On The Move…

I’d like to tell myself that I am secure and rational enough not to be emotionally affected by less-than-ideal grades.  But then of course I would be deceiving myself.

Today I received back a paper I wrote for my International Law class several weeks ago.  It was nerve-wrecking because it was long enough ago that I had completely forgotten what I had written about and only remembered the rather middling grade my first paper had received.  So it was fairly gratifying (and a huge relief) that it made a good grade.

And then a couple of hours later I received the worst grade I’ve ever gotten on a response paper.  Again.  This TF just really detests the work I turn it.  The first time I figured maybe I was misunderstanding her expectations so I put a lot more work into the second one trying to conform to her (vague) advice.  A lot of good that did me.  This time she just wrote, “Jason, quit blabbering” (in French) and slapped me with a failing grade.  And slapped is right.   For about fifteen minutes after that I was in a stunned, depressive daze (can you imagine?).  Unbelievable.  This woman is going to destroy my good track record with the French department and crush my little heart while she’s at it.  *chin trembles*  Yes, yes I know: noone likes a loser whining about his failures.  I’ll just shut up now, and revert to rationality – now where’d I put my masculinity?  Yes, there it is.  Much better.

There must be some way to fix this.  Or at least make it less bad.

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Now all I have to do is survive this last couple of weeks and:

a) Write a killer 5-page final paper for my MIT class.  I really *really* want to do well in this class.  It would be so disappointing to me if I couldn’t produce good work for this inspiring professor teaching a life-changing class.  Of course she has an incredibly challenging brief for this final assignment (”Pretend you’re writing a one page piece for The New Yorker.”)
b) Write a second Justice paper that impresses my TF more decisively than the first one (his request).  This is going to be hard…
c) Write a second/final French paper (and perhaps two more response papers) to rescue my currently very