Yesterday I received back my Nutrition course extra credit assignment with full credit given and some nice remarks along with "well-written and thoughtful." I also got back my last two assignments from the Western Civ course; an A and an "A — Thank you!"
I have never received anything less than an A on any essay regardless of topic or discipline. I’m not mentioning this to assert my writing skills, but rather to illustrate the importance of good writing toward producing a comprehensive yet interesting essay. I recently had the opportunity to view other student essays online, and while most were very well written, a good portion of them were unbelievably at an elementary school level (in my opinion, but what do I know?) and I am sure that for a college professor to read such work there must be a bit of a cringe despite the inclusion of the proper information. If the format of MLA and footnotes, etc. is important, I can well imagine that proper grammar, spelling, punctuation and language must affect a presentation as well.
Too bad I couldn’t have essayed my way through Algebra, although I really didn’t do poorly there at the time.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology
One of the most surprising things I learned some years back while taking some college courses was that I could pass a class in which I had no interest whatsover (in this case, geography) simply by submitting skillful adaptations of the material. In other words, I could escape the glare of the bright light that would reveal my ineptitude by simply using diversion; a well-written summary plucked from the very thin air of unknowing.
This was a truly surprising thing to discover, and once found, impossible to abandon. But you ARE right about one thing … it never quite translated to Algebra! My cheat sheet for Algebra was that I volunteered to tutor a blind student in Algebra, thereby forcing myself to understand the material so thoroughly that I might translate it to someone without the benefit of seeing. It worked. I passed the class, and so did she. But I always felt I had cheated somehow to get the grade.