Last night was the last class meeting of my summer school course. We basically just had to turn in our papers, fill out the teacher evaluation, and that was it. I feel confident that the paper I turned in will earn me the grade I need in this class. (I did some quick math, and even not getting any points for Jane Austen, as long as I get 25 out of 30 points on the paper, I get an A in the class, and even if I get as low as 15 points on the paper, I still get a B in the class, which is sufficient to raise my ASU GPA to get into the Fall Semester automatically.) Based on this teacher’s scoring in the past, I should easily get sufficient points, possibly even an A on the paper.
The person who helped me a little with editing it wouldn’t give me as much credit for my finished work, since I basically didn’t change the wording of the first paragraph like she thought was so vital, but I expect I’ll do okay.
Oh yeah. Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park. I still haven’t finished reading that yet. I’m almost halfway, actually. No way I could get through the whole thing before Tuesday morning at 9AM (yes, three days ago). Actually, I spoke to the teacher, and I have most of today to post my response to the book and my responses to other people’s responses. The Mansfield Park response was originally supposed to be two two-point responses, one on each half of the book, but because the class ran behind, it is now supposed to be one double-length response worth 4 points. SO what I’m thinking is that if I can get through the last 10-15 pages in the first half of the book (the teacher actually gave a cutoff point for the original assignment) and write a normal-sized response to that, and then appropriate attendance responses, I can get two points and have even more lee-way on my paper’s grade.
Did you follow that? Do you care?
I guess what that really means is that even though the class is over,I still have several hours of work left to do, and I still won’t be doing everything I was supposed to do for the class. Just so you know, I do plan on finishing this damned book, even though I can’t go back after today and get the other two points for it. Not just because of my sense of personal responsibility to complete the tasks I start, even after the reason for doing them has gone, but also because I keep hearing how important and fulfilling it is to read stuff like Austen, and I’m hoping maybe she’s just been building up to something. If I get to the end of this book and it’s just as sleep inducing as the beginning of the book, I don’t know how that will affect my perception of literature in general and Ausen in particular, but I expect it will make me question people who rave about Mansfield Park.
