Well, at least I don't have to spend 4 years struggling to keep a 4.0

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I am taking a government class at my community college because I needed another class and because I know that at some point, I’ll need to study the constitution (state and federal). I’m happy to say that after a life of being clueless about politics, not only am I learning very quickly, I’m enjoying it too.

But, this damn class cost me a 4.0 and it’s not even the end of the second week!

My class is online. I didn’t want to do online for exactly this reason (miscommunication) but I can’t get to the campus this semester.

Anyway, my professor gave us an assignment. He said to write 2-3 pp. Apparently pp means pages NOT paragraphs. :smack:

I submitted the assignment early and worked on my other classes. On Sunday afternoon, he sent out an announcement that it was supposed to be pages (apparently I’m not the only one who made that mistake). I put everything else aside and started researching. I spent about 11 hours researching and writing on Sunday. On Monday morning, I checked the online class and saw that he had already graded my 3 paragraphs. :frowning: I sent him an email asking if I could still submit the correct length (didn’t mention that I had spent so long working on it), since it was just a misunderstanding. While waiting for a response, I spend about 4 hours finishing my essay (a full 3 pages) just in case he said yes.

He emailed me this morning. His response:

Don’t worry about it. It’s still early in the semester.

:confused:

Yes, that means I have ample opportunity to ruin my GPA, is it really necessary to start so soon? I’m not even sure what his response means. Does it mean, sure send it over don’t worry about giving me extra work to do. Does it mean, fuck off I’m busy and it’s just a grade?

Now, he gave me a B+. It’s not like I’m failing. I have 2 problems with this.

  1. I wanted an A and the paper I wrote over the last 2 days is definitely worthy of an A.

  2. Grading based on the actual instructions, my first submission isn’t worthy of a B+ so I’m assuming he’s just being nice.

There’s no point emailing him again to see if he can clarify just what he means. His history so far of posting on the message board, and responding to emails, indicates to me that he does it in the morning. The deadline for this assignment is midnight tonight. So, by the time he replies, it’ll be too late anyway.

My sister said not to worry about it. My boyfriend doesn’t understand why I’m so irritated over a B+. Neither of them understands why I worked on the replacement at all (well, when I started, I didn’t know he was going to grade the first one. I thought I had to). My sister said the professor gave me a B+ because it was his fault for using an obscure abbreviation (I looked it up. Apparently, it’s not obscure). My college graduate boyfriend has never seen pp before and he also thought it meant paragraphs.

Basically everyone is telling me to get over it and move on with my life. My main problems here:

  1. I worked damn hard on that replacement and I learned a huge amount from it.

  2. I want to go to a very expensive school next year and I can’t do it without scholarships. I need a very impressive year at Community College because they’re still looking at my 12 year old high school GPA and it was dismal.
    I suppose that I can just look at it as a learning experience (and I did learn a lot and not just about gov’t. I learned that when you spend 11 hours researching and writing, saving your essay once in a while helps. I also learned what pp means.)

2

If I read correctly, you got a B+ just on this particular assignment, correct? So what’s to stop you from scoring an A in the class overall? Seems to me your 4.0 is still well within reach.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s still early in the semester.” actually sounds like solid advice to me.

3

How has this cost you a 4.0? This is one assignemnt in one class! Wait until final grades are in before commencing the wailing and knashing of teeth. GPA is what counts, not individual assignment scores.

4

seconded! Plus - save the other paper, maybe it will come in handy on a later assignment.

5

Send him the new paper with an explanation.

6

Go ahead and send the new paper - the worst he can do is not look at it. But for heaven’s sake, don’t obsess about this one assignment grade. You can still ace the class.

7

[quote=“otternell, post:4, topic:554539”]

That’s exactly what my sister said. You guys are right. After thinking about it, if I ever need to do a paper on the division of labor between the 3 branches of the government, I’m all set.
The reason I thought my GPA was ruined was from the last time I was in school. I took 3 classes before having to leave school for surgery. I had all A’s on my assignments, except 1 B on 1 history assignment. My GPA after that class was NOT a 4.0. It was definitely still a good GPA but it wasn’t a 4.0. Thinking back on it though, that professor only gave us 3 assignments and 1 test because it was an accelerated course and there wasn’t time for more.

