Failed your RAP?

First commisserations!   Remember you are not alone as for everyone who may be celebrating out there today, there will be someone else who is feeling pretty miserable and dejected…. However remember too that unless this was your third attempt – you have at least one more attempt and so tell yourself that tomorrow you will “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again.”

However once you had got over the disappointment of failing and are picking yourself up (tomorrow I hope), I suggest that you read my article that can be found on our Home Page “The Resubmission Statement – why a good one is your key to success on resubmission”. It is really important to understand what you did wrong and why your approach was not successful, so that you can avoid the pitfalls next time. So PLEASE take some time to read this.

Often the problem with a project like the RAP is that you become so involved in it over the 6 to 10 weeks of producing it, that it becomes ‘your baby’ – you fail to see what is wrong with it yourself. Sometimes you have to stand back from your own work for a while to help become more objectively critical of it. So even though you may well feel like it – don’t curse the marker and wish them eternal damnation (or murder your mentor either)!   May be if you re-read your RAP now (presuming that you haven’t looked at it since May), some of the marker’s comments might be more obvious and ring true and you will see why you didn’t pass the Assessment Criteria (Appendix 1 of the Information Pack).

If you can, perhaps get someone (family or good friend) to read your report and the marker feedback too as they may also be able to help view your work from a different angle. For example some RAPs fail on Presentation, as they contain a ‘sea of numbers’ and the person reading it ‘drowns’ in all the figures. You may think you have done an excellent job of ‘analysing’ each and every trend and figure going, meanwhile the reality was that the marker was so totally overwhelmed by wave after wave of numbers that were submersing them in every sentence, they couldn’t keep up with them. If you ask a family member to read your work, you may find out that they too find it difficult to understand exactly what has gone on when there are so many figures in every sentence. (The answer to this particular problem as @bassaniobroke and I have mentioned many times is: Graphs! Graphs! And more graphs! In fact it was mentioned too by the OBU marker in our FAQs page so take a look for yourself)

Remember however that this friend/ family review is intended to be a ‘constructively critical’. Don’t take it personally – the intention is to help you see your weaknesses and although yes, this is a blow to the ego in the short-term, the overall purpose is to give you insight into what went wrong so that you can overcome the shortcomings and be successful in the longer term. So try to take it in the right spirit– your mark sheet may have delivered a body blow but you are not down and out, so just take comments from friends and family on the chin! (Easier said than done I know when it comes to criticism, but in life sometimes you just have to ‘Man (or Woman) up’!)

As I have indicated in my article: any resubmission should start with the Resubmission statement, not end with it (except for a few minor revisions to it in the final stages). So I want all of those who failed and are serious about succeeding to take their first steps towards success by starting to do their draft Resubmission Statement.

We have an article on Evaluation as that, hand in hand with Information Gathering and Referencing is the most common cause of failure. I have also recently compiled a 3 part article on Referencing to help deal with this problem. So read those and use then to see how you can adopt some of the advice as you plan your revised RAP. The Evaluation and Analysis article is mainly angled at Topic 8 as statistically more people will choose that (and consequently more fail it too) than any other topic but it does give some advice in Part II on what evaluation means in the context of all topics and the RAP.

I have also prepared an article and Forum post ‘Marker Speak – Understanding what your marker really meant in their feedback comments’ – so please add any phrases you don’t understand and I’ll update it with my interpretation of what the marker probably was getting at (but please this is for everyone – it is not intended for me to reply individually and so just the words and phrases that you find hard to understand – not ‘normal’ comments that you disagree with)

I hope that this will help you all.   (By the way there is also an updated OBU Info Pack so take a look that too).

Sorry, but after working hard for the last few months I am actually now on a hard-earned break to re-charge my batteries so won’t be available to answer the many inevitable queries arising right now ! But back soon…

Trephena – OBU Forum Moderator