Rahab Results

This morning, I have good news to report: I made 95 out of 100 points possible on my Rahab paper! I am so relieved. Although I had worked hard on it, I am aware of all the ways it might not have been what my professor wanted.

On Monday, November 29, I turned in my Rahab paper. Part of that submission process is a plagiarism check, where my paper is compared to all sorts of databases. The student gets the report too, and can resubmit if changes are necessary.

The software flagged some of the material I quoted, which isn't unusual, and I knew I had documented correctly, so I wasn't worried about that. I did wonder why it didn't flag all my quoted material. It also flagged this sentence, "Why did Rahab take the Israelites in for the night?" It saw my words as a match to this original source: "Why did Rahab protect the Israelites"; I don't see these as close at all, and certainly not an idea that one would plagiarize.

I fretted a bit and wondered if I should write to my professor. Having seen numerous originality reports myself on the teacher side, I knew that I wouldn't worry about this "match." I decided that writing to my professor might be more problematic than not. Plus, when I clicked through to see the original source material that was contained in a blog post, I couldn't even find the words that the software had found.

I continued to check my grades, even though I knew it would take some time for my teacher to do all that grading. As I was checking, I worried that I didn't revise enough. We had been told that if we didn't revise the earlier parts of the project, the two papers we'd already turned in, we'd get a significantly lower grade. I worried that I revised out the parts that my professor had liked. I worried that my paper was too long, a page and a half over the 7 page limit.

And is often the case with me, I thought of new ways of saying what I had already said, ways of strengthening connections that I hadn't done. It's interesting to see this process work in my brain, especially after decades of teaching Composition and the writing process. We are never finished with a draft--there are always ways it could be improved.

The feedback I got was good, and I don't disagree with anything my professor said about the content. It's hard to do what she wants in 7 pages, but she has a solid rationale behind making us limit ourselves. She points out that the majority of us are training to do exegesis so that we can deliver a powerful sermon, and nobody wants to hear us blather on and on. We need to find the point and come to it quickly and powerfully. She's not wrong.

I am glad to be done with this Rahab paper. I still have writing to finish, and I'm glad to have gotten some encouragement with this paper grade. Now, onward to finish the rest--I'm in the home stretch!