Saturday 22 January 2011

The Art of the comma - my essay is back.

Well, I got my essay back - at last! And the result was fine. I moved up 2% on my last essay.It is quite frustrating though.I looked at the feedback from last time which said I needed to use slightly fewer quotations and this time, having followed the advice, she tells me I need to use slightly more! And the main feedback was an obsession with comma placement.Comma placement?? I ask you!! I am certainly not a slouch when it comes to grammar, but for goodness sake.... This is a level 3 essay and her main gripe is my placement of commas??!!

I am determined to get it right next time.I shall study her comments and do my best to learn from them. After all, she is a professor and I am a student. I have no doubt that she is absolutely right in what she says, but it is most frustrating to learn that your main failing is whether you put a comma in the middle of a reference, or not!

Now if she had complained about my over use of exclamation marks she might have had a point!!!!!

Anyway, I am glad to have it back and to have raised my score again. I am now half way through the course with only 3 more essays to write, one of which is a 4000 worder. I will not be sorry to see the back of this course. I am back in the mind set of 20 years ago when I was doing my B.A in History of Art. I was so turned off by the total pedantry and pretentiousness of the whole thing.

I absolutely love the novels I am studying, but the work of the critics which we also have to study is just mind numbingly dull.Do they have nothing better to do with their lives than nit pick over literature? I listen to the CDs which are part of the course and the critics taking part in discussions on there just make my bile rise. I find myself talking to the CD player, telling them to stop talking such pretentious drivel...

Ah well. One more year to go after this and then its done - I will have a B.A with Honours. I just need to get those bloody commas sorted...

p.s if you fancy asking anything about this post do feel free to use the video thingamejig on the right!! Thanks for dropping by x

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Osuppose it depends on which criticism you read. Some are tedious and the link to the text/subject is tenuous. I really like reading criticism, arguing against it or using it to support my argument. I get told I am over reliant on critics too, and I have to have original arguments at MA level. I have favourite critics too, mostly people who write about texts and themes, theories I am interested in. You might yet come across one who you agree with.

Jan.

Anonymous said...

I wish there was an edit button on comments - my typing/spelling is sometimes atrocious! I suppose not O suppose obviously!

Pauline said...

Well done! I'm convinced you did extremely well if the only negative comment was about commas! I got a smile out of looking at your video thingy - cute and funny (especially the little shrug!)