Do I need to revise this paper?

[Isabelarch]

I'm in an English lit masters program. Last semester I took a lecture course. There were two assignments for grad students: a four page paper and a ten page paper. I got an A on the first one and participated a lot in class, had a good relationship with the professor, who is a senior top professor and seemed to really take a liking to me - especially appreciating the fact that I have three kids.

When I got the final paper back, it was chock full of comments on almost every paragraph- which is the norm for her, but there was much more criticism than praise. She didn't give me a grade, but wrote at the end that she would like to work on revising it with me if I had the time; that she liked me and was willing to give me her time.

I was feeling very burnt out and told her I needed a month or so to enjoy the summer and then I would get back to her. She said she'd be there when I was ready. Meanwhile, much to my suprise, she gave me an A in the course! 

I met with her in July ( I live an hour away) and had a confusing meeting. She was very sweet but instead of working directly with my paper she gave me a lot of vague general guidelines for writing a good paper. She said I could either revise it or write a new one. I left feeling very confused and not inspired. 

Anyways, I decided to come up with a new idea and emailed it to her... twice. It's been over a month and she hasn't answered. I think she might be away. I wrote a few pages but I really am not feeling it and I don't see the point in writing a new paper without her input. I'll just end up doing the same things wrong again. The whole point was to work on it together. I've also been dealing with kids being sick and a lot going on in my life and am finding it really hard to concentrate on this.

Anyways, my question is: how important is it to revise or rewrite this paper? Will she lower my grade if I don't? Will it ruin my relationship with her? Doesn't it seem odd that she isn't answering after showing interest in working on it with me?

please help!!! 

 

[echo449]

Your grade is your grade. I don't think you have to worry about revising it. One thing you have to remember is that we are only small parts of our professors lives--it's tempting to give in to a kind of paranoid "what are they thinking when they blinked twice during our meeting last week" kind of mindset, but it is never helpful. Plus, it's the summer, when many people avoid emails to relax/finally work on their own projects. That you received a lot of comments that were critical is not necessarily bad; you can write an "A" paper that is still nowhere near where it could be w/ further revision. 

So, my advice: revise if you want to work on this topic further, don't if you don't. Don't worry about ruining your relationship w/ the professor; it seems pretty clear that she is invested in your progress. 

[fuzzylogician]

If this is a professor is someone who you might want as an advisor or on your committee, it's worth maintaining a relationship with her and working with her on something. But this something should be a topic that you are independently interested in, with the goal of having at least a presentation if not a publication eventually coming out of the project. The training this professor is offering you suggest that she clearly cares, and you should take it as broader career training, not as particularly important for the class. As far as the class is concerned, you are done and you have your grade. Even the professor is not telling you that you are required to work on the term paper more, so you can leave it behind if you don't care for it that much. What she is offering is a lot more valuable: training in writing and developing a paper more generally. I would agree that you shouldn't do too much without her feedback, that would defeat the point. If she is away (reasonable guess in August), wait until she is back. Maybe you could turn this into an official "independent study" project that could be scheduled throughout the semester and also give you course credit. 

[Isabelarch]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your answers- make me feel so much better! I felt really trapped in revising this paper that I had no interest in.

But my worry is that I think that she really really didn't like my paper ... I mean she didn't even give me a grade! She wrote that it was too broad and unoriginal. It just seems like the A was conditional on the revising even though she didn't actually say it. Is that possible? 

[Dr. Old Bill]

1 hour ago, Isabelarch said:

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your answers- make me feel so much better! I felt really trapped in revising this paper that I had no interest in.

But my worry is that I think that she really really didn't like my paper ... I mean she didn't even give me a grade! She wrote that it was too broad and unoriginal. It just seems like the A was conditional on the revising even though she didn't actually say it. Is that possible? 

If you have a good rapport with her, it's probably best to talk to her directly about her expectations -- both for this paper in particular, and for your future writing in general. If she gave you a lot of "vague guidelines for writing a good paper," she is clearly interested in you and your work. Make the most of it! 

Like @echo449 says, it's not uncommon to write an "A" paper that requires a lot of revision. Speaking for myself, even though all of my graduate papers have received either an A or A-, I only think that one of them (possibly two, given enough revision) is potentially publishable, and that only three (of eight or nine) are "good" papers. An A is often given in recognition of a number of factors -- general engagement with an interesting topic, quality writing and argumentation, demonstration of strong research etc. None of those things necessarily mean that a paper is innovative or particularly interesting unto itself...just that it's very well done in a broader sense. It strikes me as a little odd that your professor would want you to revise a ten-page paper (I could see it for one fifteen pages or longer), but your best bet is to talk to her personally to find out her intentions.

