GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING SPUNK CUNT COCKSUCKER! What the fuck is wrong with you?! Don’t you understand that I’m working here? You can only have one set of criteria when you’re grading papers, you stupid fucking whore! You can’t take someone’s paper, give it an A, and then give my paper of slightly higher quality a B- just because you think I can do better! What the FUCK gives you the right to tell me that I can do better?
I’d think that you’d understand. You’re a grad student on scholarship. You know what required courses are like. You know what worrying about a GPA is like. FOr the love of Christ, bitch, you should understand how frustrating it is to be marked down based on potential.
But I’m worrying about other things. I’m writing papers for World Religions. I’m trying to figure out game theory for my fucking International Relations course because THAT instructor doesn’t teach IR, he teaches game theory. I’m reading 53298652165263163151 pages a week for Morality and Law. I’m working extra hard for Statistics because it’s required for my major and I’ve always sucked with stats.
So why are you giving me such a hard fucking time in this 112 class that’s required for graduation? If there were any justice in this world, my A papers would be getting As and I wouldn’t be sitting here practically in tears worrying about my GPA.
God… what the fuck do you think you’re doing? When the other 2 TAs and the professor’s sections are averaging a grade of A- from their students, you’re averaging a solid B. Go ahead. Tell us that’s a statistical variation or that you just got a low crop of students. Whatever it takes to make you feel like you’re not fucking your students.
We all know that you’re just grading much harder than any of the other people in charge, and that our GPAs are going to suffer for the simple reason that YOU don’t know what the FUCK you’re doing.
Why do you think that you don’t have to work as hard in a 112 class required for graduation as a class in your major? If you have a problem with the way she’s grading your papers, talk to her, but don’t go in there with the attitude, “This is just a required class and I don’t care about it.”
The 112 course was a side comment to indicate that this isn’t PhD work… it’s a 100-level course. It was largely irrelevant to my point and I probably shouldn’t have included it, but the fact is it’s a history course requiring writing and it’s extremely frustrating that she’s grading my writing that much harder than ANY of the other people in the university ever have.
The point stands: She’s grading much harder than she needs to.
It sounds like this TA is fighting outrageous grade inflation almost single-handedly, and while I think it’s a losing battle I have to applaud her. The other TAs are not doing their students a favor by handing out honor grades for average work. When these students get into higher-level classes or the working world, they will be in for a rude shock.
If she’s actually holding her students to different standards (barring cases where there’s a compelling reason to do so, such as not marking down foreign students for grammar errors), I’d agree that her grading policy is unfair, but a B- is not the end of the world. It’s not even a bad grade. A D is a bad grade. Deal with it.
I should add that an instructor who hands out A-level grades like candy is also screwing over the people who are really doing above-average work. Shouldn’t their achievement be recognized?
A B- is a really bad grade when you’re
A) working to the standard that everyone else is held for an A and
B) in danger of losing a scholarship over this grade
If you really feel you are being treated unfairly I would assume you university has some sort of review policy you could take advantage of. Either go to the professor or, barring that, go to the administration.
Before any of that however try having a talk with the TA. You may get some satisfaction or you may not but it’s best to keep the peace with these people if at all possible.
If a B- is going to lose your scholarship, then you should have worked harder in the other classes where you apparently got bad grades (unless this is some wacky schlarship that requires a 4.0 average).
I do have a scholarship (two of them actually)that require a 3.0 average, so I could relate to stressing over a B-. Talking about academic standards and work ethic is great, but it becomes slightly different when your ass is on the line. Getting A’s as candy doesn’t seem quite so evil anymore…
Well, unless he is very close to the cutoff line in all of his classes, having one class slip to the wrong side is not going to cost him his scholarship.
If he is close to the line on the other classes, then maybe it isn’t all the TAs fault if he loses out.
Of course, being graded differently than another group sucks, but college is full of things that suck (mmmm…sororities…).
