GoKawiil– an owl mid flight I saw last summer. try drawing it.
“You should have failed this class. I’m going to make accommodations so that no student can pass next semester the same way you did.”
This is what my Ancient History II professor told me when my group and I got our final group project essay handed out. Every group would have an interview with her to get feedback on the essays and ideally congratulate students. We did get really good feedback on the essay.
She loved the essay, but while giving that feedback she almost was exclusively looking at my friend sitting on my left. Then she looked at me, and told me to thank my friend because he obviously carried me through the essay and that I should’ve failed her class so next semester the final essay would be individual.
She was kind of right
Although it was an embarrassing moment for me, I don’t blame her. What she saw was me arriving late or even sleeping through class. I’ve always had trouble staying awake when sitting in lectures ever since kindergarten. I’ve been kicked out of classes for sleeping more times than I can count. And my friend was the complete opposite: he was active in class and had no issues with arriving in time since he lived right next to the campus.
But my writing carried me anyways
On the other hand, she was oblivious to the fact that I had written that essay almost entirely by myself while my friend was copiloting a bit on the side or sleeping while I kept writing until 6am. I was the one that read and re-read the full bibliography we used for the essay. I was the one that proposed the thesis and the main ideas. I was the one that structured the essay. What she praised was my writing.
The single most important thing
In Spanish we have a saying: “Irse por las ramas” (to go/leave through the branches). It describes when people deviate from the topic and discuss irrelevant stuff. It has this implicit analogy that there’s a central trunk, with branches you traverse through, but that you should always be coming back to the central trunk. For every successful essay I wrote, I identified the central trunk first.
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