Tuesday, July 7, 2015

A Humbling Experience

As the final days of my Cornell experience are winding down, I am taking it upon myself to work even harder over the next couple of days.  Once the final session ends of Friday, I most likely won't be attending schooling of any kinds during the summer, so I want to make sure I pour whatever energy I have left into this class.  If I'm not going to be going back to school until late-August, I might as well sacrifice a little fun to reach my goal of an A.  I was especially motivated today when I received the score on my Affirmative assignment today, which I will go into in a little while.

Today's class session was similar to the last couple sessions, excluding the one on Friday in which we had a test.  We talked about yesterday's debate, went into questions anyone had about the Negative assignment, then hopped into another debate.  The motion was "This house rejects labeling people with mental illness."  We decided to choose this topic because of the two guest speakers on Friday.  Today, since I had participated in the last four debates, I was going to be adjudicating.  It was interesting to see how different the perspectives were and think like an adjudicator rather than a debater.  It was a new challenge, but I tried to grade every member and team fairly and efficiently.

Following the debate, I got back my Affirmative paper.  Again, I was scared to look because I was afraid of the grade.  When I finally looked, I saw that I got only an 80%.  I was sad because I put in a lot of work, but I understood why I got the grade I did.  I made some rookie mistakes and those mistakes added up into a 20% reduction.  In a way, I'm glad I made those mistakes because it was a humbling experience for me.  It made me realize I'm going to have to work harder to get a better grade on the next assignment and I can't put it off until the last minute to turn in a successful paper.  Also, the mistakes I made in the Affirmative will help me improve my Negative.  I'm aiming for a 100% on the Negative because it will balance out the Affirmative's 80% and leave me with a combined 90% on the Affirmative and the Negatives, both of which make up 30% off the overall class grade.  Once class ended, I worked on collecting information for my Negative assignment with a newly found sense of optimism and the motivation to make this my best work yet.  
I'll Get it Next Time! 

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