Hi Lily,

As per Kylie's email, I'm just writing to you to make sure you know where I've been, and with some concerns pertaining to my recent grade of a 48 out of 100 on the Marketing Folder.

I understand the importance of attendance to classes and I'll of course attend as many as I can. However I tend to place my priorities in a number of places rather than simply attending seminars. I have multiple groups for strict, regulated criticism of my work, and so if I feel comfortable in knowing that a class is going to be useful only for criticism of my pieces, then I feel I can put my time elsewhere. My other priorities include preparing for my career after university, and my mental health which I've had to attend the doctors and pharmacy for several times in the last few months, due to an increase in my prescription of anti-depressants and anti-psychotics. I hope this is understandable.

Concerning the mark for the Marketing Folder; I'm confused and a little frustrated with such a low mark. Kylie has told me in the email that while grades often reflect the attendance because of the lessons within the course, that the basis of the work is what's assessed, not my punctuality. Whenever I'm unable to make a lesson, I will spend time with my fellow students to make sure I know the lessons that I've missed by not being there, and by following the rubric carefully during the drafts and final submissions of my pieces.

It's the apparent failing of this second procedure that I use to maintain my development that frustrates me the most. I feel that I followed the rubric incredibly closely in crafting the piece.When following the assigned measurements in the rubric, there are a few things that I noticed would be essential to the creation of the pieces. They are as follows:

Agent Letter:
-The researching of an actual publishing agent [in the context of my piece, Mr. Chilliot over at Quirk Books] and their preferences [Mr. Chilliot's preferences are displayed on his introductory paragraph on the Quirk Books website, which includes parodical superhero novels with actual content, comedy, and pop culture, all of which my piece fits well into].

-Enjoyable and enticing to read [This is obviously more subjective and I understand that, but to hear that my work is apparently so unenticing and boring that it was worth a mark of 48 with no feedback is almost insulting.]

Article:
-Picking up a theme relevant to the book [the sexuality of Ant, the main character of Constellation, is very important to the novel, and his representation as a gay man is not only relevant to the novel, but relevant to my own interests in media.]

-Picking a real publication to write for. [GL Review is an actual publication, and I made sure to do research into this publication. Their mission statement, as mentioned in my piece, is about providing a forum for discussion of topics of important for the LGBT community. I felt that this was especially relevant to the topic I wished to talk about.]

-Making sure the tone and style matched the style for the publication. [This I was especially close with. I specifically found out not only GL's word count for their online submissions (1000 word maximum), but also found that the piece had to follow the relevant theme at the time. Seeing as two of GLReview's themes at the time of writing were Social Problems and The Family, I felt it fitting to write a piece on how LGBT peoples often find each other and connect with others, and the social problems involved with the concept of the 'token gay friend'.]

I apologise if I seem upset by this, and if you're the wrong person to take this out on; I'm not even sure if you're the one who graded me. But to receive such a low score when I spent several months of personal writing, study of the rubric, my chosen sources, and the styles of the two writing samples I decided on, and group reflection, despite my lack of attendance, is shocking and upsetting. I'd like, at least, a remark to be considered, with all these things taken into account, and a response ASAP.

Thank you for your time,
Callum McNeill

PS. I actually just thought; was my low grade because of a perception that the essay was over the word count? Because if the brackets are read as 'part of the folder', then it does go well over the maximum amount. I'd like to assure you that these parts of the essay were not meant to be marked. They're simply small add-ons that I wanted to give my assessor in order to provide context as to who I was writing towards and why. Hopefully you can respond to me soon and tell me whether or not this was the case.