Grading: A blog entry will never hurt your grade

About grading: your blog writing can only help your grade, never hurt it.

Good analysis and good writing are hard work. The pressure on you is increased even more when you know that your writing will be posted on the Internet for all to see. That's enough pressure. I certainly don't want to you to worry that each sentence you write could help or hurt your academic grade. With that much pressure, a normal human being could get tied up in knots.

So remember, when it comes to grades, a blog entry will never hurt you. In other words, if you write a blog entry, the worst thing that can happen is I'll ask you to improve it in this way or that way. I don't expect that will happen often. But if it does, you can simply edit your blog entry and I'll change your grade. You will never lose points for what you write, so long as you are willing to go back and edit your blog entry to correct the problem. This is not an exam. It's an interactive learning experience.

Phil and I are both writers by trade, and we each have developed our own personal ways of getting the engine started when a project seems thorny. If any of you are having trouble getting started, contact me. Just about every writer has been there.