I am such a perfecto-freak that I actually reconsidered rewriting a B paper a few months ago (I had built that into the contract the professor and I agreed upon). He actually told me: I know it is in the contract that you can rewrite, but you did well enough to get credit and if it were me, I'd accept the B and move on. I actually listened ... probably because I was just too tired to keep on with the insane perfectionism. The paper was approximately 35 pages, 12-point font, double-spaced, long (not including references). Even CONSIDERING not accepting a B on that much work is insane.
I say that certainly not to say, "na na na na na na, I got a B and you got a C-" but rather to say ... "when you're a perfectionist, when you think other people's evaluations of you ARE you, you will NEVER be good enough."
I have taught college courses too ... and for the most part, something is screwy with this teacher's system if everybody got under a C. Especially if this is not the first paper for the class and if this is a recurring pattern. I don't believe that you should just give grades away, don't get me wrong, but every class is normally a mix of high-ability and low-ability, high-effort and low-effort, highly-prepared and not-prepared people. Everybody consistently flunking means that your teacher is not teaching so hot. (Of course, even when there is a reasonable grade spread, the system COULD be screwy).
The paper I got a B on --- I spent months researching it and writing it. I knew the professor I had contracted with was a hard grader. I sweated bullets over that paper and learned tons. I will be able to apply all the knowledge I gained. The paper itself rocketed my knowledge in that particular area to a much higher plane. I still got a B on my transcript.
By contrast, after that experience I contracted with a different professor in a different subject area. I learned a lot researching that paper too ... but was exhausted by that time and just wrote the dang paper. No sweating bullets, no obsessive rewriting and making sure every point was exhaustively discussed. Wrote a rough draft, rested it a few days, went back and did a bit of reshuffling and corrections and sent it off to be graded. Told a friend that if I scraped by with a passing grade I would just be relieved to be done, all I wanted was not to have to do a rewrite, I was too tired. My grade? A+! WTH? Different teachers. Different appreciation for what I do.
Bottom line? Make sure you're expending your effort on something you care about. Learn. Pass. Try hard enough to make good grades when the system is reasonable. Let the rest go.
I plan to reread this post next time I don't do so hot on something I care about ...
