anonymous shame is a highly effective instructional resource

Half six in the morning

"It makes quite a statement. This could... this has..." I leave the thought hanging and contemplate uses of the $2500 first prize. With the haze of the unslept fogging my brain, I mercilessly read over the essay again. My inner voice finds the proper tonal pitch to convey the urgency embedded in sentences laboriously composed throughout the last 16hrs. "If I'm being completely honest about this," I say to the cat curled up on the arm of the loveseat, "perfectly honest; well, I've done quite a good job. Not a masterpiece, of course. Not bloody Keats." With a contented chuckle I realize that never having read Keats, presumably it might be on par... or better. With that pleasant thought and a look at the clock I find my way upstairs to bed after an approximately 37 hour absence.

"Not bad -- no masterpiece -- impressive really." I mumble this repeatedly until passing out.

Waiting patiently in my inbox following afternoon

"Bad," she writes. "Not good. Takes the reader three pages to figure out your point. By then not enough time to develop point. Structure all wrong. Advise to start again."

I'm shocked. She's wrong. As a compromise, a few aesthetic changes are made. Recommended alterations ignored. Moment of hesitancy before pressing SUBMIT NOW button.

Conversation months later where, mistakenly, I believe that I'll be haven' the last laugh

"Admittedly, you did have a point. Still, it wasn't that bad. It got an honorable mention and a few hundred bucks."

She smiles. "No, I was wrong." A sideways glance and a very pregnant pause. "My comments were much too kind. Much less deserving than I noticed on first read."

Confusion passes over my face. First read? She read that slapt-together paper more than once?

Her smile widens to its distinctive fearsome width. "Oh, yes. I removed your name, of course. By mid-term we had all edited it numerous times. It was less coherent under the hood than it first appeared. Excellent sample of what an academic paper should not look like. "

"And by we all...?"

By "we all" she means the required upper-division GE econ writing class of 40+ students.