Catchin' Up

Well, I’ve got a lot to talk about right now….

I have a teacher that is driving me crazy!! She keeps changing her mind about EVERYTHING! We had a long, formal paper to write. According to her syllabus, the only people that were to make a questionnaire for the paper were the graduate students. Two weeks before the paper was due, every student had a one-on-one with her regarding their paper. During each one, she told us that we had to do a questionnaire. I don’t understand. None of us are grad students. She told one of the students that it was possible not everyone would need to do one depending on their topic and how much information they were able to glean from secondary sources.

Not a problem. I found great sources online (16 of them). Two of my sources were studies that were done and published regarding my topic and the other was a questionnaire that was given to 300 companies across the country and was also published. So…obviously, I thought I didn’t have to make up my own questionnaire to give to companies (which she told me I should do) and try to get back AND do the statistical work to put into my findings all in TWO WEEKS. After all, I have completely valid information in my paper while the majority of the other students were having students fill out their questionnaires (I know this because a few of them had me fill them out for their papers). The teacher only wanted the students to do 10 questionnaires. Obviously, the sample size is WAY too small to get any kind of an accurate representation making the papers invalid.

She gave us our papers back all marked with her comments and with a grading rubric. She was grading the questionnaire as 30 points out of 200. Since I didn’t have one, my paper’s starting grade was 85% instead of 100%. That blows! Especially since my paper is completely valid while the others aren’t. I talked to one of my teachers about it and she said I should take it up with Grade Appeals. I will probably end up with a C in the class because of this crap. Luckily, I figured out my GPA if I were to get a C in the class, and I will still have over a 3.5 GPA meaning I will graduate Cum Laude. If I were to get an A in the class, I would still be graduating Cum Laude but with a 3.65 GPA. Seeing as how it really won’t make that big a difference overall, I may just let it go and suck it up. It was my decision to not write my own questionnaire and to accept whatever grade I got. I just feel that I do not deserve a starting point of a B on a paper that was really good and completely valid.