Customer Service

Dear Grade-grubber who earned a C:

You have asked me why this happened. I offer the following explanatory theories:

1) You are so dull that you couldn’t find East with the rising sun, a compass, and a praying Arab as visual aids. To call you a lunkhead insults lunks everywhere. If dumb were population, you would be China.

2) Perhaps due to 1), you have mistaken the professor’s advice for a complete proofing/copy editing service. It is not. Showing your professor a draft is not an abdication of your responsibility for the quality of your work.

3) Perhaps due to 2), you have decided that specific, marked  instances of mechanical/formatting/syntactical errors are the only times such errors occur in your draft. This is not a wise decision.

4) The various instructions I gave earlier in the semester regarding such niceties as citation form continue to apply, even later in the semester.

5) The initial draft of your paper made me long for the Purgatorial terrace where the eyes of the envious are sewn shut, as that would have kept me from having to read it. As that was not an option, I informed you that your draft “need[ed] a lot of work.” Pursuant to 2), you were the one expected to do said work.

6) My international students (who are non-native speakers) have a finer grasp of elegant expression than you do. You have taken the language of Shakespeare, Milton, Strunk and White and made it read like marbles being poured into a wood chipper.

7) Did I mention that in a game of Jeopardy! against Sarah Palin and Joe Biden, you would still somehow manage to finish fourth?

8 ) Yeeeaaargh!

9) All of the above.

Therefore, I suggest you take the C (which left me wanting to shower after writing it in my gradebook) and be grateful. Also, never darken my classroom again.

Love and sloppy wet kisses,

Prof. M