Please Counsel Me - My DS 1st paper = F

<p>Great post pyewacket. I second your comments.</p>

<p>Email at 1:00 a.m. last night. After meeting with TA, I think he's on the right track. Thought you would enjoy it (with his permission):</p>

<p>"If I come home this weekend I will drown. I've got a philosophy and another classics paper due next week, besides my rewrite. And I think that I'm going to have to spend a lot of time on each of them.
I'm kind of buried. But I'll be fine. I just know that I need to be precise and rigorous in my papers and write them as if my worst enemy were to critique them.
I still love what I'm doing very much. But I'm struggling right now.
I'll be okay. We had an open mic night this evening in the dorm basement, and I played Autumn Leaves (jazz piano). It felt good to play for people again."</p>

<p>Wow, dad4son...He's got it under control & it took only a day or two! Wonderful. I love his comment about precise & rigorous papers that should be written at a level high enough to please even his worst enemy. He'll always make an extra effort if he keeps that in mind. Also great that he's taking a bit of time to play his music. I think you can breathe a huge sigh of relief.</p>

<p>He's definitely on the right track now. Your son is going to do just fine in college. This seems to have been just what he needed as an introduction to the academic world. You should be proud of his resilience and determination and I'm sure there will also be some very positive experiences in store for him.</p>

<p>dad4son,
It certainly seems like he's made a very mature, reasoned decision about the weekend. The college expectations are such an eye-opener for so many kids, but yours seems to have "gotten the message" pretty quickly. Let's hope he follows through on what he's written to you!</p>

<p>Sounds like your son is handling it well and is on the right track! Congrats!</p>

<p>As other posters have said, sometimes an F is a great wakeup call. He now knows he must address the question. (You'd be amazed how many freshmen don't. When I teach first semester freshmen and encounter this, I always give them a chance to re-write after a meeting with me explaining what they did wrong - it's a lesson many need to learn.) There are many pitfalls freshmen encounter; this is an easy one to remedy. </p>

<p>College is a learning experience (no pun intended) and this was a valuable lesson for your son (with, I'm guessing, no real consequences.)</p>

<p>Sounds like he is being very mature about the whole thing! Well done. I hope he is developing a good relationship with the TA as well.</p>

<p>Hopefully what this young man will take away from this experience is an even greater understanding of what to ask for and what to deliver across the board. I always think it is great to take a situation and try to personalize it from their vantage point, ie what if I as a college student asked my parents to bring my winter jacket and boots when they come for parents weekend? And what if the parents thought about the request and decided to bring their son's bathing suit instead? Well, we know you asked for a coat and boots, but we were thinking that with winter coming, you might not get out much, so we wanted to make sure you had something that would make it easier for you to exercise! Absurd humor can help drive home a point.......if they want to be heard, then they too have to listen and pay attention. </p>

<p>I think this TA did EXACTLY what this situation called for.... read the paper, understood it did not meet any minimum standard...and gave the student a chance to recover. PERFECT. </p>

<p>I also think that this may now be the first time this student understands his own contribution to his college expenses. If he doesn't do the work, he won't get the money. Where I work, we have customers who want us to give them studies, analysis, assistance etc for free. The truth is that they do not value the free stuff...if they do NOT have a piece of the cost, they don't treat it with real respect. </p>

<p>At the end of the day, while it is great to write as though your greatest enemy is grading you, more importantly, I would love to think these kids understand that their work represents them.....because it DOES! </p>

<p>Congrats Dad4son that he has already made so much progress in his college maturation. You might want to thank the TA.......I would!!</p>

<p>dad4son,
Sounds like your S is learning exactly what he should from his college experience Congratulations on raising such a mature, thoughtful son, and for having such a close relationship with him. Have a wonderful weekend. You deserve it.</p>

<p>I'm sure your son will do fine. Meeting with the TA was the best thing to do. Good thing he's getting a chance to re-write.</p>

<p>My freshman year almost EVERYONE got an F on their first English papers. I suspect it was a "calculated" wake-up call because this happened every year. The English department had very strict grading standards--one full grade lower for each punctuation or spelling error and and an automatic F for a grammatical error such as a fragment, run-on, wrong verb tense etc. I remember a dorm full of crying girls. I think most of them returned to class to find out that their lowest grade for the semester would be thrown out--and with more careful proofreading most were able to raise their grades to Bs and Cs on the 2nd paper.</p>

<p>Years later, I was a TA-- teaching freshman English at another college. We had to group-grade papers--each paper was graded by 2 TA's to make sure we were on the right track. Part of the problem at that time was that TAs were giving grades that were too high. That's because the students had to evaluate US at the end of the semester, and it was known that those who gave all As and Bs would be praised by their students. Those who gave more honest grades would get comments like, "She never teached us nothin," or calls from students' parents --begging a grade to be raised from a D to a C so the student could continue on the cheerleading squad, for example. (Yes, I did that).</p>

<p>Dad4son,
What a great lesson your S has learned. I'll bet those other two papers he has to do will be on point! This is where the success he had in HS comes to bear -- now he knows where the bar is set, and what he must do to swing himself over it. Congrats to him for getting in to see the TA right away -- that can be intimidating in and of itself.</p>

<p>He may still have some bumps along the road, but he's on the right path. Congrats to your S and to you for raising a son who clearly has his head screwed on straight.</p>

<p>My Ds 7th grade teacher had that same policy- for each "error"- punctation, spelling, was 5 points off</p>

<p>they gave two grades per paper (after parents complained) instead of one</p>

<p>one grade for content, one for format, tyoing, etc, and they were averaged</p>

<p>needless to say, everyone got very good at proofreading, and while it was upsetting at first for some to see a D for format and typos and grammer, but an A for content average out to a Cplus, it was effective and now my Ds are really glad they had that i</p>

<p>My son's high school freshman year English teacher was a bit like this. My kid had one of the higher grades with a 65. They all rewrote the first papers until they had 90s. I'm happy to hear that your son seems to be on the write track. I hope his weekend isn't too miserable!</p>

<p>^^^^"on the write track" Good one, mathmom. :D</p>

<p>OK, Dad4son, you brought a tear to my eye.</p>

<p>He writes well, he thinks clearly. Come Janaury, he should have a fantastic sense of independent accomplishment.</p>

<p>Great email, thanks for sharing.</p>

<p>The sad thing is I didn't even do it on purpose. I type homonyms all the time!</p>

<p>I also am always typing homonyms -- this seems to get worse with age. And of course spell checkers never catch those....</p>

<p>Dear mathmom and calmom,</p>

<p>I'm glad you brought this up. Homonyms were never a problem for me ( I'm an English teacher!)--but over the last 3 years I am suddenly catching myself with those typing mistakes all the time.
It's definitely an age-related phenomenon but I've never heard anyone else mention it before.</p>

<p>Write on!</p>

<p>Pyewacket</p>

<p>About prrofreading...when we proofread our kids papers in middle school, and sometimes in HS, we proof read for typos, grammer, etc and suggested they read the paper outloud to themselves to catch other errors</p>

<p>but when we proofread, we would just put a dot at the end of the sentence that had the error, didn't say what it was, they had to figure that out themselves</p>

<p>it was a very effective way to help without giving the answers, and it taught them what to look for and how to better proof themselves</p>

<p>having someone proof your paper is not a sin, for WHAT it is proofread and HOW can be the issue, especially in college</p>

<p>and eye don't no watt ewe are talking about four homonyns</p>

<p>I never dew that</p>