As mentioned in prior posts, I experienced a lot of stress and an episode of depression during my last undergraduate semester. The stress was caused by constant moving and housing insecurity for half the semester (giving me a late start on the paper) and the depression by learning of my professor being in the process of retirement/declining to be my graduate advisor. (I don't have clinical depression.)

Although I received an A- on a research paper, it was slipshod work, and (embarrassingly) probably one of the worst undergraduate papers ever written (written in a graduate level course no less). The worst part is that this happened with a professor I admired/loved, but from a practical standpoint, can this ruin my chances of graduate school? I've already graduated and can't afford to take more undergrad. courses. Even if I could, however, how would I get another professor to supervise my research when I've already produced poor work?

Has anyone been admitted to graduate school/succeeded in academia despite a poor research paper? For what it's worth, I'm finally rewriting it, but second chances seem rare in academia.

*I also experienced interpersonal conflict in the department, but my question is purely from an academic standpoint.

Edit- To get a better idea of the quality, here's the feedback I received on it: "Gemini, Your final paper has a clear thesis, includes and utilizes a variety of primary and secondary sources, and is organized coherently. Given that this is your first attempt at using Chicago Manual of Style (CMS) formatting, I attach a short summary of how to cite footnotes and create a bibliography. If you decide to do more with this paper in the future, you also would want to provide complete citation information for every note; correct numerous misspellings; and fix other common errors throughout." She also said that I received 28/30 points--a very good result. I interpreted this latter part "a very good result" as indicating that she was lenient with the grade (which I appreciated, but I wanted to impress her).

I know how neurotic/psychotic it must sound describing an A- as one of the worst papers ever written, but this really was horrible work, especially compared to the award-winning dissertation that one of her grad. students wrote. This wasn't even undergrad. level writing! Although it was written during a nervous breakdown (and in around a week's time), the circumstances, I worry, mattered less than the results. (Everyone has a reason why their work turns out poorly, but in the end, poor work is poor work.)

*This wasn't just a general course in my field but in the specific sub-field/research area that I want to study in grad. school. Normally students perform their best in the favorite classes, but I didn't take the news of her retirement/absence from my life well.

I want to add that if it's unethical to share her feedback, I'll delete it. I only wanted to provide an honest assessment of the quality, and without sharing the entire paper, I wasn't sure how else to do that.