I Am Thinking About Writing A Book

I feel this need to write.  Part of it comes from the little tickle I got inside when I got my grade and comments back from my IT Reflections Journal.  The comment that warmed my heart was: "A joy to read!"

The prof was a stickler for format and style.  For example, many times, my team got dinged a point for offering 5 recommendations instead of the required 4.  Or we enhanced a submission in another way.  And the commentary on our submissions was very direct, almost harsh.  (Word of advice to future classes:  just follow his plan, make it a template, do not go over in word count or elements delivered.  You MIGHT get more than 6 out of 7.5.  I make no promises though.)

Having already figured out the "stickler-ness" of this particular course by the time the reflections journal was due, I took a risk by not precisely following the format that was prescribed.  I also took a risk by not sending a sample of my work to him in advance for him to critique.  When I wrote my reflections journal, I wrote from the heart.  I held his structure in the back of my mind (e.g.: describe the theory, come up with a current example, critique it), but when the writing started, I deleted my template.  Oh yes, I had created a template with headings and everything.  This template was going to save me from getting burned like I had experienced with the team memos.

Aside:  6/7.5 is 80%...  This is not a bad grade, it just wasn't a grade that we aspired to... Despite having a team norm that said "Grades are not everything, it's the learning that is important", we strove for excellence which was measured in the form of grades.  Eventually we realized he rarely gives grades higher than 80%, reduced our level of effort, continued to get 80%, and made jokes about it every time we got an assignment back.

At the end of the day, I threw caution to the wind and just wrote about what I knew about IT in five journal entries.  Again, it was very difficult to get much higher than 80%.  (I got 25/30... That's 5/6 for each component of his scoring rubric.)  My true and only reward was the last comment:  "A joy to read!"