Why teaching assistants need to sleep before grading lab reports

[It helps if you read it like this. And yeah, we parodied the parody. Deal with it. And when I say 'we,' I'm referring to another TA, Ashley, who is responsible for most of the first half.]



Book of Lab Rubrics. Chapter one. Verses 6 through 37, and verses 42 through 50.


And thus did Freshman the Slightly Dimwitted lifteth his plea to the TA: 
"Oh TA, bless this thy lab report, that with it thou will give high grades to thy subjects, in thy mercy." 

And the TA did grin. And the students did suffer with the conicals, and test tubes, and spectrophotometers, and reagents, and trials, and Lugols, and supplements, and standard curves, and pipettes, [...]


And thus the TA spake, "First thou shalt take out thy holy pen. And with it thou shalt write yon procedure which containeth three replicates, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thy shalt run, and the number of trials of replicate shall be three. Four thou shalt not have time for, neither shalt thou run two, unless immediately proceeding onto the third. Five is right out. Once the third trial, being the third replicate, hath been run, writest then thou thy holy lab report without thy group members, lest ye be deemed naughty in my sight, and thus snuffed to Academic Honesty, where there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth."


[...]


And so quoth Freshman in yon lab report: "Thus the amylase spake unto the yeast: 'And ye shall ferment thyself unto alcohol; as alcohol, ye shall be ferment. After fermentation, alcohol shall ye be.' So it was written, so it was done. And it was good."


Yea verily didst Freshman offer up yon lab report as a sacrifice unto the TA. But it was not pleasing unto the TA, and a foul stench it didst create in the nostrils of the TA. Freshman didst spew such falsities upon the foundations of Science that the TA didst cringe to call him "bio-major."....


Amen. 




[yeah, so, that's not so entirely far off. Between the two of us, we've got bio majors claiming that enzyme reactions can be stopped with sufficient amounts of water, DNA is made of amino acids, yeast turns into alcohol, and a liquid stain will absorb all the water in a test tube. If you're not a sciency person, that's all so wrong it hurts. It's akin to a lit major trying to tell you that Hemingway wrote Othello.]