Welcome to Gully Brook Press

The website of freelance writer Gina
Giuliano

Friday.
I spent several days working on student evaluations. I still am not finished, as I have essays to grade, but I made enough progress to give students an idea of how they are doing in other course areas. Most students are doing fine, several are outstanding, and a few are struggling. This effort on my part always kicks off the inevitable: "this low grade is not fair," and "I don't understand my grade, I have done all work for class, and it is just as good as the work I've seen by others," when about 95% of the time neither is true. (Occasionally I do make a mistake in calculations, and that accounts for the other 5% - although "unfair" is the wrong brand in that case). Again, I am amazed, as this is something I never would have approached a professor over. So there is that empowerment issue all over again - are things different now or was I simply one of those students who lacked self-confidence and so deferred to the instructor? I believe another cause is grade inflation, and I think I have been guilty of this myself at times. Students cannot accept anything but "A," no matter what their work quality is - and the empowerment of which I write does not mean (unfortunately) that they attempt to achieve that A by asking what they might do to improve their situation - instead they make demands, and insist that my appraisal is unfair, biased, and/or just plain wrong.