A week and a half ago, I had to submit a rough draft of my Big Paper to my professor so he could read it and offer feedback and suggestions for improvement. I got mine back, and now I have eight days to revise it.
…and by revise, I mean more or less rewrite it.
I got three pages of written comments back with my draft, in which my professor conceded that I did a very good job using my primary sources, but other than that didn’t really have anything positive to say. This professor is notoriously critical. He does a very effective job of (very politely) making you feel like a complete idiot. But if I could pick anyone in the world to help me revise my novel when I finally finish this draft, he is probably one of the people I would choose.
So, basically, my poor paper is about to be Humpty Dumpty’d: I am going to shove it off the wall and try to put it back together again. And, when I’m done, it will hopefully be a much better product than this one was.
(Confession: I didn’t turn in a completed draft. It was due the same day Harry Potter came out, which I made sure to note when I turned in 20 pages and a detailed outline of the last 6 or 7 pages.)
And now, it’s time for me to turn on “I’ll Make A Man Out Of You” (which is quite possibly the single most inspirational song ever) and do this thing.
Stephanie Allen 
How did it end up turning out? I'm assuming we're talking about 499 here?
Yeah, Diehl gave me very extensive feedback on the first draft…I ended up with an A-, which I definitely was not expecting. Have you gotten yours back yet?
I got a B+ on mine, A- overall. I'm really happy with that though. It feels good to have finally done something instead of just learned a bunch of stuff and then moved on.
Yeah. I intentionally chose a topic I didn't know much about, just because I knew I would be spending so much time with it and getting to know it really well. I loved it, even if writing the paper itself was a painful experience…