Techne

It didn't look good. The door slammed and my usually well behaved daughter stormed to her room.

"What's wrong, sweetie?"

"Nothing!"

Her sullen answer didn't convince me.

"Did you get a bad grade?"

"Something like that."

"It happens. Maybe we could fix it."

"We can't. It's this online class in creative writing. We get a prompt every class and we're graded for the paper. I can't seem to please the teacher. I am sure she doesn't like me."

"You said the class is online. Do you know the teacher?"

"No, never seen her, never talked to her beyond the assignments."

"Perhaps you could make an effort to know her, to understand what she expects."

"Mom, the class is online. I have no idea if she’s even on this continent!"

"However you know her decisions, which works she graded favorably. You could try to find common patterns, learn what to watch for."

This caught her attention. She chewed her lower lip for a while and I held her close. I offered her a glass of her favorite drink and sat in a chair.

"We have this natural language processing class and we're using a cloud service to classify texts and extract keywords. Let me see."

I rose and tiptoed out of the room. I didn't dream she would come back with the same scowl on her face.

"There is a pattern: out of the last ten assignments, more than half classified in the record singles from the last decade concept."

"So now you know what she expects."

Her eyebrows joined in a deep frown and she sputtered.
"Are you saying I must start producing b-rated bubblegum pop?"

I sighed.
"No, I am just saying you must decide if you want to write or if you want to make the grade."