Self-Assessment

I just read through my final exam for a writing class I took in college (Spring 2000), and it made me laugh so hard at myself that I read part of it aloud to M, who remarked that perhaps I do not always choose the appropriate moments for humor. The exam was a self-assessment.. several pages long and focusing on each piece of writing we had done and myself as a student in the class. Apparently, I was in a particularly honest mood when I turned this in:

The second piece in my portfolio was.. well, boring. I didn’t enjoy writing it, because I’ve done a great deal of analysis in previous classes, both in my high school classes and in college. As a result, I was very much not motivated to make the paper anything special. The second draft of the paper was submitted for a full-class workshop. Most of the comments seemed to be about the formality of the paper, and how little of myself I put into it. To be honest, I pretty much ignored the advice I got there, because it’s been drilled into me since my sophomore year of high school that the use of personal pronouns in standard academic prose is nearly always to be avoided. Even when it’s okay with the audience (and apparently it was, from the response), I feel like it’s wrong by now, and so I didn’t want to completely alter the structure of the paper, so I didn’t change much for the final revision. I was rather fond of the phrase "a metaphorical petri dish for gender harassment", though. (p. 2).

Who, me? A snob? Naaaahhh. I suppose I figured I could get away with it since I was doing quite well in that class already and it was the end of the semester (and my birthday!) That phrase, though, I still stand behind 100%.

The other essay that I liked was the third one. It’s kind of silly to quibble over a 9 and a 10, but I didn’t really agree with the grade I got on it. The question asked what my definition of feminism was, but the comments suggested that my definition wasn't good enough. I was sort of confused as to how an opinion question that was reasonably well-written could be wrong, but that's okay.

*laugh* I can't imagine what I hoped to gain by that, but I suppose I'm a grudge-holder about unfair grades.. but I won't get into that except to say that you can't lower someone's grade if they met the criteria you set forth in the assignment just because you "don't learn what I expected you to get out of this assignment" because then you're completely crazy. I guess since I was the only one to get an A out of that class I shouldn't complain too much. Enough about school.. I just found it funny so I wanted to mention it here.

Anyway, The Answer to my burning plot problem for last year's Nanobook popped into my head tonight. It was just yesterday that I decided to try to work on revising it before leaping into something else. I have actually spent a large amount of time trying to figure this out in the past year, but it just wouldn't come until tonight, when I happened upon a random phrase in a writing book. I am a little excited now, although we'll see how well my revising efforts go.. it's hard. We'll see. I'm hoping that my English class trend holds true--I was always told that my biggest talent was in the revising. If not.. well, maybe at least I'll end up with something that I wouldn't be embarrassed to let at least a couple of people read. :)