The thing you have to realize is that professors hate having to grade your papers as much as you hate having to write them. In my experience, most professors (the good ones, at least; the one’s with a modicum of self-awareness and critical reflection) do not want to have to assign numerical value to your work. Nor do they really want to read a hundred papers on the same topic by students who naturally (by virtue of the fact that they are students and are thus still learning the material) know much less about the topic than the professor does. All they really want to know is if/how you understand the ideas, concepts, themes, etc. that have been discussed in the class. This could be achieved in a number of ways that do not involve assigning grades, and would be less painful and punitive for all involved, but is rendered impossible by the intense restrictions and disciplinary measures imposed upon professors by their departments, which are, in turn, subject to intense restrictions and regulations imposed by the university itself (which is, in large part, beholden to the will of investors, alumni, the state, and the wider community, the good will of whom it depends upon for funding and support). Both students and professors are caught within the disciplinary trap of academia: both are subject to structures of power and bureaucracy that dehumanize and seek to render them docile, just another faceless functionary within the bureaucratic machine. Obviously, professors hold a slightly greater amount of power and have slightly more room for agency than students by virtue of their position within the system, and should thus be held accountable/responsible for their part in the perpetuation of its disciplinary measures. But we should also recognize that, within the broader system of academia, professors actually possess very little power and are generally just conduits for the disciplinary techniques of the university itself, which does not give a single solitary shit about students except in their capacity as consumers (i.e., tuition payers). This is not to let professors off the hook, or to justify the behaviour of shitty profs, many of whom do not care for their students either, having been thoroughly disciplined by the academic system to the point of internalizing the university’s mindset. But we should recognize that the professor/student antagonism is largely a false one, and that the greater problem is academia as an apparatus, a system of power, and a particular organization of knowledge/pedagogy/discipline (which itself is just a subset and microcosm of broader systems of power).
