“I guess some people in his other class weren’t citing their sh*t, so he gave this big, half-hour lecture on it.”
Chase wasn’t too happy, but he laughed anyway. “I wasn’t really worried about it,” he went on. “I cited like frakkin’ crazy. Everyone else was flippin’ out though.”
“Yeah, he did the same in our class too,” I said. “I think that was because of me.”
My philosophy professor, same one Chase had in Medieval that semester, had knocked a letter grade off my paper. He said it was strong except that I hadn’t cited any sources. That was true, both parts.
Before I started writing, I showed the professor an outline. He said it looked good. Once I had a decent draft, I emailed it to him, he read it, and then I dropped by his office to talk with him about it. That’s pretty cool for a professor, really.
The uncool part, though, is that I specifically asked him how it looked, if there was anything else I needed to change, if it looked like an A-paper. He said it looked good as is.
I’d planned on actually expanding a few sections that I felt were a little weak, but since he gave it the okay, I didn’t bother. I figured since the paper was basically a take home exam on Plato, he didn’t care about footnotes and all.
So I turned it in, expecting to get my A or A+. I got back a B. Not cool, man.
Chase laughed again. “I remember him warning us about it a while ago. Ha! He said he ought to start crackin’ down.”
“Well, thanks a lot, man. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I wasn’t too happy, but I laughed anyway.
Sarah, a girl from my class, sat down across from me at another computer. “Crazy, huh?”
I nodded yes. I guess she had caught the last part of our conversation.
“I can’t believe he did that,” she continued. “I got a C+ instead of a B-, and I cited Plato like five or six times. Who ruined it by not citing anything? Such a b*tch.”
Chase smiled at me. We weren’t too happy, but we laughed anyway.
