I Think the Essay’s Pretty Good.
Dylan has been practicing for his AP test in Language and Composition. As part of that practice, he’s been writing essays as part of his class grade.
He was absent one day, and was unable to do one of the practice essays. Twice we drove Dylan to school early, but – what a surprise! – his teacher (who had no idea he was coming) wasn’t able to meet with him before school. So Dylan was still missing that one practice essay – two weeks later.
Fortunately, he had this weekend – finally – to work on that missing essay. It was the only assignment still missing after two weeks of playing catch-up, so I was thrilled that he’d finally have the time to finish it.
But Dylan went to work at his summer job (working at a concert venue) on Friday, immediately after school. Then he did no work on Saturday afternoon, and he went to a concert on Saturday night.
And on Sunday, he had tickets for … another concert. But he wanted to squeeze in a movie on Sunday afternoon, too.
“You aren’t going anywhere until that essay is done,” I told him.
“I’ll get it done,” Dylan said.
“I want to see it before you go anywhere,” I said.
But while the rest of the family was at church doing various volunteer jobs, Dylan woke up, got dressed, wrote the essay and disappeared. By the time we came home, he was gone.
He texted me from afar: “I think the essay’s pretty good.”
So I pulled it up online and read it. Quite possibly, it was the worst thing he’d ever written. It looked like he’d vomited up all the words and just moved them around on the page. It was incoherent and incredibly vague. One of sentences said something like, “The author speaks in a formal tone which makes him very trustworthy and someone whose words you can be respectful of.”
I’ve seen Dylan’s writing. It is actually quite good when he’s focused. This was like someone else’s writing.
To be fair, I knew nothing about the assignment. In fact, I knew nothing about the assignment after reading the essay, which made it all the more disturbing. But Dylan was at the movie, and couldn’t be contacted – and he only had 40 minutes between the movie and the concert to be bothered with rewriting the college-level, AP-practice essay.
When he got home, I told Bill to discuss it with him. Bill yells less than I do, but by the end of the conversation, both Bill and Dylan were yelling. For once, I stayed out of it.
Dylan’s argument – which he stated very loudly – was that the kids who wrote the essay in class hadn’t had any help from their parents, so he shouldn’t get any help from his parents, either.
Dylan rewrote a few sentences without our “help” but, for the most part, he left the essay in “as is” condition.
And that’s how it will be graded – now, and on the AP test. It will all be done without any help from us.