Thanks, DWill. Grading essays is such a subjective process. I was one of the scorers for final portfolios, which are graded on a pass/fail basis. We came across a couple of papers that were pretty bad. Two papers came to me with one pass and one fail, so I was the tiebreaker. I failed one and passed the other. Even so, the English chair looked at it and talked with the teacher and they decided together to pass the essay. Standards are changing. There is a tendency to pass students because it's the easiest thing to do. The Lottery assignment I came up could have easily been used in high school a decade or two back. Apparently now it's too difficult for community college, although I just might try it again. I think you're right that writing about fiction may be challenging, but it's also interesting.

So do you have a master's degree? Have you ever thought about teaching?