This week Sophie turned in the final draft of her first essay, while Cheryl turned in her third draft.
Sophie’s final draft showed a huge improvement over the first draft and demonstrated a sophisticated understanding of both the prompt and the reading it was based on. It was well-organized and engaging, with nearly no mistakes. I submitted a letter to her in which I reviewed her improvement from the first through final drafts and her overall effort on this essay, in which I was very positive. During our meeting I asked her to write a brief thoughtletter in which she identified some major strengths and weaknesses of the essay, and she identified every area of improvement that I would have. These included less long-winded introductions with better-placed thesis statements, more fully developing points later in her essay, and writing more engaging and less repetitive conclusions. It was great to see that she’s very aware of what she needs to work on. She didn’t identify many of the strengths, so I was sure to go over these with her. Next week she’ll be turning in a detailed outline of her second essay—she wasn’t sure how to write an outline, so I went over this with her in our meeting and then sent her a couple resources for producing an essay outline.
Cheryl cancelled our meeting less than 15 minutes before it began because she woke up without a voice. Although we always reschedule, such cancellations are starting to really concern me. This is her third or fourth cancelled meeting—none of which I’ve been given more than 45 minutes for—but every time she cancels because of sickness or injury, so I have no way of calling her out on this or even knowing if she legitimately is unable to come to class each time. Her first essay has already been delayed because of a previous cancellation, and I’m unable to meet with her again until Wednesday of next week, so I told her to review my edits carefully and produce another draft before her final draft for Monday. I dislike not being able to go over edits and comments with her in person—especially since she struggles with restructuring awkward sentences without guidance—but unfortunately this was our only option. Cheryl has responded to my criticisms about parts of her essay being unrelated to her essay and changed many of them, but some of her arguments still don’t connect to her thesis. I highlighted these parts again in the last draft she handed in, and commented on them in an email to her, so hopefully they’ll be revised soon.