"No grade given"

So, a weird thing happened to me today.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a short paper for a history course (The American Revolution) at my university. The paper was on Brailyn's book The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. I didn't think it was anything special, frankly. I figured I put in enough work for a solid A-, or maybe (horror of horrors) a B+ if the professor was grading particularly hard (which was a possibility, given that this particular professor is a nationally-recognized leading scholar in early American history). What I didn't expect was what happened when my paper was returned to me today.

As we took our final exams, the graded papers were spread out at the front of the classroom to be picked up as we turned in the test and left. I picked mine up as I walked out of the room and came to a dead stop halfway down the hall. "No grade given," it said on the final page of my paper. What the hell?

I waited for the professor until I realized that he had somehow slipped by me while I was discussing the final exam with some other students near the stairs. So, I went up to his office to ask just what exactly was going on with my paper.

I had some ideas, but one awful one was gnawing at the back of my head. One of the comments on the last page of the paper was "Can you prove that you did all of this sophisticated analysis. . .Where did you read and study all of the cited works?" He couldn't think that I didn't actually write this paper myself, could he? Everything was cited, I didn't misrepresent anything, the writing style wasn't inconsistent. But when I finally caught up with him in his office, he informed me that that was indeed what he thought.

It turns out that he had shown the paper to three other colleagues and they had all concurred that there was no way an undergrad wrote a paper that good. He even used the phase "borderline brilliant" when describing it to me.

After several minutes of discussion, during which I apparently thoroughly convinced him that I did indeed write the paper and, on top of that, knew what I was talking about in the paper, he shook my hand and gave me my grade: A.

I really needed this today. Now, it's time for a cigarette and a nap.


-M.