Oh god. It's that time of year again...

Midterm season is upon us, bringing my first round of whiny student emails who want, with varying degrees of rudeness, to protest their grades. Very rarely do you get a politely worded email - almost all of them seem to have been typed late at night without benefit of a spell check ("how dr you criticise my enklish?"). They go on to explain that the class is beneath them and is way too easy (yet they are unable to earn good grades in it), and, more often then not, they conclude by telling you that the reason this grade is so particularly awful is that they want to be an English teacher. (In my roommate's case, they want to teach creative writing.)

I hate getting these emails - first, because they're usually insulting, and unlike the students in question you have to be professional in your response; secondly, they're *so* arrogant - the 80s seems to have bred a generation of incredibly entitled kids who will tell you with straight faces that they deserve to earn full credit for an assignment they didn't do, or that they deserve an A on a crappy paper because they *did* it, or because their neighbor's dog read it and thought they deserved an A. These emails also translate into a lot of work because you have to go back, reread the essay, look at other students essays etc. to make sure that you didn't miscalculate anything or overlook a potential saving grace in an argument. It's tiring and irritating and I hate it. *groan*