Relative Grading Makes Me Look Bad
Let's face it--everyone gets bored sometimes. For me, Monday was one of those times. I found myself in an 11th grade English classroom trying to force Renaissance knowledge into my brain in preparation for Academic Decathlon. As entertaining as that sounds, soon enough I noticed I had ripped my fingernails off trying to claw through the door. Finding it staunchly fortified, I searched the walls of my own prison (insert Scott Stapp joke) for some sort of entertainment, finally settling upon the metaphorical refrigerator door, in this case a bulletin board with "exemplary" essays stapled to it.
The grades on their title pages ranged from 92 to triple digits, and, since I had so recently been a junior myself, I felt compelled to measure myself against them. I carefully pulled the nearest 100 of the wall and scanned its face. "AJ*...she's a volleyball player," I thought to myself, "Smart AND comfortable in spandex. Truly, she is any man's dream."
I settled into a nicely maintained plastic desk nearby for the four page read. It quickly became apparent that it was a personal essay, focusing on her recent trip to Paris and, hopefully, an epiphany she had encountered relating to it. The opening was a bit choppy, and it was painfully obvious that she wasn't comfortable using words like "plethora", as she sprinkled them into sentences in an attempt to seem worldly, but I was willing to let her redeem herself. After all, hadn't she garnered a perfect score? Sentence after sentence dragged by with awkward gerund phrases and little more than basic word choices. It wasn't until her second paragraph that I finally reached my breaking point.
The opening statement went something like this: "The Paris metro was fun most of the time, but some of the stops were inconvenient to our destination." And I wonder why people think all the kids at my school are stuck up. She wants to go to the f****** Louvre, and she'll be damned if you want to get off somewhere before it.
Why is it that her writing receives the same grades I earned last year? "It's the best one. You should see the others." Delivered with a sigh and a shrug, that was the only explanation I got. I've got finger paintings from first grade with more coherent morals. All I learned from that paper is...well...uhhh...get the point?
*I have no real problem using my own name, but I don't think people appreciate it when I call them dumb, so I used initials, and my sister's first two at that.
The grades on their title pages ranged from 92 to triple digits, and, since I had so recently been a junior myself, I felt compelled to measure myself against them. I carefully pulled the nearest 100 of the wall and scanned its face. "AJ*...she's a volleyball player," I thought to myself, "Smart AND comfortable in spandex. Truly, she is any man's dream."
I settled into a nicely maintained plastic desk nearby for the four page read. It quickly became apparent that it was a personal essay, focusing on her recent trip to Paris and, hopefully, an epiphany she had encountered relating to it. The opening was a bit choppy, and it was painfully obvious that she wasn't comfortable using words like "plethora", as she sprinkled them into sentences in an attempt to seem worldly, but I was willing to let her redeem herself. After all, hadn't she garnered a perfect score? Sentence after sentence dragged by with awkward gerund phrases and little more than basic word choices. It wasn't until her second paragraph that I finally reached my breaking point.
The opening statement went something like this: "The Paris metro was fun most of the time, but some of the stops were inconvenient to our destination." And I wonder why people think all the kids at my school are stuck up. She wants to go to the f****** Louvre, and she'll be damned if you want to get off somewhere before it.
Why is it that her writing receives the same grades I earned last year? "It's the best one. You should see the others." Delivered with a sigh and a shrug, that was the only explanation I got. I've got finger paintings from first grade with more coherent morals. All I learned from that paper is...well...uhhh...get the point?
*I have no real problem using my own name, but I don't think people appreciate it when I call them dumb, so I used initials, and my sister's first two at that.
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