A Tale of Two Students

After I turned in the final grades for the eight-week session, I received the following emails (with creative changes to conceal identities):

EnglishDoc,

I truly enjoyed this course and learned more than I thought I was going to! Thank you for being such a great professor and being tough on us. I hope you have a wonderful rest of the term and thank you so much for teaching this class!

Courteous Curtis
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Dear EnglishDoc,

I just saw my grade of 780 points which is a C for your class. I am so close to a B and have done well on all of my projects, I was wondering if you would consider boosting my grade to a B. I have never made such request and thought that it wouldn't hurt to ask. I am looking to transfer to Big State U in the spring and this is my first C which would hurt my GPA. This is my first online course and I was just learning how to do it right. I enjoyed being in your class.

Truly,

Grade-Grubbing Gabrielle

Both students earned a grade of C. Student #1 knows he got his butt kicked and truly earned it. He didn't have to take the time to write to me after everything was in but chose to do so. Student #2, in addition to being a grade grubber, is also a liar. (Do they really think we don't have access to their transcripts?) While there was no way in hell I was going to grant her request (it even says in big print on my syllabus that there's no rounding up and you get what you earn), my class in fact her fourth C grade. She would not have found herself in this position to begin with if she'd actually done all the assignments and put in a decent amount of time on the class.

Student #1 is why I keep doing this. Student #2 is why I keep the twice-yearly follow-ups with the shrink. It's really all a matter of keeping everything in perspective.