Got an F on a college essay for swearing?

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chronic_archaic said:
This thread went fast... wow.

Okay, so it looks like I'm in the wrong, but, this doesn't explain why I need to censor myself as a writer. Maybe I'm simply unfiltered but I think that's a good thing, I figured in high school you'd avoid that, but in college you're an adult, you can freely write how you want and get your opinions across without having to worry if you tailor it to whoever is reading it, since it's your work. Maybe I'm getting angry about nothing however I don't understand how your choice of language is something you can be penalized for. I re-read the essay and admittedly I recognize some things that could be fixed but even with that scrutiny and barring in mind this isn't my writing course a B seems perfectly fair. Have a read but I know I'm about to get dogged on like crazy regardless. No, I'll just post the relevant uses of swears. It's partially too personally and I'm not rewriting the damn thing.

"Watching the film was really sad, quite morbid, fucked up, and too close to home"

"It went from "I don't care about you" to "fuck you" and I still feel that
way to this day"

"They're awful, sickening, fucked realities"

"The emotional problems my REDACTED still suffers from REDACTED, I've came to the point
where if REDACTED REDACTED died today, right now, I wouldn't give a shit"

"Apologizes that are all bullshit and
emotions that end up with the person hurting more and more"
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As someone who corrected academic papers and a dissertation for an old ESL student of mine who is about to get his master's degree from UK Uni, I thought I'd seen everything. Apparently not...

Other than the cursing bits, as others have already mentioned, the English used is not at all appropriate for an academic paper/essay (First person? Really?!). Maybe the essay is not worth an F as a whole, but I have not seen it in it's entirety. I have however seen essays with similar use of the English language get the equivalent of Cs and Fs.

I'd suggest asking for a chance to resubmit the paper. I know what I am about to suggest might seem a bit strange, but I have seen it work wonders with other native speakers. Read a few top graded Academic IELTS essays to get an idea of the kind of language academic papers require. There you will find the absolute basics, but you can build upon those by reading actual academic papers later on.
 
chronic_archaic said:
I cared enough to watch a 45 minute film in full, spend an hour and a half composing it and bothered to try.

And yeah, I'd love to. I probably don't give a shit about the course, but I was passionate about what I wrote in the moment. That's what I really need, to be passionate. If I'm not, then I'm going nowhere. Regardless of how shit the essay actually is, I still feel accomplished.
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You don't get kudos for 'bothering' to do what's part of your assignment... And now with your 'confession', getting all indignant over the results of submitting a half-assed paper while drunk is beyond pathetic. If you have no drive to do basic things properly, your passion isn't going to mean shit. Excelsiorlef has it right. You need to grow up.
 
Rule of thumb: Never use words like fuck or shit in an essay unless you're writing a thesis on swearing or something.

Also, for a college-level essay writing what comes to mind generally isn't good.

EDIT: What the-- you wrote it in first person? There's another problem there.
 
Ask to resubmit, follow this format instead of stream-of-consciousness profanity-laden bullshit:

expository-essay-map-1-638.jpg%3Fcb%3D1386261242


Also, spend at least half a day on it. Sober.
 
bobbychalkers said:
I was comparing the Dada movement to burgeoning contemporary outsider hip-hop at the time. My professor loved it.
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Oh brilliant.


Writing about art movements, and art pieces (be it paintings, film, whatever) is so fun.


I wrote an essay once about how The Little Mermaid functions as a parable for being Transgender.
 
Yeah lol the only time that is really reasonable in an essay is if you're quoting something has the swearing in it. You can't use it as emphasis in an essay
 
NoblesseOblige said:
Apologize and ask if you can resubmit it after some editing. It's not worth your time getting into it with a teacher who can just grade you down for pissing them off in the future. You're gonna run into other professors like this, as well as people in employment who won't tolerate certain language use. It's just part of life.
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Yeah, there are SO MANY college professors that will give you an A if they like you, and a B or B+ if they don't like you as much. College is a joke sometimes in the humanities and beyond with essays.

