Crazy professor. HELP HELP HELP?
This is my band class. My professor hates me because I didn't play a part correctly and kind of argued with him, because I thought I was correct. It turned out that he was conducting weirdly. I showed up to class on time, and participate in the performance, but I was afraid that he was going to grade me based on his personal feelings. So I emailed him if I can talk to him in person about my grade, and he replied that I will be receiving an A.
I just checked my grade, and GUESS WHAT? He gave me a C! I have never gotten a C in my entire life! I am a straight A student material. Who does that? He is a hypocrite!!! if he would've told me earlier I could talk to him in person. Now the break has started, I can't even see him. I emailed him back, now what?
Idk what to do..i think i'll drop out of college
Update:Clarification: Do you think it is valid for me to dispute my grade? I believe I have a fair argument here.
Comments
I agree your best bet is to drop out.
First, if this is all it takes to make you want to drop out of college, you probably should withdraw, because you're not ready. You may well be ready at some point down the road, and if you spend your savings and/or use up your financial aid eligibility before you are ready, you may very well be unable to return to school, and you'll end up missing out on the best that college has to offer.
To your question "Do you think it is valid for me to dispute my grade?" my answer is no. You still don't know how your grade was calculated. If you don't know how it was calculated, you can't possibly know that it was miscalculated. The only valid reason to dispute a grade is that the grade was miscalculated. So no, you don't have a valid grade dispute.
Your argument appears to be one of the following
- I deserve an A because I showed up on time and participated in a performance.
- I deserve an A because the professor predicted in an email that I would earn an A.
- I deserve an A because "I am a straight A student material."
None of those is a good argument.
Showing up on time and participating in performances doesn't mean you deserve an A. That's the basic stuff that is expected of everyone. Since you don't mention anything else about how well you did except that (a) you played something wrong, (b) instead of accepting correction and fixing the problem, you insisted that you were doing it the right way, and (c) even when you finally accepted that you had done it the wrong way, you insisted on blaming the professor for your mistakes, we aren't in a position to know whether you earned an A.
Your professor may have said that you were going to get an A because that's the grade you earned. If that's the case, then I expect him to discover that as he shows you how your grade was calculated, and then your grade dispute should be successful. But it's also possible that you earned a C and he made a mistake in telling you you were getting an A. If that's what happened, then you deserve an apology, but not an A. You say that if you had known you were only earning a C, you "could talk to him in person." I'm not sure what you mean by that, but I suspect that you mean you could have talked him into giving you an A you did not earn. I doubt that that's true, and in any event it *shouldn't* be true. If, however, you mean that if you had known you were earning a C you would have begun working harder and earning better grades, then the fact that you waited long enough for him to be able to actually *tell you* what grade you would end up with at the end of the semester, rather than just telling you how you were doing at the moment pretty much means that you are mistaken. Of course, maybe he didn't tell you you were earning an A at all, and just said something like, "As of right now, you have an A in the class." That's completely compatible with your performance sliding and you ending up earning a C.
In any event, even if you had never earned anything but A's in your whole life, that wouldn't mean you earned an A in this class. Maybe this time your performance just wasn't that great this time; maybe you didn't adjust fast enough to increased expectations. You are not graded on the kind of person ("A student material") you are, or say you are, but on how well you demonstrate mastery of the course material. Misplaying a part and then insisting that you are right to play it the way you did once you are corrected does not sound like demonstrating mastery. Maybe this was one minor incident in the class and you played beautifully the rest of the time; I don't know. But if you were only going to include one story in your explanation of why you think your grade was miscalculated, this was a bad one to choose.In addition, I think it's important for you to know that just about everyone who says "I am an A student" is lying (I have no idea why, but if you look up the transcripts of "A students," they tend to have very few A's), so not only is it irrelevant that you are an A student, but also just saying that you are suggests to a lot of professors that you are actually struggling in many classes. Also, when you make an error like "I am a straight A student material," that doesn't really invite confidence that you receive A's in classes that stress writing.
When school resumes, make an appointment with the professor and ask politely how your grade was calculated. *Then*, if you can show that it was miscalculated, you will have a valid grade dispute. If so, I hope that you are successful, because of course you deserve to have the grade you earned recorded on your transcript.
If the teacher was "conducting weirdly" wouldn't that mean everyone else in the band would have played incorrectly, not just you? So unless everyone else got a lower mark then it was just your issue and you deserved what you got.
Life is going to be very difficult for you when you go out in the real world because you are NOT going to be "A material" for every supervisor or boss you have. Dropping out of college over this is and immature response. Deal with it. Life is ups and downs and apparently you don't know how to handle the downs. Until you do, like I said, life is going to be very difficult for you.
Mircat has a very valid argument. Get used to it--real life is going to be just like that. Besides, a C in band? Only matters if you're a music major.
I'd reply to his going off subject with the aid of asking questions on matter. If he's educating on Greece and Rome, ask questions concerning the studying. Start the questions with "Um -- i know that is off subject of what you might be talking about, however I was once questioning..." Reference the studying, and so forth, and this may increasingly support quite a bit, and let him recognize that he is off subject and scholars wish to comprehend what is going on within the reading. I am hoping that helps!
If you are smart enough to get A's all your life, then you must be smart enough to know that in ten years, that C won't matter a bit. Quitting school would be the biggest mistake of your life. You best rethink that.