Word: paper
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...much should graders be required to have their comments make sense? "I believe in free speech," Knight says. "Teachers are allowed to write whatever they want, but professionally there is a line." Shrier has experienced that line. On his first paper written at Harvard, he wrote an overzealous introduction, declaiming about 'mankind.' He didn't get any comment about his bad introduction, or anything else, he remembers. Instead, the T.F. just circled the word 'mankind' and wrote a "weird cryptic comment that said, 'Use humanity. Though it seems like P.C. mumbo jumbo, they tell me I have to say that...
...Zachary L. Shrier's '99 15-page papers, the professor wrote "Nice paper--but so what?" Shrier comments, "So what? I don't know! You're the professor; you tell me so what!" Davis has also experienced the "So What" Phenomenon. His Expos preceptor would write the inexplicable words "the so what factor" next to various random lines in the paper. "It's easy to interpret that as 'I don't care about your paper' rather than as 'Why is this important to your paper?'" Davis notes. "On one of my papers, she wrote, 'Good title' next to my title...
Sometimes, though, comments on papers can get a little bit too personal, crossing a different sort of line. One such case arose from anonymous student ("Dick") was writing a cover letter for a paper. "While I was writing it, my girlfriend was bothering me. I wrote her a message in the cover letter about how some people had work to do and that she should leave me alone. And then I forgot to take it out." Most Faculty reading this might have been surprised, but probably would have ignored the matter. However, Dick's teacher chose to take it personally...
Dick's girlfriend, "Jane," read the paper and came across the comment. She responded by writing back to the teacher: "I am 'the bitch' you referred to on [Dick's] paper. I'll have you know, his first loyalty is to me, thank you very much." The Faculty member replied that ladies must stick together in the face of unavoidable, tiresome men and commented at length on Dick's hairstyle. Perhaps this is not what students generally expect when responding to the comments written on their papers...
Sometimes not responding to comments turns out worse than responding would have. Shrier recounts what happens if one does not talk to a prof about comments: "A friend of mine got comments on a paper and couldn't read a single one. Then the professor passed away. The moral of the story is that if you don't get it, ask! Now he'll never know what the professor thought of his paper...