were very good, some of them were okay, some of them needed improvement. But there was one that stood out above all the rest in terms of audacity and hilarity. From the very first word, I knew that this essay would be one for the ages, one that I would tell my students about twenty years from now. That word was “Pokémon.”

I don’t know how much time passed before I regained consciousness. I got some water, took some migraine-strength Excedrin, and hoped I’d recovered enough strength to go on reading:

Pokémon… The main three types are water, fire, and grass. But which one is the strongest? Water puts out fire, fire burns grass, but grass absorbs water easily! Does the cycle ever end? Well, that’s how the struggle of powers between the President and Congress has been viewed.

What an awesomely horrible introduction–and it might have been inaccurate, too; someone said there weren’t three types of Pokémon.

I’ve heard that in preparation for FCAT writing tests, students are told to “Explode the Point,” which, as I understand it, means to attempt to grab the reader’s interest and entice them to read further. Well… consider the point exploded. I wrote in the margin:

Do not ever put anything like this in one of my essays again.

In the next two paragraphs, the writer used several specific details to support his thesis, whatever that was. The problem was that most of his details were wrong. For instance, the President does not declare war (not even with Congress’ consent), the President needs no congressional approval to make executive agreements, and Congress can not override a presidential pardon.

The final paragraph matched the introductory paragraph for sheer silliness:

So, when it all comes down, who still has more power? Well, in my opinion, We the people do. Although Congress and the President can counteract each other, who put them there in the first place? We did! So, rock may break a pair of scissors, scissors may cut paper, and paper can cover a rock, but guess what? Rain makes scissors rust, deteriorates paper and erodes away rocks.

I suppose that “the people” were symbolized by the rain. To be honest, it was an entertaining essay, and his analogies were valid—but he had neglected to use a sufficient amount of correct information. I gave him an F, and wrote at the bottom,

XXXX, this essay was horrible. I can say no more.

But I couldn’t just give him the F, record the grade, and then let it go. I had to share this with somebody, anybody. I found my brother and tried reading the essay to him, but I couldn’t stop laughing. I handed him the essay.

He read it, chucked a little, then handed it back hesitantly. “Are you allowed to write that on his essay?”

I said, “What do you mean?”

“Aren’t you being a little bit mean?”

Now, the “mean” accusation had come up before—from the students I made take a test on September 11 rather than watch the news, from the students who demanded to have class outside all year long and got their wish on the hottest day of the year, from the students who have been jolted awake from the crack of a yardstick against a desktop—but never from anyone whose opinion mattered. I figured I’d better review what I’d written.

I re-read the blood-red comments scrawled in the margins of his paper, and realized that maybe some of my comments might be taken the wrong way. I wanted to let him know that it was an utterly terrible essay–one that I would tell my students about for the rest of my career, one that would take its place in the Hall of Academic Atrocity next to the essay by an African-American former student of mine, stating that if she had to delete one civil liberty from the Constitution, it would be the one from the Thirteenth Amendment—but without hurting his feelings.

I decided to soften the blow a little. I drew an asterisk after “I can say no more,” and continued my commentary in the top margin:

*Actually, I will say more. While your analogies may be valid, you spent way too much time writing about them and not enough time proving your mastery of the content. KNOW THE MATERIAL.

That sounded a little more professional. When the student saw his graded essay, he seemed good natured about it and understood what I was trying to tell him. Hopefully he took my criticism as constructive, and he’ll be a little better prepared for his next essay.

Everything hurts right now. My knees ache, my calves are burning, I’m pretty certain I broke my elbow, and it feels like I ripped every muscle in my abdomen.

Tonight I played pick-up soccer with my brother and some people from his co-ed league. We were supposed to start at 6:30, but we spent the first half-hour watching our self-appointed captain argue with the other team’s leader about how many would play on each side, who would play on each side, should we just play light shirts vs. dark shirts, which direction the makeshift field should be aligned, etc. Some of us simply wanted to play ball and were getting increasingly irritated. One of my co-workers showed up to play, but had to leave before we even kicked off.

Eventually we started playing. I suppose that playing lights vs. darks would’ve made too much sense, because we ended up with players on both teams wearing all sorts of colors. This was pretty darn confusing, since there were three sets of people who looked similar from ten yards away, but were playing on different teams.

We must’ve had close to twenty people playing on half a football field, so it was pretty cramped. All the same, my team went up four- or five-zip pretty quickly. Turns out nobody had bothered to count the number of people on each side, and our side had a 12 to 8 advantage. It took a while to figure that out, because of the mix’n’match jersey situation. I switched to the other team, as did another one of our players—though it took a while for my new teammates to figure out that they didn’t have to cover me anymore.

That evened the teams out a little more, and the game became more competitive and more fun. There were two players on my team who knew how to play. I judge that based on whether they seemed to know what I wanted them to do, and whether I coudl read what they wanted me to do. Now, we had some guys who could shoot and dribble and pass well, but that’s not the same as knowing how to play. Someone who knows how to play knows where and when to shoot, or pass, or dribble… or just get out of the way.

Unfortunately, those two players had me on their team. I played poorly, but I’ll give myself an excuse since it was only the second time I’d played in the last year. It’s frustrating to know what you want to do with the ball, but only have a 50% chance of success. Those swerving crosses either stay way too low or go flying off the far side of the field. Flicks either don’t go high enough or they go straight up. And the whole “breathing” thing becomes difficult when you haven’t exactly been exercising regularly since you were, oh, say, sixteen.

Late in the game, I ran right smack into a pick—which doesn’t happen very often in soccer, because it’s illegal. But the guy didn’t mean to do it, and I’m sure that my elbow will eventually bend the right way. I fell flat on my rear-end trying to flick a ball down the line, so that hurt. Happily, my pride is intact because my brother didn’t nutmeg me the few times I went up against him.

We played for an hour, and then got to the “next-goal-wins-so-we-can-get-the-hell-out-of-here” phase of the game. Three next-goals and twenty minutes later, we finally left. It was fun, and if I’m able to walk this weekend (and if the Bears aren’t on TV) I’ll go back again.

Thank God my emergency lesson plans are on file.

2 Responses to “Agony.”

1. ticklemeelmo Says:
   October 14th, 2006 at 7:38 PM

Yeah some of us form school have a pick up game every saturday at 6 at memorial park. you should join us!

1. ticklemeelmo Says:
   October 25th, 2006 at 9:19 PM

“coudl”. Enough said.