John Bean’s article that covered commentary of student’s writing was so fascinating. I think as a society we tend to forget that teachers are human beings as well. They are not grading machines. Sometimes teachers have a bad day and it could impact how they comment on a student’s piece. Additionally, I found the tips on how to effectively comment on a piece of writing pretty standard or at least what should be standard. The whole time I was reading this article I felt compelled to pull up every essay I had ever written to read the feedback given by my teachers. I think as a child, teachers placed more of an emphasis on structure, punctuation and grammar. If I remember correctly, it wasn’t until around high school maybe even late middle school that teachers actually commented on my content. I never pictured revising as “reimagining”. Revising, to me, always felt more about the minor details of my writing. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a teacher would put a question mark next to a paragraph. It never felt helpful and it always felt like I was stupid if they couldn’t understand the entire paragraph. There were many times I had to ask a teacher exactly what their comment was in reference to. That just felt like a waste of time for everyone.

Peter Elbow’s article covers ranking and evaluating. I think he makes a great point about how ranking is not reliable. It creates an unsafe environment for the writer. For someone to come up with a single numerical measure for your paper and have that be its means of validity seems unnatural in the sense of writing. Elbow’s line reading “Grades and holistic scores are nothing but points on a continuum from “yea” to “boo”–with no information or clues about the criteria behind these noises” (3) actually made me laugh a little. This is exactly how it feels to get graded on the content of writing. Its either “Yay!!! Keep going! You’re so talented and smart!” to “Never write anything again.” These articles really stuck out to me because I have been saying for weeks in this class (and in my life in general) that I tend to use grades as a way of validation. While I am trying to rewire my brain and its thought process when it comes to my writing and grading, it is a hard mindset to break. It is engrained in us from early childhood to the time you are done with your schooling, whatever level that may be. The pressure to succeed academically and abide by the grading standards can feel suffocating at times. This style of grading greatly impacted my confidence as a writer. I constantly feel like my writing is not up to par or I feel out of my wheelhouse. Although, when I write and I feel the creative juices flowing, I remind myself of my passion and that it matters.