Ode on a Grecian URL

Let's see... Merry Christmas, of course, to those of you who participate in such things. And Happy Hanukkah--Happy pre-Hanukkah, I should say--for those of you who do that. Feliz Navidad, naturally, and a most reverential pre-Kwanzaa. And a glorious Yule.

No, your grades aren't in yet. However, as you can imagine, Prof. Ortiz-Robles wants them immediately. My goal is to get everything submitted to him before I go to sleep tonight--I'm pretty sure I couldn't possibly get away with turning them in even a day later, so this is one goal you can be reasonably sure I'm going to meet.

Your exams are completely graded; I'll post examples of strong answers tonight or tomorrow, but for now it might intrigue you to learn that the average exam grade was down 4.4 points from your midterm average. I feel that this was partly unfair--I become a harsher grader when my stress levels increase--so I have buffered all exam grades by 3 points. The other 1.4 points rest on your shoulders.

I'm halfway through the essays right now; the half of you whose essays have been graded have received commented copies of those essays; the half of you whose essay have not been graded will not receive copies of your essays until after your grades are in. The reason is that I will review and sprinkle initial comments on all your papers and then grade them; I will come back next week to fill in my comments and send the final drafts of everything back to you.