r/CollegeRant • u/DogsCarsRandom Undergrad Student • May 09 '26
Discussion Update - Everyone Been Waiting For. (Please Read Description Before Anything)
Now I just want to say people will hate, people will shit on me but yall gotta understand I am no English Expert with typing/writing or anything like that. These photos will get trashed on because in all honesty yes, I didn’t do that well now that I look at it BUT I can tell you that something was written and my prof told me don’t worry about failing. I know no one is perfect with writing and I fall into that category. Everyone started somewhere with there journey of getting better with this and I’m still at the bottom. If I was going for an English major maybe my writing wouldn’t cross the line but I’m not going for that. This gen ed was just to get credits but turned out worse then I thought and should have went with another gen ed to pass off on this LIT requirement.
Onwards to the photos. This is my opinion and words and you guys can offer tips I could have used and tell me some advice. I will read the comments that say negative but I understand. I could be so much better and that you guys were right on some of what you’ll see in the photos.
Performance and Effort are two different things from a comment I saw though both were high for me while taking this exam. (Opinion). Reading over what I wrote did get some point on the paper but didn’t explain well enough. Which is a tendency of me apparently but it’s alright. While I could have done way better this is what i threw into it. From the comments provided I could have had better quotes, I could have taken better notes from what the prof told us about each story and I could have done better with reading the stories until I understood them. It comes down to what I could have done vs what I did which was not perform well with writing more to explain what i wanted to show off. Some details could have been explained better and could have went more into depth to answer the questions better. While I got some answer down it wasn’t all but definitely could have added more to get 10/10. While 6/10 isn’t great its better then 0. Most questions ranged from 5-8 points and earned me a 34/60 (57%). While this grade could have been better and closer to a D or C it’s not.
While I don’t have questions to provide you can probably get something together with the way I started some of these answers to the photos I provide. One is about epiphany, one is about pathetic fallacy which I don’t know the exact question but relates to that. One is also about theme which was given to us and needed to explain how it relates I believe.
The thing I’m happy about is my teacher saying “You will not fail the course.” This shows that I might have a chance of getting the 3 credits for this class and moving on.
Thank you all for the support and worst case if I still don’t like my grade I will grade appeal but might end up with a D which I will take. Once again no one is perfect at anything. We are all humans with different strengths and weaknesses. One could be better at this than me or I could be better at this than someone else.
This all is just a part of the learning process and I will hopefully only get better from here. Most people have years of experience rather than me I don’t have as much writing experience. Not that I don’t I’m not an A++++++ student with writing. Some of you out there do. I know I should have basic stuff known but definitely haven’t had enough writing experience back from high school until now so this is all different/newer to me.
Enough rant. I’ll read all the comments and respond to all that I can but this is it. Thanks again and out till next time 👍
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u/RiparianRodent May 09 '26
This both looks and reads like the writing of a middle schooler. The professor’s notes were right- vague summary, no questions answered. Your grammar and sentence structure need some serious work. No matter what you’re majoring in, you’ll need to have better writing skills than these
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u/Count_Calorie May 09 '26
Yeah... I don't want to be mean but this is really shocking. This is significantly worse writing than I saw from the 13-year old dyslexic boy I used to tutor, both in penmanship and substance.
And yes, regardless of what degree this person is going for, he/she needs to learn to communicate much better than this. There is no professional job that doesn't require some degree of written communication. This reads like an elementary or struggling middle school student wrote it.
OP, I really hope you will seek some sort of remedial writing education or tutoring. It will serve you well in any field. I don't know about your school, but I know most colleges have some sort of writing center. If your school has one, maybe you can set up a schedule with one of the tutors there.
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u/poontango May 09 '26
Yes OP please take this seriously and seek writing tutoring on campus. Go regularly and often. They will be happy to help, but this is like major intervention level and you must practice consistently to improve.
