The write stuff

A few weeks ago, I was tasked with marking the answer scripts for the subject that I taught. There were more than 60 students in that class. All questions were essay questions. Each student was required to answer three questions out of six.

Anyway, when I received the answer scripts, I had a quick look - and I was shaking my head in disbelief. It wasn't so much that their answers were off the mark. In fact, most of them did very well. But the problem was that quite a number of them had - for lack of a better word - "bad" handwriting. [This problem is also shared by a blogger friend, Jie, who wrote her own account of this same subject matter recently].

While I enjoyed reading their answers, more often than not, bad handwriting influences my mood as an examiner. But most definitely I had to be fair to all of them, and as such, I had to persevere. [I wish I had scanned some of the worst cases of handwriting that I have ever seen, but alas I didn't].

If I lecture again in the future, I will most definitely remind the students of the importance of decent handwriting. Imagine having to mark answer scripts at the wee hours of the night, and having to read bad handwriting, surely that'd be an unenviable task.

I hope students realise that they too have to be fair to the examiners. While people say that handwriting is a manifestation of one's psychological state and character, it is perhaps fair to say that handwriting could also affect the reader's psychological state and mood.

Fortunately for us all, these days most things are computerised. So we don't have to endure bad handwriting in e-mails, blogs and websites.