The amount of blood, sweat, and tears that we have put into this class amazes me. We all struggled to make our writing better. Some of us allowed the struggles to improve our writing, while others struggled against changing it. (It’s fine, I did plenty of both.) If we are being evaluated purely on grades, then I am super nervous about my final grade. Sure we could have written better papers or written the papers more than 24 hours before the due date, but as far as I could tell, all of us did the best we could with the time we had. I have this hope that even when professors say final grades are solely based on the grades made throughout the semester, they will take into account the great effort it took to get as far as the end of the semester.

What happens if my best isn’t good enough? What if my best gets me a grade I think is poor? I despise grades because I have allowed them to dictate my self-esteem. (Yes, I know I need to take my own advice, especially when I just posted a couple days ago on how grades are arbitrary.) This issue is nothing recent. It’s been going on at least since middle school. For me, if I don’t get an A, there’s always something more I could have done. No other grade will suffice. I wasn’t expecting this class to be easy. However, I confess, being a rhetoric major, that I was hoping this class would be just a good way to practice writing, but wouldn’t involve a ton of effort on my part. It became a class that challenged me in a lot of ways because Foley pushed me to change my writing for the better. I hate change, so you can imagine my difficulties. But I think Foley did that for all of us—pushed us to become better writers. Don’t get me wrong, it certainly wasn’t a walk in the park for me. But if you don’t challenge yourself, how do you expect to get better? At anything? So, Foley, we all know you have a heart and I know you saw how much we struggled and how much effort we put into this class. Not that you owe me any favors, but if you wouldn’t base your evaluations solely on the grades we made throughout the semester, that would be great. Remember the sweat, blood, and tears from your faithful HP students. Please?