Bumblebea

First of all, I see you're interested in Rhet/Comp, and from what I know (though others might jump in to correct me if I'm wrong), Columbia doesn't do rhet/comp. Second of all, Columbia and programs like Columbia tend to prefer candidates who are coming straight from their BA. Obviously this rule doesn't hold true for everyone. But it's something to keep in mind. Third of all, I would recommend looking only at MA programs that have funding. Since you're bound to New York, this could be tricky. But UConn has a funded MA. Rutgers-Camden also has a funded MA program. I'm coming up blank for other ideas of funded MA programs in the general NY area.

I DEFINITELY wish I had thought to include an abstract when I applied the second time. First time I did because I was sending an excerpt of my undergrad thesis. Second time I was sending a self-contained seminar paper. I now see how including an abstract at the beginning of that paper would have perhaps served as an "advertisement" or a preview of my writing. If you can write your abstract persuasively enough, and outline interesting stakes of your project, it could possibly help your application get attention. As for me--I sent the same 20-page paper to most schools I applied to. I really didn't fuss with it very much. I got into two schools and waitlisted at a third, so I don't know how much that helps you. I wasn't the world's most successful applicant (I'm one of those people who became much better at grad school once I was actually in it rather than one of those people who knows how to apply).

I think that is somewhat unusual, to be honest with you. I mean, I'm an Americanist who didn't go to Harvard-level programs, and I always had a wide selection of American lit graduate courses at my disposal every semester.. As far as American lit goes, UPenn is probably the top program. Maryland and Rutgers are particularly strong for Af-Am. NYU and CUNY are also very strong for American lit.

I think that @TakeruK was also responding to the fact that the OP is female and a member of a disadvantaged demographic. There's a lot of evidence to suggest that women who teach at the college level are often viewed as not really belonging in the classroom, and as not possessing the same expertise that their male colleagues possess. Many undergrads, male and female alike, approach interactions with female TAs very differently than they approach or perceive interactions with male TAs. Therefore, it's really impossible to look at this situation and not take the OP's gender into account, even if we don't really know for sure what motivated the student to create a fake email account and send this message. (And, as I've stated previously here, their motives aren't really relevant or worth considering, since the student couldn't be bothered to lodge a valid complaint.) And frankly, depending on where this interaction took place and the university's rules regarding electronic communication, the student could very well be in violation of the student code of conduct. I've taught in places where using campus technology--the school's network, for instance--to create a fake account for the purpose of sending a disrespectful email would be regarded as a violation. Many universities require that students use only their official university email account when communicating with instructors. A simple google search on email policy brings me to Franklin University's student code of conduct, which states: "Within the broad context of free academic discussion and debate, communications between members of the University community (faculty, staff, and fellow students) are expected to reflect high ethical standards and mutual respect and civility. The medium of communications makes no difference. Whether the communication is through face-to-face exchange, email, electronic bulletin board, chat room, telephone, audio bridge, etc., students must demonstrate respect for faculty, staff, and fellow students in all communications." http://www.franklin.edu/student-services/campus-information/university-policies/student-code-of-conduct Where I did my undergrad (a really long time ago at the dawn of the email age), an acquaintance of mine sent an anonymous and disparaging email to another person on campus. The school took this action very seriously. They tracked down the anonymous emailer and held a hearing about it. My acquaintance ended up on probation for an entire year. The message was clear: you do not use campus property to send anonymous emails. Anonymous emails are meant to intimidate people. They serve no other purpose. Obviously I'm not recommending that the OP pursue this kind of action against this student. That would be silly--even sillier than inviting the anonymous emailer to office hours. However, I think that we need to be really clear here: sending a disrespectful anonymous email communication to an instructor or another student is not acceptable. Ever. There is nothing that anyone can say here that justifies this student's conduct. If the student feels that he or she is at some kind of power disadvantage here, then that's troubling, but it still doesn't justify sending an anonymous email. If the student is troubled by their TA's conduct and feels the TA is abusing their power, but they fear retaliation, then they have other resources that can aid them in this situation. Most universities have student advocacy offices. Most other universities allow students to make anonymous complaints through official channels. But let's be perfectly clear about this. By rationalizing and validating this student's behavior--by imagining this student as so intimidated by the power structure of the university that their only recourse is to send a disrespectful and bullying anonymous email--we diminish the work we do as educators and the rights that we have to work in a civil, productive, and non-hostile environment. Just because we have some degree of power here (power that's been steadily eroded, as @telkanurupoints out) does not invalidate our expectation of teaching in a civil atmosphere. Quite plainly, the student doesn't deserve the benefit of our doubt here. They threw away their fair shot by taking a crooked one.