My literary theory professor uhg she goes over everything shitloads of reading and then assigns two comparisons from 4 authors and then has another 4 of them that might be on the test out of 8 total. We basically have to learn everything and then write in-class essays.

In-class essays are fucking stupid and no I will not argue about it. Writing two essays in class of 1 hour 15 minutes is complete fucking bullshit, especially for those of us with scrawl handwriting. I hate people who fucking test like this.

Swearing in an academic paper lol what is your GPA bud? Only if it is creative writing or if you are citing someone that swears in their writing and talking about it specifically.
 
JCHandsom said:
...huh, never thought of it before, but that makes sense.
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It does. I even presented the essay as an oral presentation and it a video comparison with scenes from the movie and trans folk (including one of myself) talking about their experiences. When it came time for Q&A no one had any question because they ll just went yep makes sense lol.

My instructor kept a copy and gave it out to the students who took his course last year as an example of what to do.
 
If by college you don't understand the difference between spoken language and essay language then I don't know how anyone can help you here.
 
B-Dubs said:
Don't use exclamation points either.
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Yeah, absolutely avoid.

I hate the exclamation point. I feel like it's only suitable in fictional writing when a character is exclaiming, not in an essay/report to make a statement. I hate it when it's used like that.
 
excelsiorlef said:
I wrote an essay once about how The Little Mermaid functions as a parable for being Transgender.
Click to expand...

JCHandsom said:
...huh, never thought of it before, but that makes sense.
Click to expand...

I would say that could be taken the wrong way. I have always read the Hans Christian Andersen story as a morale about impulsiveness and even regret. The Rodin sculpture of the little mermaid (halfway converted into a woman, but part of neither world) has a distinct expression of longing for the sea, and being homesick. Interestingly enough I think the sculpture is reversed in the film iirc. Ariel taking the famous pose, but pointed at land rather than looking back at the sea.
 
excelsiorlef said:
It does. I even presented the essay as an oral presentation and it a video comparison with scenes from the movie and trans folk (including one of myself) talking about their experiences. When it came time for Q&A no one had any question because they ll just went yep makes sense lol.

My instructor kept a copy and gave it out to the students who took his course last year as an example of what to do.
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Good shit. Reminds me of the time I used Bloodborne music to accompany my presentation on "The Second Coming" by Yeats for my Devotional Poetry class. I won't say that they all agreed with me at the end, but they said it was effective lol.
 
I have never once during my education or professional career seen someone swear in a written paper/report/letter/email. You just don't do it.

Only way this thread could get to legendary GAF status would be for the Professor to chime in as a user and start posting.
 
A Fish Aficionado said:
Always draw or type out an outline.
Profs love it, and it organizes your thoughts, especially when doing a handwritten essay exam.
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I can't believe this isn't like first hand knowledge coming out of high-school into post-secondary. My history teacher among many others in high school hammered this into us every year and I thought it was pointless to re-teach it but I guess it isn't if people (such as the OP) misunderstand the fundamental purpose of essay writing.
 
umop_3pisdn said:
You're right that people will often casually dismiss writing or argumentation because it doesn't conform to the sensibilities of their discipline. But when it comes to self-editing, I think it's often hard to differentiate style from extravagance, especially in undergrad, but if you've identified what you think is necessary in your work, then you're already approaching some justification for your style or argument whatever it is. 'Necessity' isn't going to be the same across the disciplines, but philosophical writing is pretty good at emphasizing it in general.
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I agree, my problem is that people leave college and spend the rest of their lives thinking the humanities are a joke because of some silly scientism that they took from their professors in some of the least reflective fields without questioning it, and which they buttress with their experience of a few low level classes. See the last post I quoted in this post.

I was in an argument with a Nobel prize winning physicist two Fridays ago who said, "I don't like philosophy. It think it's mostly nonsense." Again that's a Nobel prize winning physicist who is actually much more prone to thinking critically about his field that the vast majority of scientists in my experience. That's not good. He also dismissed Hobbes out of hand with some utter nonsense about the first section, that derives from his total lack of historical understanding of the subject, But that's a personal pet peeve.

