Remember some time last week when I was complaining about what a procrastinator I am? How its to the point where its not even procrastinating, its more like pure laziness and a complete lack of motivation? Yeah?
Well, this evening, the product of my laziness and lack of motivation was returned to me, with a grade. I was dreading getting that paper returned to me. I knew the grade was not going to be any where near what I needed it to be in order to do well in this class. The prof was vicious and nice all at the same time about passing the papers back to us. While I was absolutely dying to see what I got, I know that I would have been even more distracted from my final exam than I already was.
Funny thing, how my stomach gets more nervous about getting the paper back than turning the thing in. Shouldn't it be the other way around? That way you spend an appropriate amount of time on it and you'll produce something worth reading so a good grade is inevitable. Unfortunately, this isn't the way things work for me. I certainly wish they did.
Before the exams, the prof talked to us a little about the papers. She flat out told us that most of us needed to do well on the exams because we needed every point possible. I know for a fact that this disclaimer was directed towards me, maybe at a few other students, but definitely me. She laughed at the fact that students used humorous phrases and wording in their paper, she even found it hilarious that a student spelled his own name wrong on his paper. But when it came time to pick a fault on my paper, she became furious at the fact that she could tell when students didn't start their papers beforehand because they are always too short. As you may recall, my paper was almost two pages too short. Although she didn't specifically point out my paper as breaking the length rule, the shame hurt all the same. It was almost as if she really was pointing me out amongst the rest of the students.
Ok, I suppose I'll quit rambling on this and get right to the point....here's what the prof had to say about my paper:
- missing title
- font: too big
- use of awkward phrasing
- lacking analysis
- lacking textual evidence to support thesis
- problems with tense
- inaccurate analysis
Her final comments:
Katie,
These ideas have potential, but the paper does not succeed in the links it tries to make to broader issues of Victorian femininity. There needs to be much more textual explication here. As you know, the paper is also far short of the required length for this assignment.
78
argh...