Late to this topic, but for other future first-time TAs and grad instructors: For this kind of situation, if the department doesn't automatically provide you with a textbook (which they usually only do if you're teaching an introductory course that a majority of TAs teach, like composition 101) you want to contact the publisher and get a "desk" or "examination" copy. They fully expect that professors and TAs will contact them for this purpose, and they're happy to comply. They often have pages on their websites that allow you to request an examination copy. (See this page, for instance: http://books.wwnorton.com/books/academicresources.aspx?id=4683; and since you're Canadian: https://www.oupcanada.com/request.php/) As you can see, the only thing you need to get a copy is a university email. If you explain you're a graduate student TAing a class, and that you need a copy, they'll mail it directly to your university address. I mean, I'm a professor and I don't buy the textbooks I use to teach a class. To do so would be cost prohibitive, even for me. Most (if not all) publishing companies are willing to comply because it means that you're about to be requiring your students to buy a whole slew of textbooks from them. Also, you shouldn't be ashamed about asking this question of a professor. No one expects a new grad student TA to know about the "desk/examination copy" loophole. It's a perfectly reasonable question.

I think you need to reread the email that the student sent to the OP. An anonymous email scolding a TA is a bad faith gesture. It really was not a plea for the TA to remove distracting material from the lecture hall. It was not written as though it came from a student who feared retaliation. Moreover, I read your post carefully the first time. There was no misunderstanding on my part. Perhaps you need to reread mine, as you have distorted my points here. For one thing: I'm don't understand your point or how it's relevant. I never used the phrase "real world." I said "post-college life." So I'm not sure why you're attributing to me a belief system that I clearly do not espouse. Or are you insinuating that I don't understand "the real world" and its exigencies and demands? I guess we'll never know, since they decided not to behave in a direct and mature way, seeking out the TA or professor to handle this matter. That's is the problem with anonymous communication, and that's the life lesson the student will have to learn here, I suppose. If the student does have a "real issue" with laptop use (doubtful because laptops aren't that distracting in lectures--especially when 80% of the class is using them), then they've lost credibility and the high ground in this exchange. And, as I pointed out, post-academic life (much like academic life itself) does not smile kindly on those who don't conduct themselves with integrity in situations like this one. It makes no difference if we're in the Ivory Tower or the "real world." Disrespect doesn't win you friends and allies in either place. My tone was nothing but respectful to you and my response was neutrally worded. However, I did find it somewhat troubling that you made all kinds of assumptions about the OP's conduct and their relationship with their undergrad students. I also think it's telling that you think your original post was generous and that mine--calling you out on your rather baseless assumptions about the OP--was out of line. I'm also extremely bewildered that you think the OP's conduct (which was not wrong in any way whatsoever) is somehow contributing to the gulf between undergrads and professors, and that this gulf is somehow contributing to the decline of the humanities. I see no evidence that backs this up. Additionally, I don't appreciate your trying to use "the tone argument" to here. It's typically used to shut down honest discussion. In fact, most of us who are criticizing this student's behavior aren't taking issue with their tone but their mode of delivery. A grubby email sent by from a student's email is one thing. An anonymous email sent to a TA telling them that they "should know better" is another thing entirely. It's wrong, it's bullying, and it is not worth the time of day, frankly. I have no idea what you're talking about or how I would be feeding into any "dynamic." You seem to have a pattern here of projecting all kinds of attitudes and opinions--first in response to the OP and now in response to me--that are inaccurate Honestly? An anonymous and trollish email sent by a student is not worth all this hullabaloo here, and it's not worth the energy you want the OP to commit to it. I assume the OP has moved on. I think you should too. You're recommending that the OP sink an inordinate amount of their time fixing a situation for a student when they don't even know who that student is. The OP is a graduate student with a limited amount of funding and time to get through school. Their self-preservation is important. It should be important to all of us, really--much more important than the feelings of the student who decided to bully their TA by writing an anonymous email..As @TakeruK said, what you're recommending is maybe even harmful for the OP since it would open them up to additional bullying and more invisible, emotional labor. If you choose to interact with students this way, and you choose to address every minor student complaint by bringing talking them over with students and then writing the professor a memo afterwards, then that is completely your choice. But please don't try to make the OP feel that they "missed an opportunity" to do the right thing simply because they are not willing or able to dignify an unwarranted and somewhat hostile email. It's not right of you to do that. The OP did nothing wrong. And seriously? IT'S A LAPTOP. It's a laptop in a place where laptops are allowed, and it was open to the ever-so-unexciting pages detailing grant applications and university email. The OP wasn't watching Sports Center. They didn't bring a puppy into a lecture. They brought a laptop to lecture and they used it. The student was not distracted because a laptop was open to a boring page of text in a lecture hall where 80% of the students have their laptops open. I'd bet a handsome sum that not all those laptops are being used to take notes, and I'd bet an equally handsome sum that the student emailer is also getting an eye-full of Twitter and Facebook from the other students around him. But that, as far as we know, doesn't seem to be a problem for this particular student. Only the TA's boring screen. Gee, I wonder why.

