I got my paper back from Dr. Sul­li­van the other night. For some rea­son, as with every­thing in this class the past semes­ter, I’ve been a tad ner­vous when receiv­ing some­thing back that has been graded; it’s just a thing with me, I don’t know why I’m appre­hen­sive about it. And when I got my paper back I saw at the top the grade — a 75. Wow. C+. Awesome…for real.

No, it wasn’t awe­some. It was kinda sucky.

But then I remem­bered that Dr. Sul­li­van has kind of a screwy grad­ing scheme, 100 isn’t always the top score that you can get, so I asked some­one, “What was the top score you could get on this paper?” And they replied, “Seventy-five.”

So I got an A+, a 100%, or as I said, “a per­fect,” and it only took about two weeks and some furi­ous editing.

And he said -

Excel­lent paper. I like the way you pre­sented the three inven­tors in the con­text of a broader pic­ture of inven­tion — and its influ­ence within the African-American experience.

And I feel good about the paper. Very good.