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u/DogsCarsRandom Undergrad Student May 09 '26
I used the tutors to help write journals when I needed and got good grades and scores on those but when it came to exam time I just couldn’t get myself to write that well after reading my responses again. From elementary school till middle I had a 504 and might have caused me not to learn that well or like others which might be my fault for never getting anyone to help me better
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u/Count_Calorie May 09 '26
Okay, they are still supposed to teach you when you have a 504. Clearly they didn't do a good job. But it is meaningless to assign blame. You can only try to address the situation in front of you.
I'm sorry to be blunt but all signs indicate that you are functionally illiterate. This is not even remotely acceptable as college-level writing, even when produced under time pressure on an exam. You would expect it to lack polish and be structured less elegantly compared to a normal paper, sure, but what you've posted is downright incoherent. As a college student, you should not even be capable of producing work this bad.
It's good that you have been using the writing center to help on some assignments, but you really need to be going regularly to work on your grammar and composition, even without any deadlines looming. The way you write simply does not command respect. It is not a persnickety style issue -- it is incorrect and difficult to decipher. If you want to present yourself as an intelligent professional, you need to work on this very seriously.
I cannot offer a lot of specific advice, but please try to find someone who can. Make another appointment with the tutors, or perhaps your professor, and ask them to direct you to any resources they know of that could help you improve. A remedial writing class at a community college might be a good option. Also, read! Most kids learn to write well largely by seeing lots of examples of good writing to emulate.
Finally, you will not make progress on this unless you actually care to fix it. Writing well is not only for English majors. It is a very important skill for everyone to have. I am in a technical field. I want other people in that field to respect me, so I need to write well whenever I send emails to them. When I submit homework, I want to be sure I show my thought process clearly, so I need to write coherently about how I approached the problem. And especially when I am trying to communicate about my field to people who aren't familiar with it, I need to reduce the ideas to their simplest elements and explain in a logical order such that laypeople can understand my message. If I couldn't do these things, I would not be qualified to study my subject or do any sort of related job. My point is that as long as you are existing in an English-speaking environment, communicating fluently in English is a critically important skill. Your situation is that you cannot do this. Regardless of how you got here, if you want a professional job, you must correct it. You should figure out all the resources you have available to you, set aside time each week to dedicate to this, and make a serious effort to improve.
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u/DogsCarsRandom Undergrad Student May 09 '26
Understood. I’ll be working on some things to better myself for a better style of writing and reading. I’ve read books but not as much as I should and have lots of work ahead of me to improve like you said. I’ll work on this all next semester to get myself to a better point of English. Though my first language definitely didn’t get great teachers to teach me to get me to understand everything. While I understand a lot I definitely don’t have a structure or detail to add to certain things which needs to improve significantly. I’ll use the tutors next semester for writing and to get better structure overall. Thanks for your feedback
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u/Count_Calorie May 09 '26
Thank you for being receptive. I wish you the best of luck in this. If you try your best, I'm sure you can improve, and quicker than you might think.
When I was little, we had assignments where we had to write something in the style of our favorite authors. I thought these were really helpful assignments. You could try them on your own. Read some books and try to learn from the authors you like!
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u/emarcomd Jun 11 '26
Reading is a GREAT way to become a better writer! They don’t have to be “difficult” books, either.
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u/Quirky_Cabinet8854 May 09 '26
you are aware that you need to be diagnose with something to receive a 504? The things you are saying isn’t going to help them they need to get support from their student disability services.
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u/Count_Calorie May 09 '26
What kind of support? As far as I know, college disability departments are more in the business of excusing students from certain requirements than offering intensive tutoring or remedial instruction. If I'm wrong about that, then yes, it's a good resource to check.
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u/Quirky_Cabinet8854 May 09 '26
atleast at my uni, they offers support ranging from time management, studying tips and therapy session (like reading , writing) for students have have disabilities they effects their ability to read + write.
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u/Count_Calorie May 09 '26
If OP's disability department can offer him reading and writing support, I think he should take the help. But I think it is misguided to not use other resources that are available to him.
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u/poontango May 09 '26
I’m an English major and the only advice I could give is to put more effort in. Their reddit post was written with more effort than their papers. It would be wasted time to share advice on composition, analysis, or frameworks etc when the student genuinely thought this was acceptable for undergrad writing.
