Woohoo

On Monday of this week I had a meeting with my lovely French professor. In case you haven't heard, she's no where near lovely. But, anyways. I made my way to her office to talk about my paper that I had to turn in the next day. I was terrified. To say the least. And rightfully so. Throughout the course of our 45 minute meaning she told me that I was dyslexic. That I had no right being at college. That I hadn't learned very much if I was a third year student and had no intellectualism. Okay. So maybe intellectualism isn't a word. Maybe she was right? Anyways. I came out of the meeting bruised and battered and in tears. So I made my way to my room and started completely rewriting my paper. I tried to follow her suggestions as closely as possible. I proofread it several times. Finally, I was done. I felt like I had done my best and there was nothing more I could do, so I was even relieved to turn it in.

While I was sitting in class waiting to turn in my paper I realized I hadn't done something very important. She makes us grade our own papers. She wants to see how we think we did before she gives us grades. I pulled the grading rubric out of my binder hoping so much that for some reason I had done it, and just forgotten. To my horror, I realized that I hadn't. I absolutely panicked. My stomach was in knots. I couldn't focus on the class discussion. In the middle of class my teacher asked for our papers with the grading rubric attached. I sheepishly pulled out my paper and the blank rubric, fearful of the yelling that was to come. Then I looked over at the girl who sits next to me. And she had nothing. Her printer "didn't work." I knew in that moment that I was off the hook. The scolding I would receive from the professor would be nothing compared to what she would get. However, I did get a little one. And after class she sent me down to the language lab to fill it out. I had an hour to get it turned in, which was fine, I had class in 30 minutes anyways.

After that fiasco, I graded my paper. I gave myself a 78 but I was doubtful she would give me anything above a 60. I decided the best thing to do was completely forget about it. I didn't want to worry about it, so I didn't. In fact, when I went to class on Thursday I wasn't even expecting to get the paper back. But, she walked in, and the first things she said was I have your papers graded. And then she pulled them out. Just like that all my fears came back to me. I was trembling with hope for at least a 65. She gave it to me and I immediately searched the front page for some numbers. There were none. In fact, my front page had very very little writing on it. I hesitated, wondering if she gave me back the wrong copy or if she really had only corrected a few things on the first page. I furiously tore through the next 5 pages. Oh my. I really hadn't done that bad. A few grammatical errors. A few transitional sentences that didn't work. A few sentences that were incomprehensible because my French was so bad. But essentially a pretty good looking paper.

Then I came to the rubric. She had used the same one I did, so I could see what points I gave myself versus what points she gave me. When I looked at the first page of the rubric I literally got butterflies in my stomach. I had given myself a 16 in textual organization. But she had given me a 17. She had given me MORE points than I had. This couldn't be real. I flipped to the next page. She gave me the same points I did. Then the next. I skipped over the rubric part down to the overall grade. French ones look an awful lot like sevens. So at first I thought, oh she gave me a 19%. That's awful. As my stomach began to fall I noticed the notch through the stem of the 7, indicating that it was a 7. My professor had given me a 79% after telling me just the day before that it was an awful paper and that I was wasting my time. Not only did she give me a very very high C, she gave me more points than I gave myself. I couldn't believe it. It seriously brought tears to my eyes.

This grade on this paper was exactly the confidence booster that I needed. How could I not feel 80 times better about this class when I almost got a B on the very first paper. I am feeling so much better about this class now. Don't worry though, you'll still have to hear my frustrations and stresses. I'm still super stressed, I just feel more like I can do it. Yay. =)

-Kristina