Waterworks and Warm Smiles

It was good to go online today and visit the blogs of my friends. I needed to see their smiling faces, if only in pictures, and hear their voices, if only in text. Nikki's excuse for not being able to give her kitties a bath ("can't, I'm pregnant") and her decision to see how Brian would manage on his own made my day.

I made a student cry today. Which is why I'm a little gloomy and why I'm searching out happy faces. Well, I guess I should say that the grade I gave her on an essay made her cry. But still, it kind of ruins your day. Her essay was okay. So she received an "okay" grade. It was a research essay that nicely summarized her research. However, she didn't do much research, and she didn't do a very good job of citing the research in her paper, and she really didn't privilege her own thoughts and ideas on her subject. They were there in one paragraph near the end, but that's about it.

When I suggested that she reshape her essay using her response to her research as the essay's main idea, she wasn't too happy with me. I can't say this for sure, but I think she felt like I was punishing her ("marking me down," "making me rewrite my essay," "making me write something I don't want to write," "making me correct my mistakes"--all her words). Writing as punishment... Of course that's not the case at all.

I tried to let her know that I wasn't punishing her by asking her to revise. I tried to tell her that this was a good thing: she wrote this draft to help figure out what she wanted to say (writing to learn). And now that she knew what she wanted to say, it was time to reshape her draft based around those ideas. I tried to tell her that her grade was not determined until the end of the quarter and that taking this revision opportunity was the way get a good grade in my class. That didn't help. She was angry, and I understand that. I can see it from her perspective. Revision is a lot of work. It makes writing extremely frustrating, especially when you can't understand why something isn't working.

We talked for a while, which didn't seem to help. I tried to meet with her later today so that we could further discuss why I had given her the grade that I did. But she couldn't meet.

It reminds me of another student I once had, who wrote a quick discovery draft with a very straightforward research question, something like " what are the effects of alcohol on the brain." In the draft she effectively summarized alcohol's effects on the brain, based on some preliminary research. I suggested to this student that since she had answered her question, it was time move on in her research process, to refine her research question so that she could investigate another more interesting and unique aspect of her topic. She responded, "so by answering the question in my draft, I just screwed myself."

What? No! In fact the opposite. You're learning. This is what writing is. Showing that you're willing to investigate new ideas and showing that you realize that writing projects evolve over time will improve your grade. This is exactly what you should be doing in this class. Writing is discovering new ideas, trying on new perspectives, investigating thoughts and theories, figuring out what you think, articulating what you think. Writing is learning, as well as communicating with others. To not revise or to refuse to investigate your ideas beyond a basic level would screw yourself.

The question is, how do you say that to someone who only sees the grade and compares it to the grades she received in high school ("I always get A's on my writing")? How do you tell that student that it's time to start thinking about writing differently, now that she's in college? You can say those things, but most students don't quite understand what you mean, until they experience it for themselves. Students seem to hear such comments as, "You're wrong. You must do it over." Many times, though, frustration is the last barrier to this problem. It's a sign that students are ready to try something different, even if only because they're pissed off. Perhaps if we talk some more, and perhaps if she revises--even out of anger at me--something will click, and she'll begin to see writing in a new way. I hope she does...