Last year, my students started calling me a "dream-killer," due to the strict way I grade essays. I'm so particular with language and grammar that, regardless of the color pen I use, I manage to make essays bleed with the regret of existence. But even with the low grades and the disheartening sighs, my students laugh at me and at each other before they dig their heels to do better for the revision. In addition, I have to say that I have created mini-dream-killers; whenever they edit other students' work, they are as harsh as I am.
Although they call me a "dream-killer," it's more for humor; I like to think of it as a "call to reality." The quality of student writing has declined in the past years since I have been teaching. What really gets me is that some students believe they can really write; some even want to be professional writers. Yet they cannot even string a coherent sentence together. When they see the corrections I make or the comments I write, it's a reality check that they were not analyzing their own mistakes or paying attention to details.
There is one particular student in mind. Inspired by Twilight and teenage romantic notions of eternal love, she really wants to be a writer and write stories, à la Stephanie Meyer (that's the student's first mistake: idolizing low-quality literature). Far be it from me to say what she wants to write--but gosh darn it!--I will not let her believe she can be professional writer. She cannot write. She is inarticulate with sentences and incomprehensible with anything related to the WRITTEN word. When I bloody up papers, hers becomes completely anemic by the time I finish (pun intended).
Dream-killer. I'm going to kill that dream right now. She can write all she wants and aspire to be a writer all she wants, but I will make bloody sure she will know that she will not be a good one.
Reality is a bitch.