[rising_star]

1 hour ago, Isabelarch said:

But my worry is that I think that she really really didn't like my paper ... I mean she didn't even give me a grade! She wrote that it was too broad and unoriginal. It just seems like the A was conditional on the revising even though she didn't actually say it. Is that possible? 

Yes, it's possible. The only way for you to know for sure is to ask her.

[fuzzylogician]

1 hour ago, Isabelarch said:

But my worry is that I think that she really really didn't like my paper ... I mean she didn't even give me a grade! She wrote that it was too broad and unoriginal. It just seems like the A was conditional on the revising even though she didn't actually say it. Is that possible? 

Did other students get a grade on their papers? She may have just thought that the final grade directly implies a grade for the paper and that's enough. It is possible for her to change the grade later but I don't think it's likely. However, you will have to ask her to be sure. That said, the grade itself shouldn't matter that much. What matters is the feedback that you got and what you do with it. I think it's worth thinking about why the particular grade matters to you so much, and try to move past that. 

As others have said, an "A" (or even "A+") paper doesn't have to be perfect or even close to it. It could very well be unoriginal and vague. It may still require a lot of work to get anywhere near publishable, especially with early projects, and it may not be publishable at all. The fact that you got a lot of suggestions for improvement doesn't mean it wasn't a good enough paper for the purpose of the class. That's another thing you'll learn with time: the requirements for a class are different than those for theses or qualifying papers and those again are different from publications. Sometimes all you need is good enough. Not every topic you write a paper for a class on will become something you will want to engage with more deeply. Over time you'll learn to identify the point of diminishing returns for a particular paper or project, depending on your level of interest in it and where it is submitted. It doesn't have to be perfect, or even close to it. 

[heliogabalus]

My take might be a bit blunt: Rewrite the paper so you can figure out how to write a good one--you'll need to know how, and her saying it's "vague and unoriginal" along with general recommendations on how to write a paper suggest that you may have trouble with longer essays. That said, it is August, i.e. summer; the last thing your professors want to be doing right now is reading student essays. Look at her comments, rewrite the essay following her suggestions, and then take it to her once school starts back up.

[Bumblebea]

On 8/12/2016 at 10:09 AM, Isabelarch said:

I'm in an English lit masters program. Last semester I took a lecture course. There were two assignments for grad students: a four page paper and a ten page paper. I got an A on the first one and participated a lot in class, had a good relationship with the professor, who is a senior top professor and seemed to really take a liking to me - especially appreciating the fact that I have three kids.

When I got the final paper back, it was chock full of comments on almost every paragraph- which is the norm for her, but there was much more criticism than praise. She didn't give me a grade, but wrote at the end that she would like to work on revising it with me if I had the time; that she liked me and was willing to give me her time.

I was feeling very burnt out and told her I needed a month or so to enjoy the summer and then I would get back to her. She said she'd be there when I was ready. Meanwhile, much to my suprise, she gave me an A in the course! 

I met with her in July ( I live an hour away) and had a confusing meeting. She was very sweet but instead of working directly with my paper she gave me a lot of vague general guidelines for writing a good paper. She said I could either revise it or write a new one. I left feeling very confused and not inspired. 

Anyways, I decided to come up with a new idea and emailed it to her... twice. It's been over a month and she hasn't answered. I think she might be away. I wrote a few pages but I really am not feeling it and I don't see the point in writing a new paper without her input. I'll just end up doing the same things wrong again. The whole point was to work on it together. I've also been dealing with kids being sick and a lot going on in my life and am finding it really hard to concentrate on this.

Anyways, my question is: how important is it to revise or rewrite this paper? Will she lower my grade if I don't? Will it ruin my relationship with her? Doesn't it seem odd that she isn't answering after showing interest in working on it with me?

please help!!! 

 

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. 

[rising_star]

8 hours ago, Bumblebea said:

She won't lower your grade (she can't, if it's already been submitted). 

Actually, this is very rarely true. Almost every school has a procedure for altering grades after they've been submitted in the case of miscalculations, incompletes, etc. I've changed grades after submission for several students and for various reasons (their grade wasn't calculated correctly, they got an incomplete for various reasons, I subsequently found out they'd plagiarized their paper). So I just want to caution both you and the OP against thinking that once a grade has been submitted it cannot be changed.

[fuzzylogician]

9 hours ago, Bumblebea said:

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. 