Lunaray said:
I apologize if my comments gave the impression that I am criticizing the level of academic rigor in those fields. I, too, get frustrated with the uncritical (and frankly, usually ignorant) blanket dismissal of certain academic disciplines by people in STEM fields.
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It's not what you that what you said is problematic or even wrong per se, but that people who don't know any better strip such statements of their context and parrot nonsense that becomes cultural truth. See below.

Lunaray said:
As for being anti-prescriptivist, I am also of the mind that my grading rubrics should revolve primarily around content. The issue I have with just grading on the content is that this excuses a lot of bad writing in a field that is already replete with bad writing. I find a lot of people in STEM don't 1) get enough practice writing and 2) get feedback on what constitutes good and clear writing. The fact that style is rarely emphasized in technical fields is why so much of what is out there is hard to parse and filled with unnecessary jargon.
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Sure, but you can work on developing writing skills without being a prescriptivist.


Neith said:
Yeah, there are SO MANY college professors that will give you an A if they like you, and a B or B+ if they don't like you as much. College is a joke sometimes in the humanities and beyond with essays.

My literary theory professor uhg she goes over everything shitloads of reading and then assigns two comparisons from 4 authors and then has another 4 of them that might be on the test out of 8 total. We basically have to learn everything and then write in-class essays.

In-class essays are fucking stupid and no I will not argue about it. Writing two essays in class of 1 hour 15 minutes is complete fucking bullshit, especially for those of us with scrawl handwriting. I hate people who fucking test like this.
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And of course this nonsense. I'm sorry you had to read in your class about literature. I'll grant you in class written essays aren't the way I tend to go, but without seeing the syllabus I won't comment on whether that's right or wrong.

But yeah, keep telling yourself that the essay grades are just totally arbitrary. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that some people consistently get As while other consistently get Ds.

Rafy said:
ther English used is not at all appropriate for an academic paper/essay (First person? Really?!).
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In my experience only old dudes with a stick up their butt about oxbridge care about using the first person. It clearly has a specific effect, and when that effect is the intention it's a useful move.

Rafy said:
Maybe the essay is not worth an F as a whole, but I have not seen it in it's entirety. I have however seen essays with similar use of the English language get the equivalent of Cs and Fs.
Click to expand...

I don't care that much about tone, but the essay is bad, trivial in its content, and reads like he spent 45 minutes writing it while drunk.
 
That's actually absurd, fight that shit. If your professor is a conservative hammer home that he's too politically correct to piss him off.
 
Amazing... Just amazing...

Admittedly, I have cursed in English essays to great effect. Actually, one of my final essays in English ended up being a slam piece that deliberately broke most rules in college essay writing and it ended up getting me an A. Here's the kicker, the prof knew that the paper was an absurdist piece from the get go due to the tone, gratuitous use of footnotes, and the paper being pre-red-inked when I handed it in. That joke of a paper took me 3 weeks with 4 drafts being shopped around.

"I feel accomplished," is a cop out for a middle school level of effort.

Git gud
 
Sober said:
I can't believe this isn't like first hand knowledge coming out of high-school into post-secondary. My history teacher among many others in high school hammered this into us every year and I thought it was pointless to re-teach it but I guess it isn't if people (such as the OP) misunderstand the fundamental purpose of essay writing.
Click to expand...
Well, to be fair many high schools modify their teaching to "juke the stats" using standardize testing.
 
chronic_archaic said:
Didn't expect any less from here. Here's a full proper essay I wrote a year ago for reference that doesn't contain personal information. If someone wants to critique me even more.

https://www.scribd.com/document/360741724/English-104-Short-Stories

I got an A- on that one for reference.
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At the risk of sounding cruel is English not your native language? Because an A- for a paper with that many errors, sloppy writing and poor diction is kind of shocking.
 
Artistic expression throughout human history has thrived within the constraints of censorship, peer review, and cultural acceptability rather than absolute freedom. Leonardo and Michelangelo took patronage from the Catholic Church under myriad requirements and expectations. Dickens, Dostoevsky, Dumas, and many others among history's most celebrated authors published their great works in serialized format subject to strict censorship and relentless pressure to maintain audience engagement from one chapter to the next. All of our celebrated films and TV series and video games were creatively beholden to numerous masters, from ratings boards to financiers to consumer reception to Metacritic scores.

