Temper tantrum

I hate Hawai'i today. I got an A on an essay that I would probably have been ashamed to hand in back home. The teacher wrote that my essay was ambitious beyond the level of the class. But she wants me to use MLA citations (I'm in my third year and refuse to use the brackets-in-text rather than footnoting just because I'm in stupid America), and said 'don't underline your part of the title' (what?!), and various other idiotic remarks - like she changed 'Bibliography' to 'Works Cited'. Then there was this comment: 'dashes are fine for use in informal writing, but in a formal essay you want to use something less all-purpose' - given that other people are not penalized for using contractions and things like "I guess", that REALLY annoyed me. And it's not something I've ever heard before!

I texted mum in a strop about it during class earlier. I work so hard here and it all seems like it's for nothing - I spent a day and a half working furiously on that essay, in a week when I had tons of other stuff due, got it (and everything else) in on time and got an A; Eliza spent a few hours on hers one night (one hour of which was spent watching House for research), sent it two days after the deadline on Sunday morning, and got an A-. I spend all my time doing stuff and the workload never lessens, yet everyone else I know has the same assignments, does barely any work, and it doesn't seem to affect their grades at ALL. I can't wait to come home. Yes, I've enjoyed exceeding all expectations, but now it's just getting ridiculous - when I'm working so hard to achieve expectations that are actually much lower than they seem.

A few weeks ago, we did an in-class midterm exam, and were given a 'strict' forty five minutes to write two essays. I showed up on time, wrote about eight pages, left at the end of the class, got an A, and was told that I am writing way beyond the level of the class. James, a guy in the class, showed up thirty minutes into the exam, and was allowed to stay late into the next class - effectively got an hour to work on it - and also got an A.

It's ridiculous. I hate it. I can't wait to come home, and go back to Essex, and have everyone get fair credit for their work. I wouldn't mind all the stuff I'm doing - I spent the entire day reading for classes yesterday, and had half an hour off to work on an outline, and yet there's still SO much to do - if it seemed like it counted for anything. But it doesn't. But I can't figure out how not to do it, because I think I would fall behind. God, I almost feel like I'M the stupid one.

Anyway. Sorry for that. An update on our interesting weekend (the sea beat us up) is forthcoming.