I Don't Know...

I don't know if I can take it anymore. I'm getting close to my limit.

Of course, what I'm talking about is my job. I actually like the teaching part of it; the kids are great. The problem is my administration. You see, we teachers in the comp program here don't actually get to create our own assignments. We've got this large, ridiculous program where we teach these pre-written assignments and then other people grade them anonymously (I am also one of those anonymous graders myself). Anyway, the big problem comes when the assignments are badly written and the classroom instructors and the document instructors. There's also the little problem that I will teach an assignment only to find that my administrators have decided to change it.

So, this week, I have to try to teach my students to write an exploratory essay that is also "not an essay," according to my bosses. And in this exploratory essay, the student must not make an argument, but they are required to include a thesis statement. Of course, a thesis statement is inherently argumentative. Thus, I have to teach them to write a thesis statement that is somehow argumentative. It can't be done, but that doesn't matter; it's in the criteria. According to my boss, this thesis should also "not be supported." Of course, the criteria by which the students will be graded (written, of course, by these same people), however, says that the draft must "include a thesis statement that is supported." The draft is also supposed to be very formal, at according to the criteria I've been given. Of course, there are also two sections called for in the draft that are personal narratives, and these cannot, in fact, be formal. Furthermore, the assignment calls for the students to write several absolutely disparate elements that don't fit within the same essay at all.

It's all totally absurd, and I absolutely feel like I'm living in Catch-22.