Back to School for GrownUps

I hope Patricia over at the Communciation Exchange (and Subjective Soup) won’t mind that I have swiped her title…

Patricia’s article about Making Mistakes got me thinking about a particular prof - and about one mistake that I could easily have made - but didn’t.

I am generally considered - at least in academia - to be a good writer. And that is often reflected in my marks, especially for essays. I have been known, even, to on occasion, receive a 100% on papers. When it came time to approach a prof about supervising my major paper  - it would have made sense - in some ways - to choose one of the profs that I knew I could get really high marks from.

I like really high marks.

But I didn’t. In fact, I chose to ask one of the profs that typically gave me marks at the low end …As …but just barely.

I could have worked with other profs - and done well - but with this particular prof, I learned so much more than I would have otherwise, I think. No matter how well written my work was, she always thought it could be better - and helped me to get it there. She was always willing to spend the time that was needed to edit …and while she wouldn’t fix anything for me, she asked the right questions so that by the time it was done, my essay was awesome … even SHE said so :)   Only 90 I ever got from her… and I won the university’s essay competition with it too.

Taking the easy way is often attractive…but clearly, at least for me, easy is not always best.

Being willing to work with someone who points out your mistakes is a darned good way to learn… having someone just tell you you’re wunnerful can be nice…but doesn’t do a darn thing to encourage learning.