Midterm Comments

Michael Zeng '22

SPOTLIGHTED, GRACE SUN '23

Midterm Comments

Michael Zeng '22

You performed fantastically on the first assessment, but after that everything went to shit. You are always seeking to improve, but thus far your performance has not demonstrated that you are a good student at all. Your paper was superb; I would encourage that next time just get to the damn point faster. You have shown a quiet intelligence toward learning, but your participation grade is the worst in the class. I encourage you to speak up more! You are quiet most of the time. You’ve always been a quiet one. You tend to be quiet and even in small groups, you don't speak much. I suspect this is because you’re entirely socially inadequate. You are working on finding the right times to join the conversation resulting in inconsistent participation. There have been discussions where you wait until the very last moments before you say anything. Your keen analytical mind is impressive, and I only wish the class got a chance to hear more of your ideas. Now, a little advice. Most of the time, your comment is relevant and productive, but I do notice a pattern of sometimes repeating an idea, which suggests to me that you are not engaged and don’t care about the class. In your final essay, you get to some of the most interesting points in the final paragraph; I think if you build these ideas into your strong claims earlier on, the essay wouldn’t have been such garbage. I know you did not do as well as you would have wanted on our midterm, but, with a little bit of work, I am sure you won’t fail next time. Your IPad was taken away for playing video games in the library. After talking with you I feel confident that you will be more careful about getting caught from here on out. Your solutions are at times off the mark but mostly not. Your average grade on fully-processed writing in the first quarter was B. You have been steadily improving, but you’re still shit. I think you got a bit of a “wake-up” call on the first test. It wasn’t a disaster. But it was pretty bad. I am here to support you.