Writing
October 8, 2008
There is one thing that annoys me about being in school for writing. There are often teachers who grade based on their personal opinion only. These teachers give bad grades because they do not like your writing. It’s not even that the writing was done poorly, but it’s not something that they would normally read, therefore they don’t like it.
A lot of the time teachers like what I write, or at least they read it from an objective standpoint and get some enjoyment out of it. However, every now and then I get a piece of writing back with so many corrections and suggestions, that if I took them all it would no longer be my work. Once, in middle school, I had to write a poem that was to be submitted to some publishing company to go into a book of poems. By the time I was done making the revisions my teacher wanted me to make, there were words in it I didn’t even understand, and it looked nothing like my original poem. The poem was actually one of a few selected to be in the book, but I barely consider it my work.
My most recent experience was with a teacher last semester who only liked one thing I turned in the entire year, mostly because what I was writing was not simliar to his writing style. It was frustrating, especially because there is really no polite way to tell a teacher that they are doing that. So, if you’re a teacher or you’re going to be a teacher, always remember to read people’s work from an objective standpoint, and try not to grade based on how you’re feeling that day or if you like the story line.
I’ve run across both types of instructors: those that try to mold you into miniature versions of themselves and those that recognize what growth is for you. It is frustrating that your grades are based on what changes you make based on their recommendations, but then again the grading system is pretty subjective in general when it comes to liberal arts courses. The professor for my senior seminar–which was designed to create, over the course of the semester, a “thesis-sized” (an undergraduate thesis being a pathetic fifteen to twenty pages) collection of poems–was the most bullheaded, stubborn, and disagreeable woman I’ve ever seen with an MFA in creative writing. I went through the class writing what I thought I needed to write, listening to my peers more than her, and in the end we pretty much agreed to disagree. My only hope, should I ever be in her position–to have such a disturbing sense of power over twenty students–is that I’m able to see these things from all sides.
Anyway, I don’t really know what the point of this comment is, so maybe it’s best that it ends.