Comment by kbenson
6 years ago
> It was all subjective and her own opinion. I fed her back her crap and I passed the class.
I had an English class I thought was like this. I generally tried not to do that unless I had to, but given this English teacher had given me a D and C- on the first two essays (which is all we were graded on), I decided for the third essay I would get as much help as possible directly from her to see exactly what she wanted and try to provide exactly that, since she obviously didn't want my opinion. By the third visit during her office hours, she had very little feedback and thought it looked good. I got a C+. Visiting her afterwards I had her review the essay to give me pointers on what I could have done better. Her exact words, which I remember to this day, were "all I can say is it doesn't feel authentic."
That class broke me on the subject of English. It was the last required English class for my major, and I made sure not to take another elective in English (and I rather liked the subject before that). Sometimes you're damned if you do, damned if you don't.
I had an experience similar to that in high school. When my grades started falling in it, my mother set up an appointment with the school counselor and the teacher; the teacher didn't bother to show up. I was immediately moved into a different class with a different teacher...
...who was excellent. Who had fun getting students to come up their own ideas. Who didn't treat teaching as a day job to be gotten past with as little effort as was possible.
I had a similar experience. I was graded 56/100. The only comment was "Good job, almost an A paper."