Anyone who has taught Catch-22 knows what comes next. A hundred-plus essays land on your desk, all arguing something about Yossarian, bureaucracy, or the absurdity of war, and every one deserves a real read. The novel runs on irony and circular logic, so the writing it produces is rarely simple to score. That is why one class set can eat an entire weekend.

Most of the time doesn't go to reading. It goes to typing the same comments again and again: this claim is too broad, this quote needs context, you are retelling the plot instead of analyzing it. Catch-22 makes the summary trap worse, since its looping scenes and repeated events hand students plenty of plot to recap when they are unsure what to argue. Once you notice that pattern, you can plan around it.

The first fix happens before you grade anything. Decide which skills this assignment is measuring and keep it to three or four, such as thesis, use of evidence, analysis of satire, and organization. A rubric that tries to score everything ends up scoring nothing well, and it slows you down on every paper.

The second fix is treating the class set as a batch job. Read a handful of essays quickly with no marking at all, just to see where the group is stuck. That short pass tells you which comments you will write most often, so you can prepare them once instead of forty times.

Cut the Rubric Down to What You Can Defend

Every criterion on your rubric should be something you taught in the unit and something you can point to in a student's paragraph. If you never covered how Heller uses repetition to build absurdity, do not score it. Fewer criteria also make feedback clearer for students, who tend to ignore comments that scatter across ten different issues.

• Pick three or four criteria tied to what you actually taught
• Write one plain sentence describing a strong response for each criterion
• Skim ten essays first to find the most common problems
• Grade one criterion across all essays before moving to the next
• Save your best comments in a bank you can reuse and adjust

Grade by Skill Instead of by Student

Reading each essay top to bottom and scoring everything at once forces your brain to switch tasks constantly. Try scoring all the thesis statements first, then all the evidence, then the analysis. Your judgment gets steadier because you keep the same standard in your head, and outliers stand out faster.

This approach also protects you from drift. By essay forty, most of us are more generous or more irritated than we were at essay three. Working one criterion at a time makes it easier to compare a paper with the ones you have already seen, and you can circle back to the first few if your standard shifted.

Where AI Feedback Fits Into the Pile

An AI grading tool like GraideMind handles the repetitive layer of this work. You provide your rubric, and it reads each essay against those criteria, drafts comments tied to specific passages, and suggests scores for you to review. Because the comments come from your rubric rather than a generic template, they stay relevant to the assignment.

The savings are largest on the mechanical, high-volume feedback: unclear claims, thin analysis, quotes dropped in without setup. That leaves you free to give real attention to the essays that need a human response, like the student who read the ending in a surprising way or the one who is one revision away from a breakthrough. Your professional judgment still has the final word on every grade.

What to Keep Doing by Hand

Some parts of grading Catch-22 are worth protecting. A student who reads Yossarian's final decision as courage instead of escape is making an interpretive move, and a short handwritten note or a quick conversation means more than any generated comment. Keep those moments for yourself.

Set a time limit for each batch and stick to it. Two focused sessions with a clear rubric almost always beat one long, foggy slog. Students get their essays back sooner, and you keep your weekend.