Thank you "professionals." You opened my eyes.

I’ve been a student now for long time (and what I mean by “student” is a person who sits in a classroom and is lectured by a “professional” in a particular field). I don’t remember too much about high school papers I wrote. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing, but in college alone I’ve written countless reports ranging from Alex’s societal issues in A Clockwork Orange, to Aeneas’s importance to the Roman Empire and the everlasting acronym SPQR (Senatus Populusque Romanus - The Senate and Roman People), to Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. On the vast majority of papers I got back, comments made on them by professors/instructors were of no use to me. It didn’t matter what subject I’d written about, most of the time I couldn’t understand what their remarks meant, and, therefore, couldn’t improve drafts or my writing style to perform better on term papers and in-class assignments. I was resigned to believe that teachers’ comments on papers were supposed to be ambiguous and contradictory, and that it was a good thing for teachers to, as Sommers states in “Responding to Student Writing”, hold “a license for vagueness while the student is commanded to be specific” (153). I recall getting papers back with comments like “detail needed,” “what does this mean?,” and my personal favorite “too wordy.” This last one was most paradoxical because it would sometimes be followed by a statement like “elaborate.” I would read “detail needed” and ask myself “why?” I’d be stumped by the request to shorten my sentences and ideas while at the same time elaborate. After discussing methods of teaching and grading in class, after analyzing the responses of “professionals” in The Twelve Readers’ Responses, I’ve come to a better understanding of how to comment on student papers.