Thursday, March 29, 2012

Snowflake e-mail to the Court of Appeals

Dr. Jekyll and Prof. Hyde,

I am a student in a different section of Intro to Hamsters than the one you teach.  I understand that you had the same assignment as our section.  Grades are very important to me, and I received bad grade on my assignment.  I worked very hard on it, and feel I do not deserve the grade I got.  The grades are not being curved either.  I would very much appreciate another opinion on the assignment because it makes up a substantial amount of the grade in the class. If you could please look over the attached assignment and let me know what you think that would be great.  

Thank you for your time,
Suzee Snowflake


Dear Suzee:

Giving you a second opinion regarding your grade on this assignment would be unprofessional.  I am confident the other instructors are capable of fairly evaluating their students' assignments.

Dr. Jekyll


Dearest Suzee:

I love nothing more than to undermine my fellow instructors.  Thank you for this opportunity.  Upon reviewing your assignment, I believe your instructor was too easy on you.  I will dutifully inform them that your grade on this assignment should be twenty points lower.  I will also inform the department chair of my colleague's incompetence so that you do not have bother with this.  I look forward to having you in my upper division class next year.

Prof. Hyde

4 comments:

  1. I prefer this to the "could you read my paper and give me feedback even though I'm not in your class?" requests.

    I'd send both emails and leave the student to wallow in confusion.

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  2. This reminds me of why I so despise anonymous evals. I offer to my classes that every grade and/or comment put on their work bears my professional credibility. if they were ever unsatisfied with their evaluation, they were welcome to have another hamster expert look it over. Grubbing dropped to zero.

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  3. I teach a general-ed astronomy course for 100, with our planetarium director teaching the other section of 100, both of which share 8 lab sections that are taught by 2-4 instructors. I therefore get this nonsense all the time. I tell any student who tries it that, "I have complete confidence in all our instructors, so they have full autonomy for assigning grades." Rarely do these students know what "autonomy" means, but I say it convincingly enough for them to go away.

    As far as "could you read my paper and give me feedback even though I'm not in your class?" requests go, I tell them, "I have a strong obligation to my own students, so I don't have time for it." I have started saying this to news reporters who ask about end-of-the-world predictions for 2012, which are getting thick.

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