She's Scottish, Not English, So What Does She Know?

I have one English class this semester, and it is taught by a Scottish woman. She looks eerily like Sinead O'Connor, with the shaved head and everything. I can't recall at this moment what nationality Sinead O'Connor is, but I know she is from one of the British Isles, which means she has an accent. This got me thinking. What have you heard of Sinead O'Connor these days? Not a whole damn lot. Another interesting note; since Sinead was a singer, she was probably a songwriter too. Songs are often likened to poetry...which is literature. Which could, techincally,
qualify someone to be a professor. Possibly. Hmmm. Maybe my professor IS Sinead O'Connor?

No. That's just nonsense. And not at all what I wanted to discuss today.

What I actually wanted to discuss was how totally unqualifed Sinead (which is what I will refer to the professor as for the duration of this note, since I forget her real name) is as an English teacher. I mean, she's Scottish. She's not English. Doesn't that make her first language...Gaelic or something? Or is that the Irish? I think it is the Irish. However, I'm pretty sure that the Scottish spoke, or quite possibly still speak, some language other than English.

I'm in Canadian history, not History of the British Isles, so give me a break.

Anyways, as I was saying. I got a close reading assignment back today. For those of you not in English, a close reading is essentially an analysis of a paragraph or two from a larger novel. It was a two page assignment, and I was pretty damn proud of what I had wrote. I thought I had done a smashingly great job. She, apparently, did not agree. She gave me a 55%. But what made it worse...again...was the comments. The very first sentance was, "Krista, you write wonderfully." Okay. I thought this was quite good. I read on: "However, you apparently do not know how to do a close reading." My jaw dropped. I did not get to fourth year, as an English minor, without learning how to properly do a close reading. In fact, I usually get stellar marks in English. This mark was a complete shock. Coupled with the fact that she wrote such nice comments, and then proceeded to rip me apart, it was too much for me. I sat for the rest of the class dumbfounded. I didn't absorb too much of what the professor was lecturing on, because I could not wrap my head around the fact that I got a 55% on something. Previously my lowest mark ever was a 71%. That's almost a 20% difference. Then I started to conclude that the problem wasn't with ME. It couldn't possibly be my fault. I wrote wonderfully, she said so herself. Just because my idea of a close reading wasn't her idea of a close reading doesn't mean I'm stupid. Clearly people in Scottland do close readings differently than close readings in Canada. Obviously that's the problem. She's just not used to how Canadian students do close readings.

Yah. That's it. It's not my fault she's a bad English teachers. After all, she is Scottish.