Problems with my TA

[deleted647690]

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I'm thinking about dropping a general education class. If I do this, I will drop below full time, which may not be good. I will lose scholarship money. Right now, I have a B in the class. I feel like I can't take anything lower than an A at this point, as my GPA right now is a 3.5 overall and 3.4 cumulative; I'm a junior. I'm trying to mend my GPA as much as possible, and I can't take hits, especially from a class that was supposed to be an easy A.
On the first assignment, she told a bunch of us in class that we were being racist based on the way we said things. The assignment was about a certain group of people in a certain country, and why there have been more Olympic athletes from that area than from other areas. I accidentally generalized the entire country instead of specifying this area, and that was racism. None of us really would have caught this, especially since this class has nothing to do with racism/equality.
Her comments on my paper come off as very condescending/rude, and I feel like she thinks I'm pretty stupid.
She is very evil with her grading. I keep losing points for citations on assignments; apparently, I'm not doing it correctly in her eyes. On the first assignment, I cited as I had in all previous classes, and that wasn't good enough. We were never clearly told what she wanted for formatting.
On recent assignments, I am still losing points because she has not been clear in expressing what she wants from us in terms of citation format.

She has also taken points off for grammar. Knowing that I read over and checked, I asked her to tell me where I made grammar mistakes. After rereading it, she says that she couldn't find any mistakes, and it must have been an issue with my "tone", "it wasn't academic enough". BS

I'm starting to get pretty fed up with this TA.

My friend took the class before, and said that it was an easy A. After speaking with the TA, it seems that they wanted the course to be harder, but I just think she is an unfair grader.

I'm still scoring above the averages for the papers, which have been very low, especially since this is supposed to be an easy gen ed class.

 

[Hospitalized]

Have you visited office hours?

 

[ivorypearls]

I'm a TA at my institution and we take several steps to eliminate potential biases (we are blinded to the names of the papers we grade, several TA's will switch off grading from week to week. and our professor looks over each and every grade). If you feel that you are being unfairly graded in any way, you should notify the professor immediately. Of course if it is an issue with performance/studying habits, it would be a good idea to see the professor as well. They would probably provide advice more comprehensive and constructive than the TA could provide

 

[Ismet]

If she's a grad student, she answers to someone. Talk with the department head or someone higher up in the department before dropping the class.

(I'm assuming the TA is the "professor" for this class, I had a couple TAs acting as sole instructor for some of my freshman English and foreign language classes. If there's an actual professor, talk to them before going above their heads)

 

[tiedyeddog]

If she's a grad student, she answers to someone. Talk with the department head or someone higher up in the department before dropping the class.

(I'm assuming the TA is the "professor" for this class, I had a couple TAs acting as sole instructor for some of my freshman English and foreign language classes. If there's an actual professor, talk to them before going above their heads)

I second this. A faculty member must be over this course, talk to that person and document everything.

 

[BeMD13]

It is pretty late in the semester, but would they allow you to switch sections? I had a problem with a TA running my lab and I was able to swap out into another section of the same class. Mine was only about 3 weeks into the semester but I just had to get a few signatures and that was about it.