Gentle advice...

18 February 2022: Just had to figure out how to gently tell a very-eager/confident student (in my written comments) that he got out ahead of his skis in a paper he wrote with disastrous results. He made a silly and inaccurate claim about the piece of criticism he was responding to, and therefore his attempted take-down of it was just a complete failure. How do you put that into writing in a way that isn't crushing but also doesn't soft-pedal the truth and scares him into being more careful next time? It's not easy!

So maybe I'll call it quits after 10.5 hours on campus today.