Most of you have received grades
and comments on your first formal paper via email; I am still working on the
papers that came in after the initial deadline but ahead of the end of the
7-day grace period (Wednesday 10/23, at 12:01 a.m.). On the whole, the
papers were very good, and your grades reflect that. There were many more
A and B papers out of these 3 classes than I normally see.
While I
always enjoy hearing from you, some of you have fired back some rather hasty
replies, protesting your grade, and asking me to reconsider. Please
remember that it is always disappointing to receive a grade and/or comments
that are not "A+, Great Work!" I know that you all worked hard
on the papers and that you're good students. However, I urge you,
whenever you get feedback on a paper, from me or any other prof., do not
quickly fire off an email of protest. (Many I received had misspellings,
typos, etc.—and that does not help your case!) Moreover, while
it's hard to hear criticism, that is the nature of the student/teacher
relationship. (If it helps at all, I hate assigning grades--I'd
rather just read your essays and encourage you to keep writing!)
Many of
you were dismayed to find that I held you to the word-length requirements.
Some of your papers were significantly under the word limit, but many
more were over the top--some by 20-30%. Learning to edit down for word
length is an important college-level writing skill, and working and reworking
an essay to remove all unnecessary language (or even parts of the story that
are not strictly germane to its core) is often required. Learning to
expand on ideas is also a crucial college-level skill; and it often takes many
drafts and "re-drafts" to add enough detail to support your points.
When a professor gives a word length requirement, it is nearly almost exactly
that: a word length requirement--not a suggestion. After teaching
college writing for over 20 years, I know what can be done in a given length,
and it then becomes your job to expand on your ideas or edit them down
accordingly. This is part of the learning process.
Some of
you were also unhappy to find that I held you to other aspects of what the
prompt called for, such as conventions of Standard English, or addressing the
prompt (i.e., staying on topic). These are also important requirements
that you'll find other profs grading you on. Many of you said that your
friends, family, or classmates liked your paper (suggesting that my opinion was
the in the minority, and therefore in error). I'm sure they did, and
that's wonderful; however, you are each responsible for making sure your
paper addresses the prompt in the given length requirement and addresses any other
parameters that are spelled out.
In many
high school and developmental college writing classes, your teachers read your
drafts and gave you feedback, and some of you want to know why I do not.
I do read your drafts in progress: as you're working on them in class, as
they come up on my blog reading lists, as I check through the blogs each week.
And everyone who was engaging in the drafting was doing fine. That
does not mean that everyone was doing A work, nor do I expect to get an A paper
from every student (wonderful though that would be). As I talked with you
while you worked in class, as I asked you questions and answered yours, I was
giving you feedback. It was then your job to use that information
to critically assess your own work and, when asked, that of your peers, just as
it is your job to do well on a Chemistry exam or a book review for History,
without turning them in first and having your profs give you an "as is"
grade on them.
So, please, use my comments to
learn from the experience. That’s why I write
them. Please do not ask (and don’t ever
insist) that I reconsider the grade. Instead,
ask yourself how you can use the comments to think about ways to improve
the paper you’ve just gotten back, and how you can use them to think about and
improve your work on future assignments.
You have two more papers to go, plus the blogs, plus the “up to 10%
extra credit” for enthusiastic participation and improvement over the
course. And please, do NOT do what one
group of students did (in one of Thursday’s class sessions) and pout, because nothing
else screams louder, “I’m too young and immature to be in a college classroom!”
