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For these reasons, instructors are continuously looking for ways to respond efficiently to student work. Seasoned instructors have developed systems that work well for them. We offer a few here: Don't comment on everything. Tell students that in your responses to a particular paper you intend to focus on their thesis sentences and introductions, or their overall structure, or their use of sources, etc. This method works particularly well in courses that require students to do several papers. Instructors can, as the term progresses, focus on different aspects of student writing. Space or stagger deadlines so that you are not overwhelmed by drafts. If the thought of grading eighteen essays in two or three days is daunting, divide the class in half or into thirds and require different due dates for different groups. Use peer groups. Ask students to meet outside of class (or virtually, on the Blackboard discussion board) to talk with one another about their papers. Peer groups work best when you've modeled the critiquing process in class, and when you provide students with models or guidelines for critiquing. See our page on Collaborative Learning for a fuller discussion. Ask for a Writing Assistant. The Writing Assistant reviews drafts of papers and makes extensive comments. Students benefit by having an additional reader; instructors benefit because they get better papers. If you'd like more information about using a Writing Assistant in your course, contact Stephanie Boone, Director of Student Writing Support.

The mad Ophelia and the mock-mad Hamlet expressed the poet’s many-sided rebellion against the world’s ordinariness. For there is a kind of normality that is unacceptable, a base, comfortable normality that submits to reality, forgets easily. It is universal because some inner law of economics doesn’t allow us to experience reality to the full, to the depths, at the level of the most profound feelings and meanings. The same instinct for self-preservation in the sphere of the mind protects us from an excessive sensitivity, from the ultimate why and wherefore. Hamlet is the contradiction of that attitude.