"Quite Good"

Today I had my first ever tutorial. For those of you unfamiliar with how Oxford University does things it goes something like this:

You get a tutor. You meet the tutor. They say, "Read these books, write this essay, see you next week." You then go and read those books, write that essay, and see them next week. The essay is read, discussed, critiqued, and the process begins again.

So I had my first one today. I am here studying Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings and Shakespeare's histories. They are fun, wonderful, interesting things that I love very much. So this shouldn't be that bad, right? Well...

So I wrote this essay (an essay I'll post for your entertainment pleasure) on Beowulf and Rings looking at Beowulf and Aragorn saying basically that the two were sufficiently similar enough to compare/contrast them and that Aragorn is better.

And it was horrible.  Fairly irrelevant, totally ignoring of the vast differences in the characters of the two, completely superficial, far too colloquially written, and, worst of  all, I fully ignored the rest of the brilliant analysis that I should have, could have done in the two tales. I could have talked about the use of songs, of digressions, of  the role of fighting, of the inner thoughts of the hero (or lack thereof), or, you know, something she told me to write on, but no. I did a silly essay comparing two only marginally similar people in such a way that has no bearing on the stories or anything significant.

What's more, I knew this going in. I was aware of my error.

So after spending 20 or so hours reading Rings and Beowulf, and spending 23-25 hours or so writing the wretched thing, I go to my tutorial. Luckily, and a bit unluckily as I was hoping she wouldn't have been so nice about it, my tutor is a very nice, sweet, scary bright British woman, Dr. Holton. After grilling me about why I like Tolkien (a conversation in which I made something of an idiot of myself as I had not the ability to verbalize why I love him in an intelligent way), and what I thought of Beowulf (in which I also made an idiot of myself with my absolute lack of intelligent things to say about it), we got to my essay.

She, politely but sternly, pointed out that my writing wasn't academic enough, but that there were some good ideas in it and that, if nothing else, it was logically laid out. And then we got talking about Beowulf. Now, I think I might have redeemed myself a bit here. Fortunately, I think well on my feet and had some not unintelligent things to say (I hope) about it.

So, we finish looking at my rather horrible essay (the biggest let down on my part being that we didn't really even get to the interesting parts at the end where I actually had things to argue about, but we did talk about the stuff I should have talked about), we decided on what I'll write on next week: a look  at the prose of Tolkien in comparison with his modernist contemporaries, using Virginia Woolf as an example. It could be worse.

Then, knowing full well that this hadn't gone well, said something like, "If my essay is horrible, you should just tell me" because I really don't like people sugar coating things--it doesn't allow me to get better. She then replied, as far as I can remember,with: "Oh, no, it was quite good."

"Quite good."

Now, to us Americans that sounds like a compliment. "Oh, it was 'good'? Awesome." The problem is that the British are, well, passive-aggressive. If they didn't invent it, then they have perfected it. It's an art form over here. I'm sure you could major in it if you wanted. Thought you wouldn't need to as it flows through their veins like freedom and justice flows through mine.

So when a British person says to you, "It was quite good" what they are actually saying is, "That was disappointing." (Here--proof.)

GREAT. I've disappointed my tutor out of the box. To be very fair, I knew I had. I knew it when I went to bed this morning, as I walked to her home, through her door, sat down, and began to read it. It sucked.

What this does mean, silver lining here, is that I simply have to get better and, you know, do what she tells me to do rather than the easy thing. ("Oh really." "YES, REALLY.") So, while this is all a bit soul crushing and I might have slept for most of the rest of the day (partially because I was terribly tired and partially because I  kind of want to crawl into a hole and die), I'll be alright. I will just have to not write an essay that wouldn't have even stood up in high school.

Now I just  have to make sure my next essay justifies my being here, because this essay certainly didn't.

Onwards and upwards!