Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Grumble
I got my Huckleberry Finn essay back and I got a B+. Pretty good, pretty good. According to his rubrick I suck at grammar, and that greatly affected my grade. Without the "D+" score for grammar I probably would have gotten an A-. All this is iced with the general boredom I experience during this guy's lectures. What I'm wondering is if he wants us to write about things like the reasons Huckleberry Finn is classified as regionalist, or something. That utterly bores me and feels like a bunch of baloney. I'm really grumpy because we've gone over "The Wasteland" for two weeks, all lecture proving that Eliot was trying to use myth and create myth and work with myth, and Joseph Campbell and the Fisher King...all fascinating, but apparently meaning that if I am going to go on my own with my own ideas I'm going to have to be as exhaustive. I mean this guy is serious about defining terms. I understand his concerns; he kept writing words like "clarify" and "explain" on my paper, so I get that I need to be more articulate...in a three page paper. I get it though, this is pressuring me to write the best essays I've ever written, and okay, that may take more than three hours. Sometimes I don't enjoy the jabs, you know? I have such a problem with pride, really. It's like -- why aren't you praising me? Why aren't you overlooking my lack of a highschool grammar education? Whine, whine. Well, I will...gulp...spend more time drafting. No getting by this one.
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3 comments:
That guy is a tool. I'm sorry, but I read your paper and you did not earn a Dplus in grammar. Yes, of course, you could work on your writing style, on using the fewest and best words possible, on increasing the clarity of your argument. Your writing is not stylistically fantastic or perfect (although your ideas are). We all could continue working on our style. And I'm not saying that you didn't deserve a Bplus for your overall grade; I haven't seen the other students' work. But to say you have a Dplus in grammar is ridiculous and I would say it to his face. And all this nattering on about mythology for two weeks is a joke. Move on, move on. I am wondering exactly what this guy is trying to teach you.....Anyone can look up Campbell and Eliot and read all that stuff. He should introduce it and move on! There is so much in that poem! Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind.
Who knows what prompts someone to be such a stickler for grammar? I have some friends at the university level who deduct a lot of points if there are even minor grammatical mistakes. Others, like us at Fullerton College, are a bit more forgiving, I guess.
As long as the ideas shine through, and I'm sure they do in your case, that's the key. The rest is all icing.
I can't believe you've spent two weeks on The Waste Land. That would be excruciating for me. One day and then on to something else. There are other works to read and plenty more that are far more enjoyable. Hell, we're only spending one day on As I Lay Dying.
We're going to read As I Lay Dying, and I'm guessing that that it is the work that I'm going to write on. I'm scared, though, because I haven't written on Faulkner before.
Well, I've done so much complaining this semester, I feel like a total Grinch. Something in me is shriveling up and beginning to ferment.
Let me know if you have a good grammar book to recommend.
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