The email was sent from a fake, anonymous account. In other words, it was a message that the student didn't want to communicate under his or her real name. From that fact alone, I can infer that it was not simply discourteous but deliberately meant (as @TakeruK said) to bully the TA. The email's phrasing isn't what's problematic. Its phrasing, coupled with its anonymous delivery, is what makes it problematic. And by "problematic," I mean a bullying and trollish bad-faith gesture. You can't separate the content from the anonymous delivery under a fake account. Honestly, I'm a little surprised that people are trying to act as apologists for this student. I imagine that none of us sent anonymous emails to our professors or TAs as undergrads to tell them to stop sending rude emails without a salutation or proper closing. Also: I mean, come on. You're a grad student. You should know better -- isn't discourteous; it's a provocation.

Nah. The fact that the email was sent anonymously--and from a fake account, no less--means that it's not worth dignifying or thinking about. If we're going to teach our students anything about post-college life, we have to stress that integrity is key. If you can't make a complaint in person or under your real name, you can't expect an audience to respond to your problems. You can't expect people to drop everything to come and troubleshoot your issues when you refuse to air those issues under your real identity. The OP used their computer to fact check the lecture and check work-related email. That does not qualify as someone "putting your priorities ahead of your students'." I actually think it's telling that you immediately jumped to the conclusion that the OP is somehow abusing their power or shirking their duties as a TA. If laptops are permitted in the lecture, then the TA can certainly use them for this purpose. Moreover, TAs are not in the same position as their undergrads. They come in already knowing the material, for the most part, and they're there to grade papers and lead recitation sections. They answer to the professor, not to the students. The students are not the TA's boss. As long as the TA is fulfilling the duties that the program and professor specify, then they are doing what they're supposed to do. Students do not get to dictate how a TA should comport him or herself during lecture, just as they do not get to tell TAs what to wear or where to sit. And you have absolutely no cause to apply this "crisis" to anything that the OP has done. Nowhere in their original post did the OP reveal that they think interacting with undergrads is an "annoyance." In fact, the OP came to this forum to ask, in good faith, how they should proceed. Nothing in the original post should allow you to assume that they conduct themselves in a manner that's anything less than professional with their students. Moreover, your assumption--that this TA's interaction with students--is somehow deepening the gulf between undergrads and professors--is pretty unsubstantiated. You're implying that this undergrad--and perhaps others--will somehow be "lost" to the history profession because of the OP's laptop use. Well, I hate to break it to you, but anyone who sends an anonymous and petty email to their history TA about laptop use--perfectly harmless laptop use at that--is probably not enamoured of the history profession anyway. I'm guessing we didn't just lose another potential history major because of the OP's laptop. More significantly, I'd like to see some sources that substantiate your claim that academic history is "in crisis" as a discipline precisely because of poor teaching, poor relationships with undergraduates, and mistreatment of undergraduates by TAs. Because, as someone who also works in the humanities, I have to tell you that the humanities are in crisis for reasons that have very little to do with our teaching. Students aren't going to college to major in humanities anymore for economic reasons. Universities aren't admitting as many humanities students because they're trying to build STEM and business schools. Blaming professors and TAs for the crisis in the humanities seems like another way to diminish the work that we do, and a convenient passing-of-the-buck to the people who deserve it the least. Since the email was anonymous, I'm not sure how this would work. Should the OP reply to the anonymous email and ask them to come to office hours and unveil themselves? Or should they tell the entire class what happened and ask the anonymous emailer to please come forward? That seems like a lot of energy wasted on a student who couldn't be bothered to lodge a complaint under their own name. TAs have their own work to do. Devoting so much time and energy to a rather minor (and probably trollish) complaint is counterproductive. Again, I'm not sure what this conversation would accomplish. If the point isn't to apologize, then I'm not sure what purpose such a meeting would serve. Are we validating the undergrad's feelings? Are we sending them a message that you can go ahead and send a petty and anonymous email and get someone to rearrange their afternoon to deal with your minor complaint? Honestly, I think most professors would be utterly mystified to get this kind of memo ... about a student who sent an anonymous email to a TA because the TA was fact-checking during a lecture. Uh, most of my professors/bosses would have asked me if I had too much time on my hands or if I was finished with my dissertation already. Moreover, TAs and professors aren't in "customer service." Our students are not customers, and we're not trying to manage risk.

