god i handed in a ****ing rough draft of my tearm paper for Britsh Lit. and she said she would correct it and that i could stop by later to pick it up.... (she did this with everyone) I come by later just like she said and guess what she took off. SHE LEFT THE DAM BUILDING. gone for the weekend. and now i dont have my term paper with the corrections and its due next week. I am screwed.

Is this the same teacher that grades the papers? Ask for an extension.

It's your teacher's bad. Get pissed if you don't get an extention.

I hope i can get one cause if i dont hand one in then i fail english for the year. Thats how ****ed up our grading is at our school

That's not ****ed up in any way. That's real life.

it just makes it seem like everything else is a waste of time and that your entire grade depends on this one thing

[QUOTE=Andrew L]it just makes it seem like everything else is a waste of time and that your entire grade depends on this one thing[/QUOTE]
Welcome to college! Except it's not the luxury of writing an essay, It's a final.

Please use the Shift in the right places. Otherwise I get confused.

Maybe you should have been there earlier.

Or you know, you could do the corrections yourself and write up a mock-final draft of your own, providing you aren't a total dumbass. I mean, you have an outline. You should be pretty rock solid by this phase, just fix your grammar and make sure things make sense.

You know, as a cover your own *** type deal, and stop complaining.

I think he has a legitimate complaint here. Instead of saying "OH GOD IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT", why don't you realize that he does indeed have a point Rob? You're not cool, you're not funny, so stop acting like it.

Sucks dude, but the only thing I agree on with Rob is that you should be able to duplicate your paper and go over it just in case. You have the whole weekend...use it?

Haha, that happened to me one time. I missed a day of class when there was a test, and when I got back I asked "what day and time could I make it up?" And she told me, and when I got there she was nowhere to be found. Turned out she was at a meeting. I was all like, "You said I could make up the test today" and she was all like "You should have checked to make sure I wasn't busy."

Good times.

Rough drafts usually lead to better clarity in the final draft. But it is an active process. You can't expect to give little thought toward it, hand it to the teacher, then expect her to make good revisions. She will be able to help with proofreading, but she won't be able to make your paper meaningful. That is your job. Your rough draft provides a starting point. Some of the original writing may survive through to your final draft, but I find it almost never does in my writing. The point of a rough draft is mainly to get you thinking. From there, it will be easier to flesh out your paper's organization, theme, audience, main ideas, supporting details, and so on.

The teacher ought to be present to do her job, but don't expect her to do yours. From the sound of it, you're relying too much on her input. Like I said, she won't be much use to you except as a proofreader.

I think you've got a Rough Draft and an Outline fairly confused there.

No, he doesn't. :p

I find outlines irrelevant, so I wouldn't be surprised if I use a rough draft for the purpose one might use an outline. I like drafting papers intuitively. Outlines are rigid and static, which conflicts with my process of writing.

I'm with you there, but Rough Drafts are SUPPOSED to be near to the final version of your paper. You can of course scrap it completely, but the outline is what's supposed to give you ideas and structure and all that good stuff. The Rough Draft is supposed to be where you flesh OUT said ideas and whatnot.

I agree it is useful to diagram a paper's organization somehow. I'm fond of drawing pictures for this rather than outlining. The way I was taught to create outlines, I am supposed to list the main idea of each paragraph and list all of its supporting details. I find that this almost never flips me into 'creative mode,' for lack of a better description. Your suggestion that outlines are supposed to give you ideas has never rung true for me. Free-writing works better as an idea generator in my experience.

Just like any business plan, once the rubber hits the road and you begin writing a rough draft, your outline invariably falls apart. It's rare to be able to stick rigidly to an outline in any sort of sophisticated writing. So I've taken a liking to loosely diagramming the structure of my writing with pictures, while leaving content out of the diagram. I find this way works best for me, but of course, each writer will be different.

That's how I write, but according to all my english teachers (8th grade and up those being honors english teachers), and my current AP teacher that's completely the "wrong way to write" and I'd fail Comp 1 if I ever took it or...something. Yeah.

I passed English Comp 1 and 2 with an A, and I never wrote a rough draft. Ever.

I can't do the pre-writing stages, it just doesn't work. I just sit down, look at what I need to write, and write it, one paragraph at a time.

I find it highly humorous when my English Comp 2 teacher told us "You must use notecards to prepare your research paper" yada yada yada. I didn't do a damn thing, just got the research in front of me/on the screen, and wrote.

Too bad I don't enjoy writing novels, I'd probably be good at it :p

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]That's how I write, but according to all my english teachers (8th grade and up those being honors english teachers), and my current AP teacher that's completely the "wrong way to write" and I'd fail Comp 1 if I ever took it or...something. Yeah.[/QUOTE]

I know and you know I know you know that's bull-hucky. Do what I did and turn in an outline to their specifications if they assign it, but do what's effective for you when you actually write the paper. A very useful method of idea-generating I learned in college is to split a piece of paper into two columns. On the left, you write a supporting detail (maybe a fact, maybe a quote, maybe your own experience) relevant to one of the main ideas in your paper. For example, "50% of Americans think unions are a bad idea." In the right column right next to it, write your response to this supporting detail. Write what you think about it.

This is by far my favorite method of content creation for informative and persuasive papers. It may surprise you to know that English professors express concerns that many students don't add any of their own thoughts to their papers. They'll have a main idea for the first sentence in a paragraph, then follow up with a supporting detail or two and maybe a quote and call it good. On the other end of the specturm, you have students that don't do any research and their whole paper is a rant without any sources or supporting details.

