Wednesday, December 14, 2005

The written word...


The school term is coming to an end and I have been up to my eyeballs in papers, reviews and exams. I’ve always been a decent writer and have never had a problem in writing intensive classes. A few of my college professors have echoed the sentiment of my high school teachers encouraging me to become a writer. However my heart lays in psychology. I’ve got this one class where all we do is watch movies land analyze the main characters. A few weeks ago I turned in my first paper for the class on the movie Monster I diagnosed the main character as suffering from Personality Disorder and based my paper on that diagnosis.

It was a pretty quick paper I’d forgotten about it because she had changed the due date for the paper several times on us. Luckily my friend reminded me the day before it was due and I was able to write it up in a few hours. It was not my best work but considering the amount of time I had to work with it was alright. When I got my paper back last week I saw that the professor had originally given me an “A” but then changed the grade to a B- I figured I must have missed some typos/grammatical errors in my proof reading and put the paper away to look over it when I got home. The teacher then began discussing the papers in class saying that there were a couple of good ones but that one in particular had stood out but that she had changed the grade because she felt that it was not the students work and that most of it was plagiarized. She then told us we had to list all of our sources. When I got home late that night I looked over my paper and realized that it had been me she had been talking about! I didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered it seems that my paper was too well written in her opinion and that therefore I must have plagiarized the work but she couldn’t find where I copied the information from hence the lower grade.

I was livid! I called my best friend and fellow classmate and screeched into the phone, “ Reina! Reina! This heffa thinks that I didn’t write my paper!! It was me she was talking about in class!” Reina being the heffa that she is couldn’t stop laughing, she thought it was too funny. I planned to talk to the professor and let her have it… the entire paper from diagnosis to symptoms all came from memory from what I have learned in school during past semesters. We don’t even take notes in her class or have a book for the class all we do is watch movies!

I was sputtering about how I was going to tell her to speak to my other professors to look at my record so that she could see that writing was my strong point. I may be slow when it comes to math but uh uh honey don’t play with me when it comes to the written word. Unfortunately I didn’t get the chance the professor was out for the next two sessions. So what I decided to do was basically kick her butt with my next paper which is due on Thursday hopefully it will turn out good and then I will approach her about the first paper and demand that she change the grade she gave me on the "Monster" paper.

Labels: education

Posted by @ 2:45 PM
4 comment from:  Just Jane,  Mia,  Emory Mayne,  Mia,