Gothic Fiction

[Yeratel]

I don't think you can do one without doing the other.  I'm sure you could do it for lots of other stories, but The Yellow Wallpaper is about a depressed woman who's driven mad by her doctor husband when she's locked in her room as part of a misguided medical procedure.  If I were a professor reading a paper on this story that didn't mention gender (at least to the extent of mentioning why the author doesn't think it's significant), I might worry that my student had missed the gendered aspects entirely.

There are lots of different ways to structure a paper like that. I'm pretty sure I could write an acceptable one without mentioning gender at all, but I could also write one bringing in the 19th Century fad of performing hysterectomies on women to "cure" hysteria, or the fact that madness, either congenital as in The Fall of the House of Usher, or brought on by the ever popular "brain fever", popped up in so many Gothic stories. I could also do one in convoluted run-on sentences like that.  I once wrote an entire paper leaving out the vowel "i", just to see if it was possible. (e.g. "Once was done a whole essay, sans the vowel of 'oneness', just for laughs.")

[Wolfhowls]

When it came to The Yellow Wallpaper, I stayed away from the gender role. I based it more on the fact that she was somewhat forced into solitude.  And in that note I finished the paper but by all means keep talking about Gothic Fiction.

[Wolfhowls]

Got my paper back today. Yeah I got dinged for no reason. She knocked 40 points off my paper for small gammar mistakes which was suppose to be only 20% of the grade on the paper. Content was 60% and I had tons of that. Eh Well you win some and you lose some.

[Franzeska]

Got my paper back today. Yeah I got dinged for no reason. She knocked 40 points off my paper for small gammar mistakes which was suppose to be only 20% of the grade on the paper. Content was 60% and I had tons of that. Eh Well you win some and you lose some.

Aww man, that really sucks.  Did she say exactly what she was taking off for?  At least you're probably nearly done with this class, right?

[Wolfhowls]

Aww man, that really sucks.  Did she say exactly what she was taking off for?  At least you're probably nearly done with this class, right?

Yeah she made a whole bunch points, but they were all small points. Not worth 40 points. Yeah I have two whole days left of the class.

[Yeratel]

Sounds like you could use a proofreader to check the grammar before you turn in your final papers. They ding a lot more for grammar and spelling in college level and graduate courses, because you are supposed to KNOW that stuff by then, and sloppy work is just unacceptable to many professors, no matter how original your thinking.

[Wolfhowls]

Sounds like you could use a proofreader to check the grammar before you turn in your final papers. They ding a lot more for grammar and spelling in college level and graduate courses, because you are supposed to KNOW that stuff by then, and sloppy work is just unacceptable to many professors, no matter how original your thinking.

Yeah ~sigh~ I know. I understood a few of them but some of them I was like HUH? Oh well, the class is almost over.

[Yeratel]

Yeah ~sigh~ I know. I understood a few of them but some of them I was like HUH? Oh well, the class is almost over.

If you're going to have to do a lot more writing in the future, for school or work, it might be worth it to take a refresher course in English composition.  Papers that are spelled correctly, properly punctuated, and have the verbs agreeing with the nouns tend to get higher grades just because teachers are so grateful they don't have to spend so much time marking them up.  I've also seen letters and emails from business executives that look like they flunked English comp, and probably had to have their secretaries write all their papers to get their "Executive MBA" degrees.

[Wolfhowls]

If you're going to have to do a lot more writing in the future, for school or work, it might be worth it to take a refresher course in English composition.  Papers that are spelled correctly, properly punctuated, and have the verbs agreeing with the nouns tend to get higher grades just because teachers are so grateful they don't have to spend so much time marking them up.  I've also seen letters and emails from business executives that look like they flunked English comp, and probably had to have their secretaries write all their papers to get their "Executive MBA" degrees.

Well I have to retake English Comp One because I got a D in it and the University I want to go to won't take D's from a Community College. So I will welcome the refresher.


Edit for mistake

[Franzeska]

Yeah ~sigh~ I know. I understood a few of them but some of them I was like HUH? Oh well, the class is almost over.

I'm sure we'd be happy to help if you want to post an example or two of the comments that are confusing you.  I agree that teachers tend to be lenient if your paper seems good to them overall and extremely harsh if they get a headache trying to get through it.  No matter how good the ideas, no matter whether this is "fair" or not, a paper that is hard to read is a paper that's going to get a crappy grade.

[Yeratel]

I'm sure we'd be happy to help if you want to post an example or two of the comments that are confusing you.  I agree that teachers tend to be lenient if your paper seems good to them overall and extremely harsh if they get a headache trying to get through it.  No matter how good the ideas, no matter whether this is "fair" or not, a paper that is hard to read is a paper that's going to get a crappy grade.

More than just grades in class, people tend to judge you in Life on how well you express yourself. Say, for example, you've got a Bachelor's Degree and a Master's Degree from a prominent Ivy League university, and you've been successful in advancing your business career, and even been elected to high public office, yet if you can't express your thoughts clearly, use bad grammar, and mispronounce words like "nuclear" in public, people will sneer at you behind your back and whisper to each other that you're some kind of idiot. Trust me, it can happen. 

[meg_evonne]

yet if you can't express your thoughts clearly, use bad grammar, and mispronounce words like "nuclear" in public, people will sneer at you behind your back and whisper to each other that you're some kind of idiot. Trust me, it can happen. 

LOL snarky snark... not you Wolfie, but at the implied unmentioned person.

The Univ of IA law school has an ENTIRE support staff department to read the Briefs and Memos of the students in the college.  Unfortunately, they must assume that most law firms and public defenders offices have a grammar expert on retainer for correcting papers.

[Wolfhowls]

I'm not going to let this class get me too down. Ever since English Comp Two I've ever made anything less then a B on a paper. This was the first time ever, so now that I have cooled my heels I'm going take this as a learning lesson and humble myself a bit.