From peer-reviewing many papers, I can tell you that there are very few good writers. Very few strike a good balance between subjective and objective details. Most overuse a single type of supporting detail. A lot of times they'll use a thousand quotes and nothing else. Or maybe they got all their "objective" writing from an interview. Very few are able to mix up their sources. It's good to use books, quotes from other papers, maybe an interview, maybe your own experience as a supporting detail, then going more indepth with some subjective theory.

I find that the method of content-generation I described above is great for striking a balance between fact and theory; objective and subjective. Plus, when I know precisely what I'm writing about, it's easier to write your opinion about it. If you decide to write about the entire paper's topic, no wonder you can't think of anything to write. I find that if I just focus on a single statement, such as a fact, I can write loads more material that is actually relevant to a specific portion of my paper.

so.... this teacher...

is she hot?

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]I think he has a legitimate complaint here. Instead of saying "OH GOD IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT", why don't you realize that he does indeed have a point Rob? You're not cool, you're not funny, so stop acting like it.

Sucks dude, but the only thing I agree on with Rob is that you should be able to duplicate your paper and go over it just in case. You have the whole weekend...use it?[/QUOTE]


99.9% of the time I hear someone complain about school, its mostly their fault.

Personal experience, and I'm sticking to it.

[QUOTE=Andrew L]SHE LEFT THE DAM BUILDING.[/QUOTE]
Your school must suck if your english department is in the campus dam building.

Regardless of whether it's his fault or not, the only option is to take care of yourself here. You can't simply rely on an excuse "oh well I didn't get my paper back, so it's YOU'RE fault I'm going to fail."

Do what Rob said. Don't blame your teacher. Do the extra work and then explain that your corrections might not be perfect because you didn't get there soon enough to pick up your paper. Then ask if you can have an extension to do the corrections your teacher specified.

This will work.

yea i tried emailing her but still no responce... i have had other classes before and i had no time to get to her before then and at the end of the day she wasnt there she left early. But i will try to talk my way out of failing it

Write a 30-40 page thesis paper with out an outline and see how well connected your paper is.

I've written a 15 page paper with no outline, and I got a B on it. In fact, no prewriting at all. I even did it the day before.

But it was hard as hell.

...there's a very big difference between 15 and 40 pages.

No, really? I hadn't noticed.

You know, because I never learned remedial math.

I haven't had to write a paper in two years, a paper that required any sort of research since sometime in my Junior year of high school. Sometimes it pays to be a computer science major.

[/gloat]

[QUOTE=Andrew L]yea i tried emailing her but still no responce... i have had other classes before and i had no time to get to her before then and at the end of the day she wasnt there she left early. But i will try to talk my way out of failing it[/QUOTE]

Talking your way out of something and working your way out of it are the two ends of this spectrum.

Talking your way out=A
Working your way out=b
Area of spectrum most effective=^


A-------------------------------------------------------------------------------B
..............................................................................^

Make no mistake, there will be talking to do, but you can't just talk your way out of it. Integrity and hard work can take you as far as being crafty and sly (I hesitate to say cheating because being 'crafty and sly' is a very important skill in some situations) and often even further.

To cover my ***, you can, of course, talk your way out of things at times. But you're in school, learning things, so you should learn hard work and integrity. Cheating or being crafty is something you should learn in school, yeah, but don't use it to coast through.

Ummm... don't you have to take a basic english course? My college requires it even if you're in a computer science major if I remeber correctly.

But Rob and a couple other people covered it. If you want help with correcting any errors, show it to a few people and get their opinions on what they think should be corrected. If you can't find anybody, maybe somebody here can help you a bit, if anyone is willing.

I took it my first semester of Uni. Even took it for honors. The class was a joke though. I think we wrote all of four papers, 15 or fewer pages each, and none required any significant amount of research. Then there are the CS Writing Intensive courses, which I've taken one already(Systems Analysis) and the other will be my capstone. Systems Analysis was also a joke, as there was really a minimal amount of writing involved. The class was centered around E-R diagrams and Microsoft Visio. Whoopdeedo.

Most intense writing I've done lately is the project plan for my HL2 mod for game design class. It's about 20 pages or so, but it deals with storylines and explanations of game mechanics and the like. Not really intensive writing by any means.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]No, really? I hadn't noticed.

You know, because I never learned remedial math.[/QUOTE]


It's not about the math.

I understand what he meant. I know a 40 page paper takes a lot more structure. I had to write a 50 page paper on the US Constitution for AP History. I was just relating a goddamn story.

[QUOTE=Dj Yoshi]I've written a 15 page paper with no outline, and I got a B on it. In fact, no prewriting at all. I even did it the day before.

But it was hard as hell.[/QUOTE]

Those are the easier ones. I bust those out the morning of usually. :p

You're given a perfectly good reason to slack off for the weekend, and all you do is worry? You can't do anything about it until Monday, so you might as well hold your worries until then. If you explain that you couldn't work without your rough draft, she should be understanding.

In a later post I described the alternative to outlines I like to use. I feel it would work better for a longer paper than an outline. In fact, my method is specifically tailored to ensure the paper is connected.

See, I get what would be called an A at most schools (my school doesn't do letter grades) in English without any strict pre-writing techniques... but I must admit that if I sat down and did a detailed outline---and followed it---I would have a much improved essay. Sometimes I wish I had better habbits.

It's still an outline. Not in the taditional sense, but still an outline of sorts.