The purpose of this blog post is to provide guidance and coaching
to STI students writing their leadership essay.
When the paper is submitted, the FIRST thing I do is run it
through Grammarly. As a graduate student at SANS.EDU you have access to the
tool; use it. As a grammar checker it is not perfect, but it can find and point
out avoidable errors.
Writing mechanics is the last item on the rubric, but if your
writing is sloppy, that impacts several other dimensions of the assignment.
Clean and concise are two keys to victory. If you use Microsoft Word,
the green and red squiggles can also alert you to writing that can be improved.
If the submission scores below 90 on Grammarly, I tend to stop and
pour a mug of hot green tea and settle in; this paper is probably going to take
a while. Marginal papers require more effort to grade than exemplars.
A final note on writing quality, several of the rubric items
require the reader/grader to understand what the author intended. Slapdash
writing does not achieve that goal.
The assignment asks for a single aspect of transformational
leadership. Rehashing the definition detracts from your message. If we ask for
a focused exposition of “something”, we probably already know what that “something”
is. Try to break new ground instead of repeating the fundamentals.
Your grader will also look at the literature research, or,
references. The key to winning is quality. If you have thirty ill-chosen,
vaguely related references you can expect a low appraisal. There is nothing
wrong with using printed literature, but your grader may not have access to
those items, consider at least a few Internet references that can be validated.
Speaking only for myself, I tend to grade style gently, (8.0 is
neutral), If it is extraordinary, I will mark the paper higher, if it is
painful to read, I choose a lower evaluation, but I am not a literary critic
and know it. That said, when the rubric mentions transitional sentences at
multiple scoring levels, take the time to put a few in!
Finally, your graders are rooting for you. We want you to succeed.
A day where we get to nominate a paper as an exemplar is a good day indeed.
Please take the time to give this your best effort. If you shoot for the
minimum passing score and miss, nobody wins.
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