I've been in grad school for almost three weeks now. I have successfully completed more reading in these past two weeks that I did for almost an entire semester of undergraduate work. Whew! it's exhausting. But I knew it was going to be tough and a lot of reading, I mean I am an English Major, what else would I be doing besides reading novels and writing papers?
I am really enjoying my Literature, film and life science of the oceans class, however I received a heart breaking email from my teacher this afternoon. After turning in my first weekly response paper over 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and a few other brief articles pertaining to the subject of environmentalism, my teacher has recommended I drop her course due to my lack of writing skills... Here's a copy of the email she wrote me:
Hi Meghan,
Unfortunately, your paper was not graduate-level work.
Even though you touch on some significant questions, the ideas are
not developed in a complex and nuanced way. Moreover, the writing is
a real mess. The sentences often don't make sense. There are fragments,
run-ons, and other non-sentences throughout the paper.
It isn't just that you haven't had 5300. It looks like your writing needs some
very serious improvement before you enter graduate school.
I recommend that you drop this class and take a composition course
instead.
Dr. ________________
Professor of English
Distinguished Teaching Professor
Co-Chair of the University's Sustainability Committee
University of Texas at Arlington
Did your jaw just drop too? Because mine certainly did after reading that. Talk about a knife straight to the heart. I've never had a teacher flat out tell me my writing skills were shitty. I can't blame it on anyone but myself of course, in which I will blame it on myself for being dyslexic and being pulled out of my Language Arts classes in middle school when I was supposed to be learning grammar and punctuation, but instead I was learning the sounds letters makes and playing flash card games for candy. I will also blame it on my eagerness to get out of high school too quickly. I pushed so hard to begin college and get out of Rockwall City Limits as quickly as possible that I opted out of senior english in high school and took dual credit courses the summer after my sophomore year of high school in which we did not learn grammar or punctuation or even interpretation and analysis like most students, we wrote how-to papers, description papers, poetry and every other form of writing possible. I also blame myself for believing I wasn't good at anything but English, apparently I'm not that fantastic at it either. So, as it turns out, I will be dropping my oceans class and sticking with my required graduate English 5300 course for the semester. I just pray that I will be able to make a B in this course to maintain eligibility for graduate school. There's not really anything more I can do to better my knowledge for the required 5300 course, I am already reading and listening to lectures from a professor at UC Berkeley. Maybe English is not my cup of tea. If I do not make a sustaining grade for this course, I will be kicked out of school, which then I really haven't decided what I'll do after that. Maybe I'll start school over and go a different route, maybe biochemistry or aeronautical engineering, I suppose I could always go to ITT Tech and become a two year lab tech. Or maybe I'll just stick to my Twitter job and get a second job somewhere else. I mean life's about money not knowledge anyway right? I suppose I just had my heart set on the knowledge making me money through a teaching degree.
The funny thing is about all of this, is that UNT KSU and CSU all told me I wasn't good enough for them, and UTA gave me a chance, but now my teacher at UTA is telling me I'm not good enough. Swift Kick in The Teeth:4, Meghan:0
I just need a little faith, is all.
And surprisingly enough it just came through my inbox from my graduate advisor as I was about to hit "publish post":
Meghan, I wouldn't have admitted you to graduate
school if I didn't think your skills were adequate.
Sometimes a professor is very zealous about a course,
and sometimes a course is pitched more ambitiously
than others. 5300 is not like that, and Dr Arce will
work with you to help your writing improve. In any
event, the only way to learn to write *for* a discipline
is by writing *in* the discipline. Oddly enough, a
generic composition course in English won't help you
write very specifically for graduate English courses.
Dr.________, Professor and Associate Chair
English Department
University of Texas at Arlington
Talk about a quick sign right when I need it the most.
Really awesome how assurance found it's way as soon as it did. I would tell you the same thing, though. Professors are often dicks and are incredibly too judgmental to be educators. Seems as though they feel their job is to skim out the slag instead of actually teaching and at any given time you are working to pass the professor instead of the curriculum. Though, I would've figured at graduate level they'd be a little more heartfelt about their work.
ReplyDeleteEither way, keep writing.