Wow. Just wow. Why am I not surprised that the student who sent this email is male and you're a female TA. I agree that not replying is the best way to go in this situation. He's trolling you in between memeing "dicks out for Harambe" and participating in some stupid reddit discussion. He wants a reaction. Preferably he wants a reaction that he can share with people who are just as arrogant and grubby as he is. Don't change anything you're doing. Don't change where you're sitting. You have a right to use your laptop, and you are exercising that right. Seriously, if you ever figure out who this is, you need to make a point of sitting in front of him for the rest of the semester and smiling sweetly the entire time. ETA: I have to admit that I'd be tempted to reply to the email with "No. Tough shit, sweetheart. Find a new seat." But that's not something I would recommend doing. I also don't think you should go to your DGS or the professor about this. Though the email is anonymous in nature, and therefore not coming from a position of integrity, I'd be worried that they might take the complaint seriously and ask you to retreat to the back of the lecture hall. And that's the last thing you want--for the trollish student to know he's gotten the best of the situation, or for him to think he actually intimidated you into changing your behavior. I'm guessing that he has been reprimanded before for using his laptop inappropriately, and he's chafed that a TA can sit there looking at (seemingly unrelated) sites when he got in trouble for watching Sports Center or playing Minesweeper. Some students get very angry when they feel that they're being held to different standards than their TAs or professors. They feel that TAs and professors are using their status to get away with things. They don't realize that they should just put that energy into studying.

Wow! That's a new one, Wyatt's Terps. I have never heard that all three LORs need to be in one's proposed area of specialization. Master's students take so many classes to fulfill distribution requirements that few have actually worked with three professors in the field by the beginning of their second year. And I know he's saying that you should go find someone you haven't even had a class with ... but that's really asking a lot of someone. It's hard to write a recommendation letter for someone if you've never seen them in action. Professors at this time of year are also writing letters for their students going on the job market, and those students often take priority. FWIW, I only had one letter in my proposed area of specialization when I applied for PhD programs. That one person was very famous, and, truth be told, I had begun graduate school in an entirely different field and then fallen in love with my current field along the way ... so maybe that explains how I still managed to get in. But most of the people I know didn't have three recommenders from the same field lined up. Most had two (if they were lucky) with a wild card thrown in for good measure. This is a situation I'd definitely ask your DGS about. Jesus, the graduate admissions process is resembling the job market more and more every year, with people expected to have perfectly matching writing samples and SOPs and three recommenders from the proposed area of study. Soon they'll be asking you to assemble your dissertation committee before you even get there. Yikes.

Totally agree. It's indispensable for teaching college English at any level, and another reason I would never intentionally denigrate it. However, there are a lot of programs out there that don't have rhet/comp specialists, and that don't stress teaching. I do know people who graduated without really having taught a writing seminar. Heck, a person on my committee graduated from a (very, very top) program only having taught one class--a literature class--and a few recitation sections of a very large intro to lit class. I don't know if this made this person "completely unable" to teach writing--they weren't hired at our university to teach first-year classes (as is often the case with hires at R1 schools) but upper-level undergrad and grad classes--but it does indeed happen that people get literature PhDs without teaching or knowing much about composition. For those who are lucky enough to walk into a career as a research scholar at an R1 or a very top SLAC, that's maybe more acceptable. But the rest of us need to be able to teach a few other things, and first-year writing is usually high on the list of priorities at a great many universities.

