Unsatisfactory

If there is a word which irks all students, it's this : UNSATISFACTORY

This is our research year and possibly the most important year in graduate school. Before our paper proposal submissions, all soft copies came back with that same word and after another 3 months of re-drafting, the same word appears again. It doesn't tell me much except that; isn't this the minimum expectation from first-time research year students? It's not like we are experienced in the field of academic writing to automatically know how to construct sections. But having said that, I'm not excusing this entire cohort of being ignorant about standards, myself included - we just need more time to adjust to this new level of work.

Of course this comment accompanied a single-spaced A4 page of 'instructions' on where the re-draft should happen, in a nutshell, the marker has tired to re-focus for academically blind students like me and my classmates. Perhaps they felt 'sorry' for us, not having the liberty of walking into the professors' office for consultation each time we are stuck, since we are not on-campus, and so they made the extra effort to give us a blow by blow of what's UNSATISFACTORY.

With exams just under 3 weeks away, and UNSATISFACTORY hanging right in front of my face, I really am torn about where to begin - which is more important. Most would say exams, but this research culminates this graduate programme and if it doesn't get off the ground, we don't graduate - period.

So, looks like I'll deal with UNSATISFACTORY first, since it's the one sore thing that's sticking out of my To-Do list like a picture hanging on one hinge.

Bottom line : is to graduate - and if one word is going to be the wall, not hurdle (which we can either go around or jump over), then hacking is the solution. Brain hacking.