English Midterm Mark

Remember my English midterm I was talking about a couple weeks ago? Well I got my mark back and I was pleasantly surprised that I got 80% on it. I was trying not to get my hopes up because I really wasn't sure how I did. Our midterm was an essay on a piece we read in class.

The weird thing is, my professor emailed a marking sheet with her criteria on it, and then at the bottom it says my mark which reads: "Grade: B+ 76%, 12/15" . The weight of our midterm was worth 15% so 12/15 is the raw score or weighting achieved for this evaluation. The thing is, 12/15 is 80% not 76%. So I guess there could be a small possibility that I got a weight of 11.4% but I don't think that's the case.

What I think is going on here is that the grade of a B+ vs an A- can be open to interpretation for an English professor, so maybe I was on the cusp of an A-, but because of the mistakes I made, she was forced to not give an "A-" grade but a "B+" instead. But I'm thinking despite my mistakes, the quality and effectiveness of the argument and piece of writing on the whole was so good that she didn't want to deduct too many marks from it. So the result is a B+ piece of writing by definition because of my mistakes, but the the high level of cohesiveness, unity and style meant I should be deserving an A- raw score. I know that English professors can be very principled when it comes to handing out grades in the "A" range for essays. I know that it isn't really a checklist of right and wrong, but more of a holistic evaluation of how "good" the writing is. I've always got this sense when speaking to English instructors about how to get an A (which I did with this particular professor as well). It is notorious that at UBC very very few people get high "A" marks in first year English. And I'm not at UBC for this English course, but the standards feel the exact same.

Anyways, in this example the 12/15 is very clearly the percentage of weighting that I achieved, so I'll go ahead and go with that when calculating my final mark. So far my marks are looking pretty good in this English class, which is making me look forward to writing the final exam in December and getting a final mark. But this week I've got a lot to do. I've got 2 assignments and one quiz to do by Monday morning, so another 16% of the course will be complete by Monday morning, about the same weighting as my midterm. Hopefully I can get much higher than 80% on these new tasks though. I always do better at the end of courses than the beginning too. Anyways talk soon and take care.