I got my final grades back today.
I failed.
It was obvious from across the room, the bloody red drawing schematics across the page. What the critiques were didn't matter, the sheer quantity was enough to make the point. There was barely enough room left to scrawl the circled F that made it official.
Am I disappointed? Sure, but not surprised. A whole semester of tutoring and practice had already told me that this test wasn't going to go well for me no matter how many hours I spent in the lab, writing and rewriting, correcting and recorrecting the incorrect corrections. I had grafted my final draft with surgical precision, using only the allotted vocabulary terms and making sure never, ever to end my sentences on a preposition. Or run-on. Or get too choppy. Emotive, but not irrational. Logical, but not scientific. This was a creative project, after all, you were supposed to express yourself.
Maybe I could have written more drafts. Asked for more pre-emptive critique to offset the inadequacy of my themes. But I'd forgotten how many drafts I had already turned in, and I thought--nay, I really truly childishly hoped--that this would be the perfect one. The ultimate draft. All my darlings had been killed, all my clauses were complete, and my bibliography was triple-checked by the librarians. Some of them suggested some rewrites, but I told them they didn't understand the rubric for my class. Their sweet brows furrowed, but otherwise they kept their characteristic peace. They didn't know I had already tried submitting drafts with those sections, and they'd been struck through piece by piece until they were cut down to a few footnotes.
But whatever. I tried my hardest, but eventually I had to turn something in. I had as much time to write as I wanted, but eventually I had to decide which would be my final attempt.
Honestly I didn't even really like it. I mean, I wrote it, so I like it, but the pieces I used to be proud of felt weirdly scrunched in between whole sections that might have been able to be held up in court as forensically "no match" against my own writing voice. I thought that made it better, though, because that's supposed to be the point of a grade on a paper. To meet someone else's standards by changing your voice to fit them.
I thought failing the class would ruin my life, when I first noticed my grades failing. But now that I'm actually reading my critiques, free from the pressure of conforming to them, they're all so... Pointless. Circular. Redundant. Created, as far as I can tell, solely to see how much ink a piece of 8.5"x11" can absorb.
None of the other people in this classroom with me seem to have had their work subjected to the same challenge, so I asked around. They told me--get this--they aren't getting graded! They just like when the guy grading me reads their work. The only other person with red on their submission says it's because there's no one else telling them how to write, so it's the only way they learned how.
So clearly an F in this class, if I was even in a class to begin with and not a writing club where I accidentally only submitted to the person sitting in the front of the room, is obviously not that big of a deal. It definitely isn't going to ruin my job prospects or anything like that.
But I was going through old drafts, trying to figure out if there was ever a way to outwit the system I had unwittingly been subjected to and getting a passing grade, let alone an A, and I found some of the drafts that I had never submitted at all. Some were messy, almost illegible things, but others made me smile in a way my final draft had made my grimace. Instead of skimming through stricken paragraphs, I swam through pages of analysis and theory I had forgotten had ever been in the draft. Now, having reread them, I have new ideas! And old ideas, that I could make new.
So I'm going to write my next draft, and then maybe I'll shop around for a publisher. Or maybe I'll self-publish. But I've been sharing around my newer work, and my older work, with some other people. People whose criticisms and praise I had never registered before in my drive to meet the unknowable rubric of my... What even was it, then? Was I pranked? Had I signed something that told me I was the only person who had to pass and forgotten? Did my ruthless reviewer and simultaneous creative confidant just hate me that much? Who cares. It's not the point. The point is, these other voices, and my own voice, are finally coming through. For the first time, I
[Insert uplifting ending paragraph here when I have one to write]