Essays

[cosmolinguist]

I've been quiet partly because I've been trying to write all week.

I made use of almost the whole week (minus 25 hours!) of the automatic week's extension I'm given on handing in assignments in my disability support plan. I felt really bad about using it at first, realized that was internalized ableism, and recognized that while I could have handed something in last Friday, it wouldn't have been nearly as good as what I just managed now.

I have another one, ostensibly due in about 13 hours so I have until next Friday to do it, due for my other class. I have about a third of it written. The structure is more "hard" sciencey and thus completely unfamiliar to me, but I'm going to ask Andrew for help. It's also forty percent of my grade in that class, everything else is the final exam, so y'know, no pressure there or anything.

Speaking of essays, today while I was procrastinating writing this one I checked to see if my previous one had been graded. Blackboard, which gives me all kinds of meaningless updates, hadn't told me about this but there it was: I'd gotten 78/100. Which seemed fine to my American sensibilities but my British friends assured me that was amazing; anything over 70 is a first. One of the advantages of being a fresher in my 30s is that I have friends who work in academia (honestly, you guys have been so reassuring!) and one of them said she wouldn't even bother giving first-year work that high a grade. I ended up having to go and check that it really did say 78 because by this point it seemed more likely that I'd have mis-read it than I'd done so incredibly well.

It's only 10% of my grade for one class, and my friends also told me first-year grades don't count toward your degree (not that I'm even thinking that far in advance or planning on it mattering what degree I get!), but still it's the first thing I've had graded and so here's hoping I've started as I mean to go on!

Comments

[matgb]

my friends also told me first-year grades don't count toward your degree

Check that: in most UK degress the first year doesn't count for anything, but that's not always the case, I know some of the marks did count for Maths and some sciences at Exeter.

While it can seem like a cop out and it's not a good idea to get into the habit of, if there's a compulsory subject you're not enjoying/good at or unlikely to follow up with in subsequent years, the ability to just get a pass while concentrating on the stuff that matters to you can be useful if you get overwhelmed. I barely scraped a pass at Political Theory in year one because I was terrible at it and knew it.

But I really enjoyed it, so kept studying it all the way through because, well, not caring about actual results. Which is why I've got a Pass, not (hons).

[cosmolinguist]

Oh I will check, and my friends said that too. But this semester I have two mandatory classes and I'm enjoying both of them, so it's a safely hypothetical problem right now. :)

[sir_guinglain]

Hurrah!

[meepettemu]

That’s unheard of for a first assignment and bloody good. Well done. It’s very rare that I mark *anything* over a 70!

[cosmolinguist]

It’s very rare that I mark *anything* over a 70!

That's exactly what my academic friends on Facebook told me. :)

[meepettemu]

Good!

[jack]

Well done!

[jo]

I did an exchange year in the UK my second year of university. My first essay got a 79% or 80% or something like that and I was REALLY disappointed because I usually scored in the 90s back in Canada. My British friends couldn't understand why I was so disappointed with the grade -- they were all "WOW!" and everything. It's funny in retrospect!

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, at least I've lived here long enough that I had the vague idea the numbers worked differently here. I checked with Andrew when I found out and he confirmed more or less what I had guessed. So I told Facebook about my good score and my academic friends especially told me it was even better than I'd been thinking! Which made it a little bit easier to get that next essay done. :)

[biascut]

I've done orientation for postgrad students and "American students, seriously, we DON'T GIVE NINETIES" was like 95% of it. 😁

Congratulations Holly!

[lucymorningstar]

That's a fantastic grade, congrats - and here's to your success continuing with the next one! :)