Payoff

Although I passed only three and a half days in the company of this year's Great Stack, I gathered enough entrants for the Parade of Wonderful Student Statements to outstrip the usual week's worth.  This means that the students are getting stupider, or the writing is getting worse, or I am becoming less patient, or, as I suspect with no small amount of brittle anger, all three.  I do believe the highlight was the exam book which, in place of an essay, offered an odd stain. 

That was preferable, however, to 98% of what came across my temporary desk, because the vast majority of the responses didn't address the the question at hand.   They didn't even try.  The prompt was about a fictional character's search for justice; the answers ranged all the way from "Please enjoy this post-chewed and utterly unanalyzed plot summary of The Kite Runner!" to "I Wrote a Term Paper on the Use of Symbolism in The Great Gatsby...and Here It Is!"

As is the case every year, you're about to be enormously Hamleted.  For the first hour of the first day I took succor from the fact that it's actually still taught, but then I realized that it's not learned particularly well.  This stops no one; a common pickup line for those of us scoring the free response question on the AP English exam is "So how many Hamlets did you get today?"

You're paid to read, it's true, but well... what you're reading is this:

"In the novel A Midnight Summer's Dream..."

"Because he needed to avenge his family, McGruff begins to plot."

"This book's main character then started with knowledge of bad deeds and immoral acts, allowing them to uproar conflict."

"Through the use of literary devices such as point of view and structure, Lee tries to emphasize the father, son, and his point of views and structure by mixing their views and and sending mixed messages to the reader.  This can be confusing."

"Othello then had an emotional breakdown, causing him to cry over and over again."

"Sure, she encountered some setbacks, such as the death of her entire family, which will likely scar her for life, but at least she's all good for now."

"Shakespeare makes the concept of vengeance extremely popular."

"Marlow does not want to extinguish the light from her forehead because he wants to spread the hope to people."

"This first fatal killing shows how Hamlet's search for justice begins unsuccessfully.  A rough spot in his avenging plans."

"The story takes place in preantebellum America."

"Achebe utilizes Okonkaw's suicide as a patent anecdote."

"In Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie finally found happiness with her husband, Tea Bag."

"Hamlet's uncle has taken his place on the throne by marring his mother."

"It's thanks to this character that his dad's eyes were plucked out."

"She disenabled the toilet."

"Edmund is his illegitimate son, born from a whoresome woman.  His soliloquy is all about standing up for bastards.  Well now that Edmund is the favorite son, he has no more havoc go wreak on, right?  Wrong!!!"

"Dr. Jeckyll struggled to create an anecdote."

"He slapped all the h8rz in the face with his success."

"Hamlet does not have to stand the sight of his mother being with the man who killed his father because Hamlet is dead also."

"MacDuff will end MacBeth's new found hobby of murdering."

"Chaos runs rampid."

"Literature is a pot filled with pieces of work that contain stories of justice and injustice."

"In The Scarlet Letter, Pearl is the metal detector that can sense the fraud."

"Hamlet wants to help out his dad's ghost.  Alas, it doesn't go well though."

"The search was very significant because it gave Hamlet hope and reason to go on after Big Hamlet died."

"Hamlet then attempts to slay his uncle through a rug, only to find out that it was his former love, Ophelia's father."

"There were many event-filled adventures in this book."

"Jesus swipes dust onto the feet of those who don't welcome him in their house."

"Hamlet is about a guy named Hamlet."

"Every American should read The Adventures of F**kleberry Finn."