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Letters from Tara · January: The Mark

The draft she did not send

Danya,

It snowed here on Monday and the whole campus went quiet, the way the Green does, except that here everyone films it. Hollie made a snowman outside the kitchen window with a carrot for a nose and a bus ticket for a mouth. Joss played something on his keyboard that he said was about snow. It sounded like rain to me, but I didn't say.

I got my first essay back. It was about why some people vote and some don't, three thousand words, and I worked on it for three weeks and rewrote the beginning five times.

I got 52.

At the bottom there was one comment, in green pen: "A good summary of the reading. Where is your argument?"

I don't really know what that means. I put in everything. I read eleven books. Every paragraph says what someone found and where. I thought that was what you were supposed to do.

I've put it in my drawer, under the jumpers, so I don't have to look at it. I'm going to go and see my tutor about it, but not yet. Her office hours are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I thought I'd go in the week before the next essay is due, when I've written most of it, so I can show her that I'm better than 52. I don't want her to think I'm the sort of person who gets 52 and then comes and complains about it. I bet she remembers. I bet she thinks of me as "the 52".

I keep thinking about the green pen. I

The draft stopped there, as all the drafts did.

Tara read it on the Sunday night, sitting on her bed with her knees up, with the snow going grey on the windowsill. She noticed something she had not noticed while she was writing it. The plan in the draft was to wait. It was a careful plan, and a sensible-sounding one, and it was a plan for waiting until the last week, the way she had nearly waited for the last night with Joss.

She counted. Office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The next essay due in three weeks. Two a week for three weeks was six chances to ask. Her plan would leave her with two of them, in the week when there would be no time left to do anything with the answer.

She put the draft in the back of the notebook with the other four. There were five now.

She looked at the sticky note inside the front cover. The cheapest time to say the thing is before there is a plan for it to be against. Under it, in December, she had written: Ask on the second day, not the last.

It was Sunday. Tuesday was the first chance.

The first Tuesday

She took the essay out from under the jumpers on Tuesday morning. It had a crease across the middle now. She ironed it flat with the side of her hand, which did not work, and put it in a folder so nobody would see the number on the front.

Dr Mensah's office was on the fourth floor of a building that smelled of radiators and old coffee. There was a sheet on the door with time slots, and a pen on a string. Two names were already written in. Tara wrote hers in the third slot, in small letters, and then sat on the floor of the corridor to wait, because there were no chairs.

The student before her came out after ten minutes, looking cheerful. Tara thought: she got 70.

"Come in," said Dr Mensah.

The office was small and very full. There were books on the shelves and books on the floor and a pile of essays on the desk, so high that it leaned. On top of the pile there was a mug that said WORLD'S OKAYEST AUNT.

"Hello," said Dr Mensah. "Remind me which one you are."

Tara had not expected that at all.

"Tara," she said. "From the Tuesday seminar. I wrote about voting. I got..." She took the essay out of the folder and put it on the desk, number side down, and then turned it over, because that was silly. "I got 52. I wanted to ask what the comment meant. About the argument."

Dr Mensah picked it up. She looked at the front page, and then at the green comment at the end, and then, Tara could see, she looked at it as though she were reading it for the first time.

"I marked ninety of these in December," said Dr Mensah. "I'm sorry. I'm going to have to read your first page again. Give me a minute."

What Dr Mensah said

She read the first page slowly, all the way down. Then she put it on the desk between them.

"It's a good summary," she said. "I meant that. You've read a great deal, and you've understood it, and you've been fair to everybody. That's not nothing. Lots of people can't do that."

"But it's 52," said Tara.

"Because I don't know what you think," said Dr Mensah. "I know what eleven other people think. You've told me very clearly what they found. But you haven't told me what you make of it." She tapped the page. "So here's my one question. Not what do they think. What do you think? Why do some people not vote?"

Tara opened her mouth. Then she shut it again.

She thought about the Green, and about her dad, who had never voted in his life, and said it was because nothing ever changed. She thought about her mum, who voted every time, even in the rain, even for the council. She thought about all eleven books.

"I think," she said slowly, "most people who don't vote aren't lazy, or don't care. I think they don't believe anyone like them gets listened to. So it isn't about getting to the polling station. It's about whether you think it counts."

It came out in one go. She had not known she thought it until it was out.

Dr Mensah sat back.

"That," she said, "is an argument. It's arguable, and some of your eleven books would disagree with it, and that's exactly why it's interesting. That sentence belongs on page one. Then every paragraph after it is either evidence for it or a fair account of somebody who thinks you're wrong."

"That's it?" said Tara.

"That's it," said Dr Mensah. "Your next essay's in three weeks. Write the sentence first. Before you open a single book. Then go and find out whether you're right."

Tara picked up the essay. The 52 did not look quite so large.

"Can I ask one more thing?" she said. "Do you remember people's marks? Like, will you think of me as..."

Dr Mensah laughed, not unkindly, and pointed at the leaning pile on her desk.

"I've got sixty more of those to mark by Friday," she said. "I'll remember the sentence about whether it counts. I won't remember the number."

The sentence

That evening, in the kitchen, Hollie was making soup for six out of everything that was left in the fridge, and Joss was sitting at the table with headphones round his neck, not listening to them.

"How was your tutor?" said Hollie. "You looked terrified this morning. You ironed an essay with your hand."

"She didn't remember me," said Tara.

"Is that bad?"

"No," said Tara. "It was the best thing that's happened all week."

She opened her laptop at the end of the kitchen table, away from the soup, and made a new document for the next essay, which was about whether schools should teach people how to argue. She did not open a single book. She sat for a while, and then she typed one sentence at the top of the first page. It was not a very good sentence. It was hers.

Then she printed it on the hall printer, which took four attempts, and pinned it on the cork board above her desk, next to the photo of the Green.

The letter she sent

Danya,

It snowed. Hollie made a snowman with a bus ticket for a mouth. I'm sending you a photo of it in the next letter, if it hasn't melted.

I got my first essay back, and it was 52, which is not very good. The comment said: "Where is your argument?" I put the essay in a drawer and decided to go and ask about it in the week before the next one was due, when I'd have something better to show.

Then I counted. There were six chances to ask before the next essay, and my plan was going to use the last two, when it would be too late to do anything with the answer.

So I went on the first Tuesday. I was sure my tutor would be thinking of me as "the 52". She didn't remember me at all. She'd marked ninety essays. She read my first page again and asked me one question: what do you think, not what do they think? I said it out loud, and she said that sentence was the argument, and it belonged on page one.

That's the whole secret, apparently. One sentence. I'd been hiding the essay from someone who wasn't even looking.

Tara

P.S. Five drafts now. In this one I was certain somebody was watching my mark. Nobody was watching it except me.

The question for your own table

Is there something you are waiting to ask about until you have something better to show? How many chances to ask are there between now and when it will be too late to use the answer?

Something to do

Think of one piece of feedback you have had, at work or at home or anywhere, that you did not fully understand. Write down the one question you would need answered to use it. Then ask it this week, at the first chance, not the last.

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