Earning the Grade

Writing papers is always a struggle for me. My best, and most natural writing is what you see on this blog - completely unedited save for spelling as I type, I can place an idea down and leave it alone. Essays aren't quite so friendly. For them, you need to have an idea or hypothesis, do the reading/research, and only then can you formulate the "real" idea about which your paper is based. You then must structure a paper that expresses that idea, and then you have to dig in and write the thing.

Ew.

The thing that happens to me with essays - repeatedly - is that I spend much more time on the research/thinking portion than I should, relative to the writing portion. The interesting part of essay writing to me isn't expressing my thoughts (which is irrational, since much of one's grade is based on the quality of expression), but formulating and balancing them. However, what that can mean is that I end up 24 hours before an essay is due with a piece of writing that doesn't match my own standards - not because the grammar is wrong, but instead because I don't like the final ideal product.

So I refine the ideas, forgetting or ignoring the inevitable re-writing that is required, and I get into a timecrunch. That happened twice this semester in a single class, and each time I had to take my own medicine and turn in the papers late, despite a grade hit, because I wanted to get the ideas right. Neither turned out super, in the end (at some point, you start to loathe your graphs and data), but I was much happier with the intellectual content I had produced and the mental twisting they had required.

And this time (unlike in past classes), I got a grade that reflected the work I did, despite the grade hit. Sometimes sucking it up and turning a paper in late is a good idea. Whew.