I meant it didn't take much effort to reimagine how my dissertation could relate to writing studies/pedagogical theory. Not that rhet/comp doesn't take much effort or isn't challenging. I wouldn't presume to call myself a rhet/comp specialist because that wouldn't be right. But for me, this "marketing strategy" wasn't difficult *because* I attended a program at a public university that has a reputable and well-developed rhet/comp program. I taught constantly throughout my program and took classes in rhet/comp and pedagogy. For this reason, I was familiar with some of the debates in the field and was familiar with certain theorists. Obviously, this is not possible for those who attend programs that don't have rhet/comp or that don't make TAs teach rhetoric-based classes in first-year English. That was all. I was not implying that rhet/comp isn't challenging. Obviously my dabbling doesn't make me appropriate to take on a rhet/comp job, and I wouldn't presume to apply for one. I did not study it for 6+ years or write articles/a dissertation in that field. But frankly, there *are* a lot of jobs out there these days that want to hire literature professors who have familiarity with rhet/comp. It's "two birds with one stone" issue that has become very prevalent on the job market. It's not right, but it's happening, and you see the same sort of things when you review job ads that want someone who can teach "Asian-American literature and multiple genres of creative writing." It's not right--these schools oftentimes have the money to hire three people but the department can only get approval for one--but it's the system we're living in. The schools where I got interviews were very enthusiastic about being able to hire someone who could teach in the first-year writing program while also bringing knowledge of a very specific literary field. Honestly, doing rhet/comp is a matter of survival for literature PhDs who come out of public universities. Almost every literature PhD I know from a public university got a job because they had basic knowledge and experience teaching comp or running a writing center/first-year writing program. They were hired by small departments that didn't want to hire someone who just did rhet/comp but someone who could also jump in and teach classes on Irish literature. This is the new and unfair reality of the job market--we're all sort of crowding into each other's fields. So I didn't mean to denigrate rhet/comp at all ... but I was trying to drive home the reality that it's absolutely essential for lit PhDs to be able to market themselves very flexibly.

As someone who's been on the market a few times ... yeah. I really want to sign on to the idea that you can't predict the market. Having said that, you always have to be aware that rare specializations--and fields that seem especially overpopulated--are not going to get easier. But these days, it's just ALL looking bad. There's really no golden-ticket specialization anymore. I was told that my particular area was secure because "every department will always need a blankety blank"--flash forward five or six years and blankety blank has become ridiculously competitive, and departments have found ways to combine blankety blank with other adjacent periods. Even if you're in literature and not inclined toward rhet/comp (and I was not), I would recommend trying to do something, anything, that relates to the writing studies side of your department, whether that's working for the writing center, training new TAs, or taking additional classes in writing pedagogy. I'm convinced that's how I got my current job. I was also offered a teaching postdoc that was more rhet/comp than literature, and getting that offer had everything to do with being able to imagine my work as intersecting with current debates in writing studies. And it really did not take THAT much effort on my part.

Ugh, that reminds me of something very similar that happened to me when I was applying out of my MA program for a PhD. You have my sympathies. I'm guessing your "lukewarm" recommender wants to throw his support behind another student--like maybe he's making a big play to keep another person in the program, and he knows that, due to the make-up of the admissions committee, some compromises are going to have to be made. I think it's good that you might have this other letter writer option. If not, I don't think one slightly milk-toast letter is going to sink an otherwise solid application. (The first time I applied--when I got into my MA program--I applied with what had to be the worst and most embarrassing letter of rec in the history of grad admissions from my undergrad advisor, who happened to be weeks away from checking himself into rehab. But that's a totally different story and I won't bore you with the details.) In terms of the WS--I'm with everyone else here who thinks that the A- paper might be worth a shot. But it would be really difficult to say without knowing more about both samples.

That's something you should probably ask your prof about. However, I don't think that "prior scholarship" necessarily means "scholarship about this particular text." Obviously if you're the first person writing about this novel, then there won't be any formal peer reviewed articles out there. But I assume there would be scholarship on the author more generally, or scholarship about this particular topic. Like, say you're thinking about examining a recent novel that concerns the Middle East. I assume you'd look at the scholarship surrounding similar recent novels and give some background about the direction this scholarship has taken.

