The opening is humorous as it is exactly how one reacts when having to correct a peers paper. We never want to give them a bad grade because they may be our best friend or just another peer. You can’t give them 100% either, that’ll look suspicious when the teacher looks at it, and if the teacher thinks you weren’t paying attention to what you were correcting then you might get marked down to. And then both of you have bad grades just because you thought a peer should have a 100%.
So what do you do? Just correct it down enough that it looks like a B+ paper so the writer is satisfied with the grade/corrections and you aren’t busted by the teacher for being lazy or biased at a friend. You also can’t look like you have no idea what you’re doing. Don’t write over their text, and make sure you have the proper symbols to use. Add some commas that always make things look official, maybe change how something should be capitalized. This makes you feel like you are getting through this without being to critical.
You need the critical thought, that’s what makes the people actually better in writing and you won’t have to got through that horrible grading process as much. If we all want to be better writers we need to criticize the hell out of each other, without being a bunch of total assholes to one another. Constructive criticism is key “I like this idea but maybe you should word it differently” perfect maybe this can all work out. Or maybe we just get better at the charade we’ve been running for years with our fake correcting, whatever works best.
jacktegebakken 