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A Mirror Floating in Water

An eef-ing rant

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12 Comments
by
DanielBenoit
, 01-15-2010 at 06:12 PM (943 Views)
Okay, I'm sorry to any kiddies or mods if some swearing will persist here, but I am as pissed off as hell. WARNING: The following writing is going to be crap.

As many of you know, I take online courses. Well, even though the work is pitifully easy, it comes in such great quantities and is so tedious and boring that it comes out as very hard. Blah blah blah.

Okay, in English I had a writing assignment to do. We were supposed to read a novel from a list the teacher provided us, and I who was in the middle of The Idiot wanted to ask her if I could write about The Idiot instead. I thought "well, The Idiot is generally 'harder' than these novels (for most of them were relatively light reading), so there won't be any problem." There wasn't. She said fine and all was good.

Now, fast-forward a month and a half later. I finish the book, and write an essay. I loved the book so much that I put my heart and soul into the essay. In the end it came out as 20 perfect pages concerning the novel. I put so much work into it and all of this crap blah blah blah. And then, guess what? She can't accept it because the novel wasn't on the list. But I could've sworn that I sent her an email asking her. I looked back in my email history, but couldn't because it automatically deletes emails, and the earliest one was only a month old.

Now I'm thinking WTF? It's like I turned in 20 pages of the word "blah", as if it was worthless. Yes the ****ing novel was not on the ****ing list, but honestly, if I put that much work into the essay on a novel that is probably ten times more difficult than the teenage novels on the list, why the hell can't it be accepted? It's not that much of an injustice to the other students, because I'm sure I worked just as hard, if not more. I doubt she even read it, because once I sent it, I immedietly got an email back about ten minutes later saying that she can't accept it. Come on! At least you could ****ing read it!

It just gets me mad because my American Government teacher appretiates creativity and gave me a 100% on an essay I did that strayed a bit far from the subject and had a lot of philosophical jargon in it. But she at least was able to recognize the hard work I put into it and the value of it (because I do consider it to be one of my best essays). While my English teacher can't even bear to read it. Wtf?

Idk, I'm pissed off, because this will be catastrophic to my grade in English because I have no time to read another frickin' novel when there's only a few frickin' hours left until everything must be turned in.

Sorry for wasting your time.
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Comments

  1. Veva's Avatar
    sorry for that, my perosnal explanation would be that your English teacher fell into a common routine of teachers (and I know this, my family is full of teachers and tutors), when their own work fails to satisfy them, so they have to create their dogmas and stereotypes to keep them in the bloody job, whithout being confused. So the problem is that you are trying to break down someone's stereotype .... bad luck but stay positive
  2. qimissung's Avatar
    Well, if it makes you feel any better, as an English teacher, I would have accepted it. It's not, however going to help you.

    I can't believe I'm suggesting this, but maybe it's time to hit the old Cliff or Spark notes and write the most minimal amount allowed. It's not really that hard to fake something like that, usually. I'm sure you could pull that off relatively quickly.

    I wouldn't suggest that if you weren't already an obviously good student. Good luck.
  3. Dark Muse's Avatar
    It is too bad you don't have the e-mail to back you up that she had already told you that you could do it and than retracted it. That really does suck, I would be pissed off too.
  4. Virgil's Avatar
    Oh my gosh, that's terrible Daniel. What other novels are on the list. Maybe there is an easy one, like Qimi suggests. You've got to at least get the minimum.
  5. 1n50mn14's Avatar
    No way! I'd be doing some serious complaining about that! Kudos to you, though, for going above and beyond expectations.
  6. qimissung's Avatar
    yeah, note to self, in the future, save correspondence!
  7. mtpspur's Avatar
    Oh yes--it's what in wriitng NOT what gets said. A word to the wise is sufficient. PLUS---big lesson in life -- meet the expectations FIRST then the enhancements will gild the lily. Had to laugh at Gimissung's Cliff notes remark. I read them but can honestly say I never used them--though a social studies teacher accused me of it once over Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini. She said she checked Masterplots for plagerism. She and I were never the same after that. Hang in there. Seven years from now you'll laugh over it.
  8. toni's Avatar
    Ah, what misfortune. I'm very sorry to hear that, Dan. If I were you, I would go to my teacher personally and give her a piece of my mind.
    I go with Qimi's SparkNotes suggestion, if it's not too late.
  9. DanielBenoit's Avatar
    Thank you everybody for all your kind and helpful remarks.

    In the end I didn't have time, for I was overloaded with stuff from my other classes. Hopefully I pass
  10. The Comedian's Avatar
    Sounds like a tough situation all around. But, the email would have made the situation a lot easier to resolve.

    On the other hand, I can feel for the teacher too. If she didn't remember saying "yes" to your request, then she might feel that letting you write on a book that "that's not on the list" would just be the start of a slippery slope.

    I know, as a teacher, that is why I have many black/white rules in my classroom -- the minute you let one well-intentioned student bend the rules in the right direction, you'll have 5-10 ill-intentioned ones wanting to bend the rule in the wrong direction.
  11. AuntShecky's Avatar
    I'm sorry that your instructor, as so many (but not all!) people in the education biz, punished your individualism and creativity. It reminds me of a line on the Simpsons a few years back when Principal Skinner told Bart, Lisa, and their schoolmates, "That's showing creativite thinking, and I'm here to stop it!"

    As to the automatically-deleted email-- I think I suggested once before that you should save important emails in a folder. Does your IP feature "file cabinets" to save emails in.

    Also, you might want to look into back-up files. I use the old-fashioned 3.5 disks because I never got the hang of how to save docs on a CD-ROM. (I tried once -- the PC said that the ms. was "successfully" saved, but I never could open the file.)

    Anyway, good luck in your future studies. I hope this bad experience
    doesn't "turn you off" literature courses.
  12. Heathcliff's Avatar
    Ouch.

    Same thing happened with my English teacher, only for some reason, she never collected the work and I got an A+.

    I wanted to do an essay on something more complex than 'school uniforms' or 'junk food in canteens'.

    I ended up with three essays. Two topics I chose that were double the word limit, I sat with her and froced her to read them.

    Good luck with that. I'm sure she'll at least give you something. Spelling, grammar, format, stucture, referencing, that could get you a pass.

    Tell us all how it goes.