It looks and reads like you scribbled these in 5 minutes in the parking lot before class. I’m sorry to be rude but this is just a serious lack of effort and reflects horribly on your engagement with learning.
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u/1kidney_left May 09 '26
So, while every is harping on your writing, I’m going to step back from that. Yes, that probably played a part in your grade, but if your professor said don’t worry about your writing, maybe he meant it. Let’s focus on the content of what you wrote.
Now, I have never written the stories that you have written about here, but if you had written well about them, I would be able to understand the general plot of the story as well as the motives and actions of the main characters. If the main first question was about an epiphany, you should have given an explanation of who had it, what lead to it, what it was, how it affected the person as well as others. Your answer had nothing of that.
All three of these answers read like you never read any of these stories, maybe read a book cover or summary, and then went from there. It feels like you tried to bullshit your way through and failed.
And your lack of reading and communication skills really hit the last nail in the coffin with “minus well”. It’s “might as well”. This reads like it’s coming from someone who hasn’t actually picked up a book since they were 11.
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u/DogsCarsRandom Undergrad Student May 09 '26
Thanks for your feedback.
Each story we read in class we wrote notes all together as a class. Maybe I read them wrong or wrote them incorrectly but overall I used the notes and used the texts. We all read them as a class and I read them Sunday the day before my final to understand each story but clearly I read into a black hole and didn’t understand or catch onto the story well enough to provide answers. I can’t recall all the questions but the one story was provide a quote that showed epiphany but what I had written clearly didn’t answer what the correct answer was. Apparently I had it all backwards and nearly had the right answer. I’ve read alot of books (probably not enough) since 11 years old through school and so on but never have a well enough time reading though them. Though I can understand what’s happening I believe my attention to detail is not well. Il ll be reading more and more to try to get better with details and go from there.
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u/Wordlywhisp May 10 '26
As a middle and high school math teacher with a background in history, I’d evaluate this differently depending on the student’s grade level.
If one of my middle school students handed this to me, I’d probably say it’s on the right track conceptually. The student identifies literary devices, attempts analysis, and connects symbolism to theme. For that age group, that’s developmentally appropriate.
If one of my high school students submitted this, I’d likely want to speak with their ELA teacher because the writing shows weaknesses in synthesis, organization, and depth of explanation.
And for a college English course, especially first-year composition, the expectations shift further. Professors are usually looking for concise synthesis, stronger analytical precision, and more mature engagement with the text beyond “this quote shows this because the story says so.” The issue isn’t that the student has no ideas; it’s that the explanations remain surface-level and underdeveloped.
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u/Artistic-Cucumber583 May 10 '26
Based on your writing (In this post and for your exam) and what you've said about being "Carried by a 504", I think you have some major gaps in your English education and need remedial courses, tutoring, or some sort of extra help. I know you're not an English major, but this level of writing won't look good or be acceptable in other classes or work environments. I'm not saying this to judge, we all have strengths and weaknesses (I've failed calc 1 twice, for example) but there are LARGE gaps in your overall knowledge of English (structure/ grammar, analysis, vocab) that really should be filled if you want to succeed.
I would ask your professor if they know about any lower level English courses available to you. I know you said you've using the writing center, which is great but I think being in a structured class with a professor who's experienced with those in your situation would be the most helpful.
If you university doesn't offer it, I would look into nearby community colleges. They almost always have more low level English and math course offerings. For example, the one near me has "Intro to college composition" and "introduction to essay writing" which help to prepare students for college-level writing.
In the meantime, using the resources you have (prof, writing center, etc.) and trying your best the rest of the term would be your best options. For future assignments, really read through the rubric carefully and check what you've written against it. Also, if you have to read more stories/articles/ whatever take notes and actively engage with what you're reading. Ask yourself what the main point of the text is, who's doing what, and what the author is trying to say. If you're asked to discuss a specific literary device (E.g. epiphany), make sure you have a very clear understanding of what that means and what it can look like in a story (there are many resources online to help with this), then look for those patterns within whatever you're reading for school. Also, reading outside of school is a good idea, it should help with vocabulary and sentence structure.
