Congratulations to everyone who has made it through the class. First, the good news: if you did the work, I have no doubt you will be better able to handle future writing assignments that come your way, assuming you continue to practice all that I preached (and try to practice myself) during the last eight weeks. You will also have passed the class, though I can't promise anyone will be happy with their grade, which is one reason I hate having to grade, but enough of that.

The bad news, if we want to look at it that way, is that writing takes a lot more than one class to master, if it even can be mastered. In "Why I Write," George Orwell said that every piece of writing is a failure, or at least it feels that way. Once you become satisfied with your writing, that's when you'll stop progressing, and in some ways, stop learning. I know that few of you want to do a lot of writing in your life, but as part of your education, you will write, write and write some more. That's the way it goes, and that's a good thing. No writer ever learns it all, so that might be good news as well.

When it comes to your grades, I have to have them submitted in the next couple of days, probably by Friday afternoon or evening, which means I'll be reading the last of the revisions today and tomorrow. I'll be returning each revision once it is read, with the revision grade and the grade to date. Those grades will be your minimum. Once I am done with all the essays, I'll check on the participation points as spelled out in the syllabus.

Receiving participation points requires first having a 2.0 average for your essays, as that is an indicator you would have passed the portfolio process had we had one during the summer. Up to 0.4 will be added to your final essay grade based on the work done for each essay as follows: essay draft: .2, each complete response: .1 for a total of .5 of a grade point. Summaries: .2 of a grade point for each summary submitted on time and complete (the "on time" is flexible--I'm not going to ding people for being an hour, or even a few hours late, with the midnight deadlines) and .1 of a grade point for each of the three required responses to a journal that are capable of promoting further conversation as the directions indicated. These would be either the cohesive or interactive responses as discussed in the "responding to blogs" link in the left margin. I'm looking to give people the highest scores possible here, not the lowest.

Finally, if I can be of help or service in the future, don't hesitate to ask. I've enjoyed working with all of you, and I mean it. Stop by my office if you are ever on campus. I'm in building 5, room 157. I'll be serving as interim department chair for the fall (while the regular chair is in Italy) and will be happy to help you however I can. That means I teach in the morning and do meetings and administrative work in the afternoons. Now, I have to get to your essays, because I know you want to know how you've done and I need to get my work done and get grades in. Best of luck to you all.