In addition to rising_star's correct comment above, I want to add that this is also not necessarily true. I would agree that comments and an invitation to work with the professor indicate that she is invested and that is great. But I really don't think there is any reason to think that the comments mean that the paper could be publishable. This is something to explicitly ask the professor about, not assume. I have given students As on papers that I don't think are publishable, and I've received As on papers of my own that I believe couldn't be publishable no matter how much I would have worked on them. The standards for a class paper are just different. I also don't think it is the case that there is some "publishable vs. crappy" distinction (without lots of additional categories inbetween) or that any A class paper is (or could be) publishable. 

[Bumblebea]

8 hours ago, rising_star said:

Actually, this is very rarely true. Almost every school has a procedure for altering grades after they've been submitted in the case of miscalculations, incompletes, etc. I've changed grades after submission for several students and for various reasons (their grade wasn't calculated correctly, they got an incomplete for various reasons, I subsequently found out they'd plagiarized their paper). So I just want to caution both you and the OP against thinking that once a grade has been submitted it cannot be changed.

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. 

Edited August 14, 2016 by Bumblebea

[Bumblebea]

7 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

In addition to rising_star's correct comment above, I want to add that this is also not necessarily true. I would agree that comments and an invitation to work with the professor indicate that she is invested and that is great. But I really don't think there is any reason to think that the comments mean that the paper could be publishable. This is something to explicitly ask the professor about, not assume. I have given students As on papers that I don't think are publishable, and I've received As on papers of my own that I believe couldn't be publishable no matter how much I would have worked on them. The standards for a class paper are just different. I also don't think it is the case that there is some "publishable vs. crappy" distinction (without lots of additional categories inbetween) or that any A class paper is (or could be) publishable. 

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. 

[fuzzylogician]

12 minutes ago, Bumblebea said:

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. 

Where did you see anyone telling the OP to write off the professor's interest? No one did.

An anecdote about a publication that came out of an originally flawed seminar paper, while great, should be flagged as such, and not over-generalized. Maybe it's true that most early student publications come from class work, but that doesn't mean then that all class work could lead to publications. We don't know that the OP's paper is publishable, or that the professor's comments imply that. In fact, the fact that the professor invites the OP to work with her on this or another topic to learn how to write better papers would suggest that perhaps this is not the paper to go all in on. Bottom line: maybe it is, maybe not, neither one of us knows, but it's good to keep expectations where they should be, and *ask the professor directly what she thinks without making too many assumptions*. 

[rising_star]

5 hours ago, Bumblebea said:

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. 

I never said anything about the OP getting an incomplete or plagiarizing. I presented those as examples of reasons why a professor can change a grade after it has been submitted. If you read what I said, you'll see that I was speaking in general and never referenced the original post at all in my comment.

13 hours ago, rising_star said:

Almost every school has a procedure for altering grades after they've been submitted in the case of miscalculations, incompletes, etc.

That said, @Bumblebea, I highly doubt that you and I have worked at the same universities so I appreciate that you're presenting another perspective for the OP to consider. But, when you get down to it, is there anyone that actually doublechecks to verify why a professor changed a grade for someone? When I've submitted grade changes, no one has asked to see the graded work or my gradebook to verify why I submitted the grade change. And, without such a system for verification in place, I don't think any one of us can say that a professor couldn't submit a grade change because they changed their mind. Should they do that? Maybe, maybe not. But we can't say that it doesn't or couldn't happen.

(I actually can think of an example where one of my colleagues did change a bunch of grades after the fact. But, that's because they decided to curve the course grades, resulting in higher grades for a group of students, who they then submitted grade change forms for. Does that amount to a professor changing their mind about a grade? Yep. Did anyone do anything about it? Of course not.)

[Bumblebea]

17 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

 

An anecdote about a publication that came out of an originally flawed seminar paper, while great, should be flagged as such, and not over-generalized. Maybe it's true that most early student publications come from class work, but that doesn't mean then that all class work could lead to publications. We don't know that the OP's paper is publishable, or that the professor's comments imply that. In fact, the fact that the professor invites the OP to work with her on this or another topic to learn how to write better papers would suggest that perhaps this is not the paper to go all in on. Bottom line: maybe it is, maybe not, neither one of us knows, but it's good to keep expectations where they should be, and *ask the professor directly what she thinks without making too many assumptions*. 

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.

[Isabelarch]

Thanks everyone for all your extremely helpful replies! 

Just btw- it wasn't a seminar paper, it was a lecture paper in a class that is not in my area of interest...