I don't think that would be a glaring problem. Your writing sample isn't expected to be a chapter from your future dissertation. The fact that you are submitting a writing sample about the same author you're proposing to study in graduate school (in this hypothetical scenario) is close enough. You probably want to contextualize your critical "shift" in your SOP. So, as you detail your future research plans, provide some kind of link between your writing sample and your chosen critical lens. Like, you might say that after writing this paper on Shakespeare, you wondered how cool it would be to link this discussion of England's class structure to the colonization of North America. (Kind of a dumb example, but something like that.) And to be honest with you? Being willing to change and stretch yourself might be seen as an asset. The least successful grad students I've come across are the ones who came in with a dissertation project already mapped out and were unwilling to grow and change along the way. The most successful ended up changing authors, time periods, and continents. I know Americanists who started off Africanists and film scholars who ended up doing early modern. But ...many of the people I knew who went to grad school proposing to convert their undergrad thesis into a dissertation are still in grad school. So, demonstrating versatility in more than one critical area could work in your favor.

I would recommend not throwing it out there for one of the zillion smaller online journals for a quick and easy publication. You're really better off working on it until it gets better (even if that takes a few years). I know it's a cliche to say "you don't want a mediocre publication following you around forever"--but you really don't. I almost published something very early on in grad school, and now I'm glad I didn't. Honestly, I don't think there is any harm in just sending it out to a more prestigious journal--if only for the fact that you might get some feedback that will help you in the long term. You won't get your article published at this point (for the reasons Wyatt's Torch touched on), but you might get a reader's report back. A reader's report from a reputable scholar in your field is much more useful for telling you what you need to work on than a publication in a low-rent online zine. As far as helping you get into a PhD program--admissions committees are *not* going to expect MA students to have publications (or even conference presentations). They're looking for promise at this stage, not some finished product. So, tldr: Don't worry about publication right now, but it's not a bad idea to circulate your article to a reputable journal, just to see what happens. And revising a paper for submission alone will make your writing sample better, which should be the more important goal.

Well I don't think there was a consensus here that the paper was "OMG publishable" simply because a professor told the OP to revise, so I guess we're one for one in strawmanning, then. I should have specified "good seminar papers," and I guess it depends on how you define "good," and I would add that PhD students in coursework rarely write "good seminar papers" either. *shrug* I guess it's a matter of perception. Nearly all of my professors told us to think of seminar papers as drafts rather than finished products. Most people don't produce polished research over the course of 10-week quarter or 14-week semester. And MA students, who are unused to churning them out, often have a difficult time putting them together at first. The biggest problem MA students have initially is figuring out how to enter the conversation, and discerning which sources are worth citing and which ones should be tossed aside. And, well, Greg Semenza has a whole chapter devoted to troubleshooting the seminar paper in his book, so I don't think the problem is an uncommon one.

Well no lol, I don't think anyone here has argued that the paper is "OMG publishable"--but it might contain a kernel of a good idea that, if pursued adequately, could someday yield a publishable essay, which can be said of many papers from talented students in their first year of graduate school. It's also not a big deal that the OP is struggling with "the basics" of writing a paper. Seminar papers are difficult to write at first because they have a very distinct format--you need to introduce your topic early in the paper while laying out a thesis statement, then do a lit review/historical context section, deploy your close reading, and then tie it all together and explain the stakes. It can be intimidating if you've never done it before, so I don't really agree with the assessment that being told to review general guidelines on writing a paper means bad news about the OP's writing ability. A lot of brilliant students struggle with putting papers together, especially at the MA level. The fact that the professor gave the OP an A and made numerous comments on each paragraph is, from my perspective, nothing less than encouraging. I think it's odd here that you want to assert this dichotomy between "terrible paper that is not publishable" vs.. "OMG publishable." Papers rarely fall into one category of the other. Most are "good idea/start, but needs massive work to get to the submission level." Some are even rehashing ideas that have been put to rest since 1983--but that doesn't mean that the work isn't provocative on some level. (I had a friend who was accused of "reinventing the wheel" during her MA thesis defense, and two years later that unoriginal thesis was in PMLA.) Obviously none of us knows the details-- which is why the OP needs to take this up with the professor. I also don't agree that asking for help equals hand-holding, or that the OP needs to hand in a polished draft in order to demonstrate independent interest. I really don't think the OP should walk away from this offer. I would be hesitant to leave this on the table. Professors who offer this kind of feedback to MA students are rare.

