"The pen is mightier than the sword."
He sits across from me and a fellow professor I work with.
"There is a certain delight I feel whilst wielding the red pen deciding the fate of students."
It came across as a stunningly arrogant and egotistic statement with a hint of sadism. The professor almost choked on his food. Not in a good laughing way but more in the sense of wow that was a low blow. It is not something to be proud of. It is even less something to boast about.
A lack of self-awareness one might state.
But in any case, there is some truth to this sadistic statement. And it might be linked to the old statement that the pen is mightier than the sword, even though they definitely did not mean it in this sense.
In wielding the red pen, we are holding another's future in our hands.
Or that is what it feels like.
And in some sense, this is true. You have the future of another individual in the palm of your hands. But this statement goes two ways, at least somewhat. I am merely marking what the student presented, she had to do the hard work of studying. If she did not do that, it is by no means my fault.
But it still feels that way. I feel responsible for it because I write the mark down, and I asses the worth of the intellectual property of another human being.
For the colleague in the above exchange, it gives a jolt of sadistic pleasure, playing academic God, if you will. But for me it has the opposite effect, it fills me with fear, remorse, extreme sadness, and a bunch of other words that might be produced when I drink enough.
Because I know the blow it might give those who thought they would do good, or those who needed a good mark for their scholarships, and so on. I know the feeling of receiving a low mark. But I also know how students lack the determination to study. This is not my fault. I can only do so much.
But the power of wielding the pen is not something I look forward to. It is not something I like to do. I get paid to do it. Does that mean I sell my soul to the academic demons? Probably. When you do something for money, you are constantly faced with this predicament: how much of it is only for the money, and how much is for enjoyment? I am not sure I have an answer for this because some days I feel ready for the world; other days, I struggle to get out of the cognitive slumber.
Have you ever wielded this metaphorical red pen? I know family members that work with people and who needed to tell them that they were retrenched. The feeling of power is mixed with utter sadness and remorse, maybe fear as well. Fear in the sense of sympathy, being able to feel-with. (In Afrikaans, we say meegevoel. Literally translated as feeling-with. You are feeling the same feelings as that person.)
It is never fun to do these sorts of things. But it is life, we need to work through it.
Alas.
The writing in this post is my own. The photographs are also my own, taken with my iPhone.