I feel for you… try having your professor say (in an upper-level class), “Your research, thesis, and conclusion were excellent, above-average in fact, but I have some problems with the readability of your paper.”
His problems with “readability” were that 1) I used the wrong vocabulary (eg “disembark”), and 2) I used too many commas (not unnecessary commas-correct punctuation, just that my sentences involved “too many commas”. This means that I used big words and clauses in my sentences. Since when is that wrong?
He marked me down a whole letter grade. Grrr. “I think you can make an A next time”…if you write like a third-grader.
Plus, once last year, a TA grading my roommate’s (1st draft) paper disagreed with her thesis and rewrote all of her points, giving her a preliminary D. The assignment was of the “what do you personally think about this subject” variety. So she just disagreed with my roommate’s opinions. TAs are just a bad idea.
Plus, my scholarship requires me to get a 3.5. When you’re in that kind of situation, you panic over any lower grade, especially the dumb ones for core classes. It isn’t that you “should have worked harder in your other classes,” it’s that you have to do well ALL THE TIME.
If getting a 3.0/3.5 GPA is such an iffy proposition that a B- on a single paper is going to screw you over, don’t accept the scholarship that depends on that GPA.
They should turn down a scholarship because they might lose it? “Nope, sorry. Your scholarship sounds nice, but since unfair grading might make me lose it, I’m afraid I’ll have to decline it”. It’s not like they have any bargaining power here. “If you raise the amount by another thousand and lower the GPA requirement by .25, we’ll have a deal”.
I remember hating high school art classes because I was always held to a higher standard. I was already deeply into art (drew all the time, had private lessons, etc.) but could I ever get an A? No. It was always “I think you can do better”.
The art assignments were usually the brain-dead busywork types, so it wasn’t like I could sink my teeth into them anyway. So I’d do something (like everyone else) and get a B or C.
I got so I never expected an A in Art. Oh, I guess I got a few As, but not bloody many.
It’s certainly not right to hold someone to a different standard, especially if they are doing well. So? I don’t advocate giving away easy As, but if a person does A work, they do A work. Period.
No, they should turn down a scholarship if they’re unwilling to suck up a B- and pull their GPA up with another course, or the next paper in the same course. Somewhere over the course of 8 semesters, somebody will give you a grade lower than you feel you deserve–it’s practically an inevitability. So if you can’t live with that, free up the space for someone who can.
Actually, I knew a girl who got an extra two thousand dollars, from freakin Yale, just by asking nicely. And believe me, she wasn’t that good a student. Specifically, standard advice for high school seniors (at least, if my guidance office and every one of those silly books/magazines my grandmother decided I needed are to be believed) is to bargain for a financial aid package that you can live with. I could be in my senior year somewhere else instead of my current location, if I didn’t think that I could maintain a B average. And since my school only gives out a set number of the scholarship that I’m on, I’d be giving the opportunity to somebody who could deal with a B- as the perfectly respectible grade that it is.
I’m on a 3.5 scholarship that’s most of the tuition at this school. And it’s not just a single B- that’s worrying me… it’s that she consistently grades me like this, and we have so few grades left that there’s no opportunity for me to write enough A papers in this course to bring my GPA back up.
When I’m making my schedule, I try to balance my classes between stuff I know and shouldn’t have a tough time with (ie, required 100-level courses) and stuff that’s more challenging. It so happens that a few of my classes are turning out harder than I thought. No problem, except that a slip here, a slip there, and a course that doesn’t match the course description at all really throw you off.
Keep in mind that I DID do pretty well last year taking difficult courses. Freshman year the scholarship only requires a 3.0 and I was above 3.5 both semesters while taking heavy loads including 200- and 300-level courses, so excuse me if I think I can handle taking what looked like a schedule more suited toward my personal tastes.
And I know life isn’t fair. But when I’m working and working to do everything she tells me, and then my grade goes DOWN on my next paper… sorry, that’s a little frustrating.