Fewer rigid constraints exist for typical creatives today, but it's no less important than it has ever been to adapt to whatever parameters you're presented with and excel in that space. Take ownership of that space. Even if you manage to find a Patreon audience keen on throwing money at you for being you in all your brilliant unfiltered fuckery, if you let your ego take the wheel and ignore your audience and your platform, eventually you'll change and alienate them or they'll change and alienate you, or likely both, and you'll be able to pat yourself on the back for how real you are to an empty room of no one gives a damn.

Adapt to your circumstances. Know your audience. Deliver accordingly. Creative expression isn't just a matter of shitting out whatever's in your head unapologetically and expecting a reward for it. You're not grading yourself or paying yourself at any point in this journey. Your prof graded you an F and you self-graded an A? More concisely: you got an F. Work toward the real A instead of sheltering your ego from the reality of your failure.
 
Best thing about doing science in college is that you don't have to write essays. Fuck that nonsense.
 
Aren't college essays supposed to be rather objective and provide "facts"?
Swearwords are mostly used to emphasize subjective feelings and have therefore nothing to do in a college essay imo.
 
EviLore said:
Artistic expression throughout human history has thrived within the constraints of censorship, peer review, and cultural acceptability rather than absolute freedom. Leonardo and Michelangelo took patronage from the Catholic Church under myriad requirements and expectations. Dickens, Dostoevsky, Dumas, and many others among history's most celebrated authors published their great works in serialized format subject to strict censorship and relentless pressure to maintain audience engagement from one chapter to the next. All of our celebrated films and TV series and video games were creatively beholden to numerous masters, from ratings boards to financiers to consumer reception to Metacritic scores.

Fewer rigid constraints exist for typical creatives today, but it's no less important than it has ever been to adapt to whatever parameters you're presented with and excel in that space. Take ownership of that space. Even if you manage to find a Patreon audience keen on throwing money at you for being you in all your brilliant unfiltered fuckery, if you let your ego take the wheel and ignore your audience and your platform, eventually you'll change and alienate them or they'll change and alienate you, or likely both, and you'll be able to pat yourself on the back for how real you are to an empty room of no one gives a damn.

Adapt to your circumstances. Know your audience. Deliver accordingly. Creative expression isn't just a matter of shitting out whatever's in your head unapologetically and expecting a reward for it. You're not grading yourself or paying yourself at any point in this journey. Your prof graded you an F and you self-graded an A? More concisely: you got an F. Work toward the real A instead of sheltering your ego from the reality of your failure.
Click to expand...
Fuck man, that is some of the realest shit I've seen on this website.
 
Neith said:
Yeah, there are SO MANY college professors that will give you an A if they like you, and a B or B+ if they don't like you as much. College is a joke sometimes in the humanities and beyond with essays.

My literary theory professor uhg she goes over everything shitloads of reading and then assigns two comparisons from 4 authors and then has another 4 of them that might be on the test out of 8 total. We basically have to learn everything and then write in-class essays.

In-class essays are fucking stupid and no I will not argue about it. Writing two essays in class of 1 hour 15 minutes is complete fucking bullshit, especially for those of us with scrawl handwriting. I hate people who fucking test like this.

Swearing in an academic paper lol what is your GPA bud? Only if it is creative writing or if you are citing someone that swears in their writing and talking about it specifically.
Click to expand...

My 300 level technical writing class's midterm and final were in class writing prompts. We had 2 hours to write 5 short papers. I hated that class.

Markitron said:
Best thing about doing science in college is that you don't have to write essays. Fuck that nonsense.
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Wut? No, that's not true at all.
 
This thread shows how idealistic understandings of 'censorship' can play havoc. There's nuance and then there's this.

Edit: 100% what EvilLore said. And anyway, even if you could achieve 'true' creative freedom (free from what, and how?)it doesn't mean anyone wants/needs to pay attention, and it doesn't make it 'good' by default. Or even comprehensible, actually. But that's art, not academic writing.
 
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