Biking to school yesterday was fantastic, apart from my dripping nose and eyes. You could smell flowers, out of nowhere, before you could see them. I know flowers aren’t responsible for my allergies; that would be trees. Though I guess trees often flower, so it’s probably both.
I felt I did a mediocre job on a paper I handed in (due to procrastination, little time, broadness of topic, etc.), saying to myself that if I got a B I would be happy. I got an A. However, the professor gave us a crestfallen lecture on the various things she wanted us to do that we didn’t do in our papers. I did these, things, mostly, but I still thought my paper was lousy. She said that if we wanted to talk to her about our papers we could send her an email after class. She said this ominously.
I’m happy to have gotten an A, but something about one of the comments, “Thanks for writing a good paper”, felt a bit desperate. A bit of a hollow victory, maybe. I’m pretty sure this paper would have gotten a B if I had been in college, though I think I’ve become a better writer since then. The people in my program have all different backgrounds, most of which did not involve literature or writing, so I know we’re being graded according to quite different standards from what I’m used to. That’s all there is to it.
I tend to like classes where I get Bs on everything, like I feel like this is what I deserve, forever. Or rather, I can always see what I can do better in a project, and since I always fall short, I don’t deserve an A.
