First Formal Paper, Grades, and Comments

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!”