It's possible, but in my experience professors are rarely that nice for the sake of just being nice. YMMV, but when they don't think you're up to snuff (and you're only a master's student), they tend to pull out the B+/B as a subtle warning to get your thing together or to make other plans. Choking the page with comments and then giving the student an A in the class--while urging major improvement--tells me that the professor sees something worthwhile in the OP's work.

Well, I would agree with that last bit, even as I strongly disagree with the advice that you and rising_star are giving here. The OP should indeed talk to the professor to see what the endgame is, or to better gauge their assessment of the paper. However, any paper that a professor wants a student to revise is worth revising. I think that telling the OP that this might not be a paper "to go all in on" is the wrong tack to take. If your professor wants you to work closely with you to revise a paper, you should not blow this off. I shared my own "anecdote" about a published paper not to give the OP undue assurances, but to illustrate that next to nothing that one writes for a class is ever publishable right out of the gate---but that doesn't mean the paper isn't worth working on in the long term. (It took me four years.) In reality--and I see that neither of you are in English, so perhaps this speaks to a difference in discipline--almost everything that one writes can be improved, rewritten, and overhauled to the point that it contains an original argument that is worth sharing with the world. Maybe the final product will have little in common with the draft that one submitted in seminar. But articles come from somewhere, and many of them come from seminar papers that were passed through without a second glance.

Of course the paper isn't publishable now. No seminar paper is really ever publishable. My first published article came from a seminar paper that was shamefully bad. But the professor's interest in this student shouldn't simply be written off. I think it's a good sign for the OP and would urge them to look into this more. One writes a publishable paper by working on crappy seminar papers over the course of a few years.

Of course a professor can submit a grade change when the calculation is off. And of course we're assuming that the OP didn't receive an incomplete here or plagiarize. Why would you even bring those things up? Where did the OP indicate that they'd received an incomplete or plagiarized their paper? At the universities where I've taught, the professor cannot submit a grade change simply because they've changed their mind. The only changes a professor could make were due to calculation errors, and this was a very firm rule.

She won't lower your grade (she can't, if it's already been submitted). However, I strongly urge you to take advantage of her offer. Anyone who makes comments like this on a paper and urges you to revise is invested in your success. She probably thinks that this paper could be publishable if you work on it. She definitely doesn't think it's crappy. Crappy papers just get a crappy grade and the student gets a B+ or B in the class, end of story. Trust me, grad professors do not pressure students to revise papers if they aren't interested or invested in some way. I wouldn't read too much into the fact that she hasn't gotten back to you--it's summer, and you told her you were taking a month off. Go to her office hours when school starts again.

My own experience is that, for pre-MLA deadlines and for jobs that were looking exclusively for an expert in my field (even 4/4 loads), I sent letters that led with research. This perspective is a little iffy and controversial, but I'll explain my reasoning: 1. I attended a program where I taught A LOT. Therefore, I had a CV with a diverse course list, letters of recommendation that talked about my teaching abilities, and a very specific and well-developed (IMO) teaching statement. Had I attended a school where I was the sole instructor of only one or two courses, I might have presented myself differently to teaching colleges. 2. I was told to lead with what makes you interesting. For many of us, that's our research interests. Teaching paragraphs, though they can be interesting, often times don't have the same memorable "it factor" of a well-written research paragraph. And you can always retool your research paragraph to talk about how your research appeals to undergrads, or how it informs your teaching. 3. I tailored every letter, mentioning specifically what courses I could teach and what initiatives I wanted to be involved with. For teaching colleges I talked very specifically about how I could act as a "generalist" and teach things outside of my field. As far as how my search went this year ... well, it's too early to tell, but in a rough year (20 jobs or so for my particular concentration) I got four interviews, all from very different schools. One is at an R1 with a 2/2 load, another is at a liberal arts college with a 3/3 load, and the last two are at very small and teaching-oriented LACs with 4/4 loads. Is it possible that I turned off more of the small teaching colleges with my research? Sure. Maybe I could have gotten 8 interviews if I'd structured my letter differently. It's also possible that I turned them off with my undergrad institution, or that they were looking for someone 6 years younger or 10 years older, or that they were looking for someone who already had a job, or that they were looking for someone who could also teach cooking classes on the side. The point is that in this cutthroat market you'll never know, and I think the "no way to know" thing is the big consensus emerging from this discussion.