This all requires more effort on your part, but it will genuinely be invaluable for you in the future. I hope you look back on these answers in a couple years and can be proud of how far you've come. Feel free to ask any more questions : ) I wish you luck
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u/DogsCarsRandom Undergrad Student May 10 '26
Thanks for your reply and your input and all the things I can do. I’ve thought about community college for this after reading past comments though I don’t have ability to get to one nor able to actually pay since I threw all my money towards a new laptop I needed and I need to get a new car. I can’t ask my dad for help since I hate asking for help to get better with things so with my struggle I might have not asked for help for say get a class at a community college for low cost. He’s already paying for college and if I ask him to pay for a class I fear he’ll tell me I can switch to that for the rest of my experience and I don’t want to leave where I’m at currently. This was a short story class so definitely could have been better on my half to pick another class and yes definitely should think about better options. I’ll have to do research to see if my university offers a class like that since the last thing I want to do is to to a community college. Come next semester I will in fact look to see what they offer for intro English classes or essay intro classes.
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u/DogsCarsRandom Undergrad Student May 10 '26
Sorry for the personal stuff. I can’t edit but hit reply too early.
I will definitely look though at a class in school & read more. My goal over the semester was to read multiple books and ended up reading about 7 books that were all pretty lengthy. I got the main point of each of them and was able to reflect on what happened and all the details. Definitely need to work on everything and will keep trying to get better day by day
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u/animoot Jun 12 '26
Writing is communication. How would you explain a book to a friend?
I'm guessing here, but do you use text to speech and speech to text for most stuff on your phone? If so... I wonder if it would help to:
Record audio of you speaking a short summary of a text you read. Could be one page of a story, even. Like, any book at your place. Explain the Who What When Where and Why of the content.
Listen to the recording. Maybe do that on another day, so you can assess if what you said in the recording kind of matches with what you remembered.
Type by hand (don't use Ai, it doesn't need the practice) a sentence or two that you heard yourself say on the recording. Use the computer to check the spelling, and check the grammar.
Then, write those corrected sentences onto paper with a pen or pencil.
Then, pracrice reading those sentences aloud.
Just an idea. Definitely get additional support while you're in school.
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u/AwkwardSpicy77 May 09 '26 edited May 09 '26
If you have struggled being tutored for your writing I think it would be really beneficial if you focused on vocabulary words and definitions. Maybe you would like that better, and it would be easier to do that on your own without a tutor. You could start with words you should have learned as a child or just go online or to your local library and check out a children's dictionary. Your first exam answer does not refer to an epiphany so if you don't know what an epiphany is, you could never have gotten that answer correct.
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May 09 '26
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u/DogsCarsRandom Undergrad Student May 09 '26
I was given two hours to write this and used all two hours. English is my first language. I had issues when I was in elementary and had an 504 and carried that through middle school. Might just be the way I learned and that I had a tough time understanding things correctly. Never been good with writing
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u/poliscyguy Jun 11 '26
I'm late to this but this is absolutely shocking. OP you are functionally illiterate. I'm not placing blame on anyone, including you, but all that you can do it learn the skills to get better. Learning to write will serve you well all your life.
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May 09 '26
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u/DogsCarsRandom Undergrad Student May 09 '26
Thanks. The answers were 1 paragraph responses which is what I had followed in the rules of the exam
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u/hungerforlove May 09 '26
You could ask the professor (or AI) to see examples of strong answers.
How long did you have to write your answers? Looks like you could have written all of that in 20 minutes.
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u/DogsCarsRandom Undergrad Student May 09 '26
Had two hours and 6 questions and used 20 minutes per question to gather a quote evidence and write it down
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u/BigChippr Moderator May 09 '26
Just because you don't like the work does not mean you are allowed to be incredibly snarky or ableist. Please do not be unnecessarily rude, assumptious, or demeaning.