You guys are right. This is a regular length semester so there’s more than enough time for me to make that up. I just need to make sure I understand ALL abbreviations before starting an assignment.

I’m a bit obsessed right now (couldn’t tell, could ya?) because I have managed to fail at pretty much everything I’ve done so far in my adult life and I already made the decision to drop one of my 6 classes (I don’t know what I was thinking taking 2 sociology classes). The idea of getting a B+ AND dropping a class on the same day is distressing.

I guess I can go back to obsessing about keeping a 4.0 :smiley:
And this is why I like this place. When I’m suffering from overload of Type-A personality and my family can’t pull me back to earth, you guys always seem to manage it.

8

You already wrote a new paper. Why let it go to waste? I see only upside to submitting it and no downside.

9

First, what is his grading algorithm? Does he assign points based on assignments, or average grades, or grade on a curve? That way you can tell exactly how well you must do to get an A.

Second, pp. is the standard abbreviation for pages. I advise you to start glancing through the references of papers he gives you to read - you might pick up some other notation it is important for you to know.

Third, I don’t know any college assignment that is only a few paragraphs.

But I agree, don’t sweat it. If you got a D that would be one thing - a B+ means your paragraphs were pretty good. And one more thing, to quote from a parody of “Sounds of Silence” (called Sounds of Science) that was around MIT when I was there

And the people bowed and prayed
To the 5.0 God they made

(5.0 being an A at MIT). If your ultimate goal is getting a 4.0, you will never take any classes that challenge you, for fear of losing it. Work hard at the classes you do take, but you can never tell which weird class can change your life, or even be the reason someone decides to hire you.

10

The information he gives on grading is fairly basic (on the syllabus).

Discussion board participation - 30%
Project - 20%
Mid Term - 20%
Final - 30%

I’m assuming he adds submitted assignments to the discussion board participation because he doesn’t give a percentage for them and they definitely don’t fall under the other 3. Maybe half of that 30% is discussion board participation and half is submitted assignments. I don’t know. edit to add: I just reread that part of the syllabus. In the first sentence explaining the participation, he says “readings and assignments” but the rest of it only talks about the actual discussion boards, nothing about submitted assignments.

Anyway:

93-100 A
90-92 A-
87-89 B+
83-86 B
and so on

I got an A on the first assignment and 6/6 on the first week discussion board (the online version of class participation).
So far pp is the only abbreviation he has used. I will absolutely make sure I understand all others before continuing. I have never taken classes online before so I’m used to professors telling us with their mouths us how long the assignment should be.
Our first assignment was in paragraphs which is why I didn’t question my interpretation of pp as paragraphs. I suppose the fact that he actually said paragraphs for the first assignment should have been a clue.

11

Although I can sympathize. There is one particular professor who I will maybe someday forgive who ruined my 4.0 in grad school. B+ my ass! :smiley:

12

I hate to rain on your parade here, but if you didn’t have a 4.0 then, you won’t have one now. All of your coursework is taken into consideration, no matter when or where you did it.

13

I asked about that when I transferred. They said that they make note of my transfer GPA but that it isn’t calculated into the GPA for this school. I just checked my GPA projection on the school portal. If I get an A in every class this semester, my projection is 27 credit hours earned with a GPA of 4.0. My current stats show 9 credit hours earned with a 0.0 GPA.

I have no idea what my next school will do. In this case I went from a private school to a community college. Depending on funding and who accepts me I’ll either be going to a MA state college or an out of state university. Whether or not they use both previous GPAs is yet to be seen.

14

They’ll use both, or at least look at both. I speak from experience.

When I was a kid, during my first go-around in college, I didn’t care about my grades - I was just going through the motions. After a long break, I went back five years ago, at the age of 34, with a much better attitude. I graduated last year with a 3.53 at my university and a 3.55 in my major, but my overall GPA is 2.74.

