The Mormon Monk

A few weeks ago, this Monk and newly minted PhD received a letter from the Brigham Young University English Department: The letter invited me to join the only university led by living prophets and to teach early American literature there, but there was one problem: my (now former) address was horribly misspelled. Actually, it's a small miracle that the letter even reached me. I asked myself--how could divinely inspired leaders get my information so wrong? Shouldn't they KNOW? And then I remembered Symonds Ryder (also, infamously, Simonds Rider), who was once placed in something of a similar situation. I quickly decided that maybe spelling wasn't the most important thing, even for an English professor, and suffice to say that I'm now happily on my way to BYU. Wahoo! Give me your tired, your poor, Your starving students yearning for knowledge . . . Send these, the young, the media-addled to me, I lift my books beneath the Y!

Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints affirm that “[w]e believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law” (AF 12) and that “[w]e believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments” (D&C 134:5). This guaranteed exercise of basic rights, including the right to “worship how, where or what [we] may” (AF 11), is a necessary precondition for our support of government because “[w]e believe that no government can exist in peace, except such laws are framed and held inviolate as will secure to each individual the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life” (D&C 134:2). In other words, members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints believe that the primary function of government is the protection of indi...

This is the fifth part of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 4 . You’re probably sick of hearing about the AP exam—but before I go, I want to give you a look at the single worst essay I graded during my time in Louisville and a piece of the best writing on humor I’ve ever seen. First the (worst) essay: “Many people try to be comedy, act funny, and even draw humorists things but personaly that is just a gift that you have to be born with. “If Mr. De Botton wasn’t a natural this process was very hard for him probably due to the fact that he has to try to impress people and a lot of people get intimated by that. There are also risk of being talked about and laughed at and even dead silences. So Mr. de Botton probably went through a lot to be as well known as he is now. “In conclusion success doesnot just happen over night it ta...

This is the fourth of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , and Part 5 (coming soon). During a week in Louisville, I spent 53 hours reading student essays that were recorded in illegible scrawls requiring intense eyestrain to decipher. During that time, I graded more than 2,000 exams, spending a little less than a minute on each essay. I quickly grew tired of reading about Jon Stewart, Wanda Sykes, Chris Rock, Larry the Cable Guy, Tina Fey, and a slew of humorists I had never heard of before my arrival in Louisville. The only thing that pulled me through this slog of essays was the occasional gem in the rough, an essay whose unintentional comedy would lead to laughter. Let me share with you the last of these gems which students thought would impress exam readers: The following are excerpts from actual exams; each excerpt is in italics, w...

This is the third of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 4, and Part 5 (coming soon!). While the grading standards set forth in the official grading rubric for each essay question might seem to be straightforward, you’ll find that most graders disagree strongly as to what makes for an “adequate” essay versus an “inadequate” essay—and that those disagreements are even more stringent when you’re discussing minor variations: What distinguishes an inadequate 3 from an inadequate 4? An adequate 6 from an adequate 7? The sorts of natural disagreements that any two individuals might have over these sorts of questions are complicated by grader demographics. I would estimate that approximately 50% of the 2010 English Language exam graders were high school teachers; another 35% or so were teachers at the community college level, and the remaining 15%...

This is the second of a five-part series on the mysteries and realities of the AP English Language Exam and its grading process. For more on the the marathon that is AP exam grading, see Part 1 , Part 3 , Part 4 and Part 5 (coming soon). After the prompt, the official grading rubric is the most important document for any grader in assessing the quality of a given exam. Each essay is scored on a scale from 1-9, but graders are encouraged to interpret that range as a series of decisions. The first question every grader is supposed to ask: “Is this an upper-half or lower-half paper?” Lower-half scores include 1-4; upper half papers include scores 5-9. Once the grader has identified the essay as “upper-half” or “lower-half,” they break it into a further subset. Lower-half papers are further divided into two groups. Those that are “Inadequate” have evidence that is “inappropriate, insufficient, or less convincing” or the argument is “inadequately developed.” Inadequate papers receive a sc...