Okay.
So I screwed up massively on one of my final papers from last quarter. How I pulled a good grade in the class is a miracle. Anyway, my professor writes “incredibly articulate and at times, even impressive, but…”
And I’m too insecure to actually put what the “but’ actually says, but lets say it comes down to essentially doing undergraduate level work instead of graduate.
I was aware of a lot of these issues when I submitted it due to an oversleeping issue that lost me hours of work on the paper so this isn’t unexpected.
However. I really like this subject, and I know I could’ve done better on this paper, and some reading I’ve done over break has made me realize how better to construct the type of paper I should be instructing. And for my thesis I really would like this professor to be on my committee, because he is an expert on the subject.
So how should I approach this? I’ve written, what I think is a good proposal for my thesis, and I know I’ll be able to improve it once I go through my workshoping this week? Do I acknowledge my screw up on the final when I talk to him? Do I acknowledge that that paper is clearly evidence of where I misunderstand what graduate level research requires and acknowledge the ways in which I now better understand how to do that? Or do I pretend it never happened and just present this paper proposal to him?
If it matters, in all my interactions with him he is has come across with a genuinely decent guy and so maybe asking a second change to prove I’m not a moron isn’t so rash? I mean, I totally get what he is saying in his comments; I’m doing more summary than I am arguments, but I believe I can show in my thesis proposal how I can move beyond this. Can I approach him after writing such a shitty paper for his class?
