Lesson 4

This is a chapter from the book Squeeze the Sponge: A No-Yawn Guide to College Writing by Rhoda Janzen. Take some time to read it!

2.1 Being Graded on What You Write

Have you noticed that most textbooks are silent on the subject of grades, as if to pretend that you would joyfully practice academic skills for the sheer pleasure of the experience? The grades that you get color the way you feel about your writing. Correct me if I'm wrong, but contemporary textbooks seem to have overlooked that fact. My niece loon used to clap her hands over her ears and shout "Lalalalala!" when she didn't want to hear something. While I am personally sympathetic to all forms of denial—been there!—I do wish textbook authors would just admit that the writing experience changes pretty radically when you are being graded on what you write. Some .folks do write for pleasure, and I'm one of them. My tribe is a global community of list-makers and journal-keepers, scribblers and bloggers. If somebody dies, we volunteer to write the epitaph. If nobody dies, we send out a breezy newsletter.

When you are of the same tribe, terrific. When you're not, terrific. You can experience grade anxiety either way, and it's not doing anybody any favors to ignore the reality of the assessment process.

Over the years I have heard students vent about negative experiences with this or that prof's grading. I've heard students complain about this or that course grade. Though I do my best to side-step gripefests, I still catch the occasional downdraft. And I'd like to suggest that this downdraft presents a view of writing classes that will not help you advance in college. It's a view like buckshot to the behind: ouch, painful position ahead. Sometimes students speak as if their grade in a writing class is an utter crapshoot. Essay assignments can produce a vague quease because you are at the mercy of seemingly erratic, unpredictable writing instructors. Perhaps the instructor uses the Staircase Method! (Heard this one? Instructor chucks the lot of papers from the top of the stairwell and assigns grades according to where the essays land: top step, A; middle step, C; bottom step, D.)

I would like to assure you that your instructors are not random, careless people. They are dedicated professionals, committed to your learning. In fact, college instructors care so much about your learning that they have been willing to devote an unusually long time to their professional preparation. Other careers with comparable training periods pay more. Your instructors have chosen this field because they think your learning is important.

I cheerfully allow that academia makes it a point to honor diverse pedagogies. But this view that the student is somehow at the mercy of the quixotic writing instructor is, and I say this respectfully, wackadoodle. It is cuh-razy to hand your power away. Don't turn yourself into a victim! Ascribing all that power to your instructor undermines your own agency, as if you have no say in the development of your own skill set. You do. No matter what the situation is with your instructor's bee and/or bonnet, you have control over your own writing. I urge you to take it.

Like you, professors are trapped in a system of evaluation. If you are attending a college that uses letter grades as its primary form of assessment, please know that the grading scale ain't arbitrary. Profs may not like it. You may not like it. Grade inflation notwithstanding, the letter grades are supposed to be standardized nationwide, though of course they might inch higher or lower de-pending on the conferring institution.

After a lifetime of receiving the same five letter grades in school, sometimes we lose sight of the underlying message. Here is a handy translation. 

Notice that when a writing assignment earns an average or a below-average grade, your instructors are not assuming that you cannot write better. We are assuming that for whatever reason, you have chosen not to. This assumption should cheer you up. Most instructors at the college level honestly figure that you can indeed write well, should you choose to prioritize good writing as an academic goal. 


I am one of many professors who aren't crazy about having to give out grades. In the collective faculty fantasy, which is the only time academics all agree, students bring a picnic lunch and flock around us to learn for the sake of learning. But we are not Socrates. You are not Xenophon. It doesn't work like that. In real life professors assign grades because to do so is part of our job.

I take my hat off to instructors who try to shimmy around conventional letter grades by inviting students to assign their own grades, or who offer assignments with lots of wiggle room for nontraditional assessment. Some instructors say, Certainly you may substitute an interpretive dance for a term paper! By all means, you may submit a poignant black-and-white photograph instead of an essay! Go ahead and title it -Hang in There," especially if it features a duckling snuggled against a squirrel nutkin, in an adorable teensy hammock! While I am sympathetic to these alternative ex-pressions of creativity, I don't think they'll help you much in the professional world after college. You know what will? Learning how to write better.

Some instructors shrug at grade anxiety and say, "lust don't take the grade personally." That's disingenuous, because a grade is personal. It's personal in the sense that a person is trying very hard to write better, so as to become a more well-rounded, more employable person. Grades matter. And when you get a grade you aren't expecting, it is tempting to shift the focus onto the instructor.

Tempting, but not profitable. In fact, harmful. My suggestion to you, the student, would be to focus on the improvement rather than the grade. You may have graduated from high school only months prior, but this isn't high school. You don't have to be intimidated by your instructors. We will not treat you like kids. We will treat you like the adults you are. So many college students don't figure this out until their junior or senior years: you can march straight to your professor's office hours and boldly go get the help you have already paid for. Instead of talking about the grade you got, ask for some specific strategies to get the grade you want.