Free The iCandidate by Mikael Carlson

argument, factual accuracy, thesis development and a couple of other things. Once you add this result to those of the other sections, you get a raw score out of two-hundred. They all need to score a one hundred and eighty-four or better for an A. The good students historically average around a one hundred and seventy, or an eighty-five percent which is a B.
    Students are dismissed from school once the two exams are over, so I get right to work correcting their short answer sections. It’s barely lunchtime as I plod my way through the stack, and the results are all pretty much the same. A question wrong here and a half-credit answer there, but overall they did really well. I’m impressed because these questions are not something I would ever characterize as easy. I am also a little distressed, given the circumstances, for the same reason.
    I receive a text from Jess explaining she is going to do much of her grading at home instead of at school. Since that means the living room will look like it threw up Shakespeare, I decide to grade the essays at my favorite local hangout. The Perfect Buzz is a throw-back coffee house not far from the school. Much larger than you would expect, it still has a quaint, comfy feel you don’t get at a modern Starbucks. The java here is excellent and the espresso even better.
    L aura, the shop’s owner who is almost never spotted outside the store during business hours, is surprisingly not in. Her stand-in, a pleasant older woman, makes my usual quadruple latte, and I settle in to one of the plush, comfortable chairs near the window to read the essays.
    I ’m a fast reader, and since I only take notes and not assign grades to the essays until I have read them all, it only takes a little over five hours to finish. It is nearly summer, but the sun has lost its struggle to stay in the sky. The long shadows of the late afternoon and early evening fade as twilight begins to settle in.
    I review my notes and assign the grades based on each student’s performance. The highest was a 40 and the lowest was a 32. Clearly they prepared very well for this exam because I have never had essay scores this high. I begin to calculate the scores for each student by adding the essay to the short answer. Each of my pupils is in line for an A, but there are some borderline ones. A bad showing on the multiple choice questions could easily send a few plunging into B or B minus range.
    I open the folder the teacher clerk gave me and begin to add the multiple choice scores to the tally. I want to not believe what I’m seeing as I type the scores into a spreadsheet. Excel will do the math, but the result is already obvious. A year of hard work paid off in this demonstration of knowledge and historical concepts. I am not so thrilled about what that means.
    By the time I calculate the scores, collect all my crap and get to the house, it’s well after nine. Normally this would draw the ire of my significant other, but Jessica is in the same boat herself. The condition of the living room serves as a testament to the plight of the modern English teacher. Piles of papers are everywhere, and although she has a finely-honed system for how she grades, it looks like complete chaos to me.
    Jessica is passed out on the couch, a purple pen she uses to correct essays only an inch away from bleeding into my microfiber cushion. I never use purple, despite it being the official color teachers at Millfield High are supposed to correct with. Our current administrators feel red is too harsh on the fragile psyche of the American teenager. I figure if you don’t like red, don’t make mistakes.
    Sensing my presence, Jessica opens her eyes groggily. “Well?”
    “Can we not talk about this now? Sleeping on the couch isn’t good for my back,” I say, answering the question without really answering it.
    “ So much for not underestimating them.”
    “They must have cheated,” I retort, knowing full well they didn’t.
    “ Yeah, sure.