[ExponentialDecay]

I may be caustic and suspicious, guys, but my first thought upon receiving generic paper-writing guidelines as revision help from a professor isn't that the professor thinks the paper is publishable, but that they're gently telling me to practice the basics over the summer so that I don't end up with Bs in the second year.

If they gave me a B for the course and then emailed me generic guidelines, I would take that as a particularly cruel diss.

[Bumblebea]

12 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

I may be caustic and suspicious, guys, but my first thought upon receiving generic paper-writing guidelines as revision help from a professor isn't that the professor thinks the paper is publishable, but that they're gently telling me to practice the basics over the summer so that I don't end up with Bs in the second year.

 

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. 

Edited August 16, 2016 by Bumblebea

[ExponentialDecay]

10 hours ago, Bumblebea said:

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. 

It is entirely possible that the professor sees something worthwhile in the OP's work without thinking that OP's work is remotely publishable. In any case, all this reading on tea leaves is perfectly irrelevant - OP needs to walk before she can run, and until she can write good essays, a priori nothing she writes will be publishable.

[Dr. Old Bill]

3 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

It is entirely possible that the professor sees something worthwhile in the OP's work without thinking that OP's work is remotely publishable. In any case, all this reading on tea leaves is perfectly irrelevant - OP needs to walk before she can run, and until she can write good essays, a priori nothing she writes will be publishable.

Meh. While your last point sounds valid, I think it assumes too much. Surely you've had to fulfill prerequisite courses in fields you have no interest in, and surely you've had to write an uninspired, yet objectively unobjectionable paper. It sounds like that's the case here. I wouldn't assume that a "too broad and unoriginal" (OP's words) paper in a course outside the realm of one's interests -- a paper that still garnered an "A," mind you -- means one cannot write good or publishable essays. I would be far more concerned if it was in the OP's particular field. It's not, so I wouldn't necessarily take it as emblematic of his/her writing in general.

 

[ExponentialDecay]

@Wyatt's Terps I guess it should be said that I have never met OP before, I have never seen OP's work, and everything I say here is YMMV because it's a general comment. I commented out of a general sense of lol at the general consensus that a professor telling OP to revise her paper with a basics worksheet means that she thinks OP's paper is OMG publishable. If I were OP, I would revise the paper out of a sense of scholarly integrity and approach the professor with a completed draft in hand (professors tend to respond better to people who have demonstrated an independent effort, whereas a request to help me from scratch can be interpreted as needing hand-holding), but I also don't have 3 kids.

[Bumblebea]

On 8/16/2016 at 5:27 AM, ExponentialDecay said:

 

8 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

@Wyatt's Terps I guess it should be said that I have never met OP before, I have never seen OP's work, and everything I say here is YMMV because it's a general comment. I commented out of a general sense of lol at the general consensus that a professor telling OP to revise her paper with a basics worksheet means that she thinks OP's paper is OMG publishable. If I were OP, I would revise the paper out of a sense of scholarly integrity and approach the professor with a completed draft in hand (professors tend to respond better to people who have demonstrated an independent effort, whereas a request to help me from scratch can be interpreted as needing hand-holding), but I also don't have 3 kids.

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.  

[ExponentialDecay]

We're talking past each other. I never stated that OP's paper was bad, or "terrible", or "not publishable". I stated explicitly that I have no way of knowing if that is the case. I asserted no such dichotomy, and you can check my first response to you for evidence that I contradict the existence of such a dichotomy. I completely agree that OP should take advantage of this massive opportunity and that professors who offer to help are rare. I am a bit surprised at your assertion that MA students who cannot write seminar papers are so common, as I was under the impression that writing at least one seminar paper would be a graduation requirement in most undergraduate humanities departments, but this is also irrelevant to OP's question, as is imho 90% of the speculation going on in this thread. I stand by my advice to have some independent work to show before approaching the professor again, because in my experience, being proactive is overwhelmingly the best strategy to get people to work with you. I don't think I'm being provocative anywhere here. @Bumblebea come on why can't we just be friends?

Edited August 17, 2016 by ExponentialDecay

[Bumblebea]

4 hours ago, ExponentialDecay said:

We're talking past each other. I never stated that OP's paper was bad, or "terrible", or "not publishable". I stated explicitly that I have no way of knowing if that is the case. I asserted no such dichotomy, and you can check my first response to you for evidence that I contradict the existence of such a dichotomy. 

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 am a bit surprised at your assertion that MA students who cannot write seminar papers are so common,

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.