Ouch, that smarts

I love that old joke where, after somebody says that an injury smarts, the wise guy says he should try some on his head. I am still smarting over Chieh's wise critique of my analysis about student expectations vis a vis post-9-11 issues, and revisiting my tentative thesis about a change in the political weather, Obama-mania notwithstanding. Meanwhile, my student in-class essays were markedly stronger than previous quarters (or were they, hmm?) I am perhaps feeling comfortable about grading these because I am using them as drafts, and returning them with the assignment that they respond to each and every one of my comments, which I have highlighted, on a sheet of paper ("error log") with corresponding page and paragraph indicated. This worked really well last quarter, and with the additional promise that I would raise their grades, I got 100% participation. And some seem to have embraced careful reading of comments into their later revision, editing work. Running out of time is a problem, so that I am going to formally integrate this into their pre-graded final HAs toward getting better, revised and edited papers, as opposed to just making those hours of comments and not actually being sure whether they were ever addressed. (Two things I can't stand are actually recognizing the same mistake, which I have already noted and, worse, having to compare drafts to see changes.) I will have them turn in this "error log" with the final paper, basically formalizing this whole log deal.