Some jobs/grad schools/institutions/programs/whatever will only take your final two years into account, or they will allow you the chance to explain any discrepancies. But others insist on looking at your overall GPA only, regardless of your circumstances. My past has come back to haunt me on more than one occasion.

ETA: Oops - I just understood what you meant on the previous GPA, at 0.0. You have nothing to worry about.

15

But why is a 4.0 so desirable? Hey, I’ll be the first to tell you that great grades are going to serve you well. But I don’t see an appreciable difference between a 3.5 and 4.0, to be brutally honest. Anyone with grades in that range is a diligent student that works hard. What else are you doing besides your studies? And what’s your career aspiration?

Upon reading your responses it seems that you’re trying to transfer to a state uni. You should make efforts to connect to faculty and admissions officers in the areas you’re studying. That might help take the pressure off and let you know what they’re looking for.

If you have a dialogue with this prof, cultivate it. At this point I might have interpreted your message as another annoying grade-grubbing inquiry. I’d take a new approach, thank the prof for calming you somewhat, and start having conversations about the course content and how it is shaping your academic trajectory. If you plan to transfer to an elite college you will likely need terrific letters of rec, and this guy - hell, every prof you have - could be a potential writer.

Just an angle to consider from the other perspective. I get students bombarding me with questions about grades all the time and it gets old. Be memorable and different in another way, and see if that gets you something more valuable than an ‘A.’

(Trust me, I’m a doctor… yeah, that kind of doctor.) :slight_smile:

16

I can’t help you much with the school stuff, but I can help you with the typing stuff - make Control S (Save) part of your typing rhythm. :slight_smile: When I’m working on ANYTHING, I hit Control S about every two minutes.

17

GES: My past is haunting me also but only from the high school standpoint. I haven’t completed enough college classes for my high school grades to stop hurting me even though I’m a hell of a lot older, more determined, and more dedicated.

My GPA from my previous school was above 3.7 but I don’t remember exactly where it fell. It’s not going to hurt me (unless I try to go to MIT apparently but I have no intention of going there).
Hippy: It’s all about money. I want to go to UCONN and it will cost me over $30k per year. The higher my grades are now, the better my chances of getting scholarships to help cover the cost. The reality is that I’ll probably end up at Worcester State and wont need scholarships. But, if there’s any chance of majoring in Pathobiology, I don’t want less than stellar grades getting in my way.

I made sure he knew I appreciated the grade he gave me. After all, I did do the assignment incorrectly and that was my fault alone. I asked if he would be willing to throw out the incorrect one if I turned in a proper one before the deadline (which still hasn’t passed). I have time and I have an essay but I don’t have permission. I’m not submitting it now specifically because I don’t want him to think I’m obnoxious.

edit to add: I plan on contacting UCONN, Worcester State, and Framingham State this semester. I want to do exactly what you recommended. But, It’s only 2 weeks into the school year. I think everyone needs more time to settle in. Besides, I still don’t have access to a car (hopefully this week! The motor has arrived!) so I can’t go gallivanting around CT and central MA without first dropping my boyfriend in RI and that gets tedious after a while.

Cat: LOL Thanks. I actually set my autosave to save every 5 minutes. Apparently though, you have to actually save the document at least once before autosave will do anything for you. When I started typing the essay for the 3rd time, I saved it as soon as I started and then I manually saved it at the end of every paragraph. I don’t ever again want to spend that long typing something only to lose it. I actually cried.

18

I understand wanting to keep a pure 4.0 GPA, but honestly, 3 months after school no one will care about the specifics of your GPA. No one hiring you is going to differentiate between 4.0 and 3.85, it’s meaningless.

19

When I tell my (Super worried and dedicated) students “Don’t worry it’s early in the semester” what I generally mean is “This particular assignment is worth so few points that in the grand scheme of things it’s meaningless as long as you do well on the rest of your work.” Since this was only 2-3 pages and he gave you a B+ for paragraphs my guess is that he’s factoring it into the 30% participation and at the end of the semester, you won’t even notice the missing points.

20

Believe me, I definitely don’t care about after school. All I’m concerned with is my ability to get accepted into the program I want with enough financing to actually be able to go.