Listen, we love a good drinking (water) game in this house to increase our water intake, so one day while I was grading, I decided to post a little grading drinking game on my BlueSky. I’m compiling it here so it’s all in one place.
I was grading my creative writing students’ book reviews, so rules reflect those papers. Originally skeeted (sigh) 11.04.2024-12.05.2024.
Take a sip every time:
1. Student makes a formatting error (one sip per error)
2. You think, “Okay, nerd,” “Calm down, nerd,” and/or “So dramatic”
3. If you say one of the phrases in #2 while rolling your eyes
4. Student italicizes a short work
5. Comma splice!
6. Fragment!
7. Student leaves out a required component (one sip per missing component)
[If I had done this game when I was grading annotated bibliographies, I would have consumed the recommended 64 oz before I was done grading. So many missing/incomplete annotations ???? ]
8. Word salad.
9. Extra sip if you suspect AI.
10. Extra sip if you confirm it’s AI.
11. Sigh loudly, get up, and take a break because now you have to report student for academic dishonesty. Make note to bitch about it to friends/colleagues later.
12. Take a sip for each piece of evidence you gather to submit with academic honesty violation claim.
13. You have to make a note to update the directions/rubric.
14. Student uses both italics and quotation marks around a title.
15. You put your head in your hands.
I don’t drink, so this really must be the only explanation. (source)
16. Student puts quotation marks around the title of a long work.
17. Spelling error (two sips if it’s a homophone error)
18. You take a second look at something because it’s not done well and the student usually does things well.
19. You consider adding a new assignment to help students do better next time.
20. You add a syllabus clause.
21. You forget to evaluate a criteria on the rubric so have to reread that section of a student’s paper.
22. Student says they turned in assignment late because they were doing assignment for another class.
23. You have to revise a rubric in real time.
24. You have to re-read your instructions to make sure you told the students to do what you want them to do.
25. You have to open multiple tabs to toggle back and forth between assignments (one sip per tab)
26. You get distracted.
27. You realize you’re distracted because you haven’t turned on [insert hack here*] so your Pavlovian response to grade hasn’t kicked in
*classical music and/or movie scores for me
28. You can’t find your grading pen.
29. You post to Facebook.
30. You post to BlueSky.
31. You open Instagram.
32. You go on Box Lunch.
33. You add something to your Christmas/holiday/birthday wish list.
34. In-text and/or works cited citations incorrectly formatted (one sip per TYPE of error, first time encountered only)
35. Works cited page incorrectly formatted (one sip per error)
36. You think any variation of “Oh no baby what is you doing?”
Slice of Life is a writing challenge hosted by Two Writing Teachers.
And that’s it..for now. I’ll try to remember to add to the list since I did that one pretty late in the semester. Grading comp papers is a whole different ballgame AND the errors students tend to make at the beginning are different than the ones they make at the end. Mostly.
How creative! I love this intentional drinking game along with the supporting memes. My favorite sips were for numbers 13 and 36.
This is so creative. I love the way you bring us into the thoughts you have while grading. Loved this insightful piece.
This makes me laugh! It’s a good thing you’re only drinking water! (Though it might make the later papers easier to grade if you traded the water for something else.) I love how you move from listing when to take a sip to other responses to the varied issues you know you’ll see in the papers.
Akila, you are my people =)
Let me just state for the record that I made the unfortunate mistake of reading this blog while my students were silently working. Which means that I would not laugh aloud at so many of these. #2 especially made me giggle because ALL of my students are nerds. My fifth graders are getting geeked about Chaucer as we speak, so…yeah.
And as an elementary teacher, I’d add:
#37. Student misspells own name
#38. You say to yourself, what even IS THIS?
Who knows? Maybe I’ll make a Bingo Board.
Right after I post to Bluesky…
Hahahaha yes! Also, I love the nerds. They make the work so much easier.