What do you do when a class is getting you down? :(

[spicykimchi]

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I'm not doing as well in English class as I wish I could. My teacher is very tough and I can't seem to write an A paper. I really wanted an A in this class but all I get are B's and C's on my papers. The teacher lets us revise the essay and resubmit for a chance at a higher grade but it doesn't help much. I can make all the changes she suggested and get the paper back with all kinds of new things she didn't like about it. My score might go up by a point or two but it's never been enough to push it up to the next grade. Going to the writing center to have them look over my papers doesn't help much either. They can think my essay is great and my teacher not. I've showed them papers of mine that she has graded and they can't make sense out of how she grades. In my last English class I got an A on every single paper so the writing center people can't just be a bunch of idiots.

Earlier tonight (it's an online class) I got an essay back that I poured my heart and soul into and was so sure I got an A. What did I get? I got a C. I completely lost it. I just freaked the heck out...screaming....cussing....crying....complaining to my friends...the whole nine yards. All it did though was give me a headache, stinging eyes, and an annoyed friend so I'm thinking my efforts to feel better are not working so well.

Has anybody else ever been emotional about their inability to get the grade they wanted? How did you handle it? Is there a way to handle it? Or am I just a wuss?

 

[bbeventer]

I think in this case the easiest solution would be to go talk to your prof. If both of you can get on the same page of what she is wanting in a paper it would save you and her a lot of time and heartache. Most profs want their students to succeed. So go talk to her.

Observation: We, people of science have a hard time writing English comp papers as they loving seeing lace, frills, and glitter behind ever period. In science we have been taught to be brief and concise, but you are smart and its do able.

Good luck!

 

[spicykimchi]

Yeah I meet with her too. I question the literal heck out of her. I stopped bringing papers to her after she graded them because her explanations for why she marked stuff wrong doesn't make any sense to me. I can't decide if I'm just stupid or if she is throwing b/s at me to cover up the fact she grades my papers on whatever haphazard whim has struck her at that moment. I'm glad I don't have to take any more humanities classes after this. I despise humanities.

 

[CatPartay]

Some teachers are just horrible and you just have to do the best you can and move on. It sucks when you work so hard and the time and energy spent does not equal the grade. English is def harder for us pre-vets, I think because there are really no right or wrong answers like when taking a bio or chem test, you either get it right or you dont. I am taking an online eng class too right now and I HATE IT> I am also taking genetics, biochem, pharm and tox and clin lab and my online eng class is my hardest and most time consuming for me. So go figure. Dont stress to much, just do your best and ask if there is any extra credit she may be able to give you to get your final grade up. Good luck!

 

[Trilt]

My inner philosophy major is crying at all the humanity and writing hatred going on. 🙁

See if your professors will meet with you and give you suggestions on your paper before it is due, and then make all of those edits. Then take it to the writing center, revise it again and turn it in. If you get a poor grade, do the revisions suggested (for the second time), and if it is still a poor grade - I'd walk into her office with a copy of every paper revision you've done, with notes on who suggested changes at each step. If she honestly believes that your paper, after several personal revisions, being evaluated by a writing service, and twice by herself is still a "C" paper, you're dealing with someone impossible to work with, and I'd throw an email at the department head about her, personally.

 

[breenie]

My inner philosophy major is crying at all the humanity and writing hatred going on. 🙁

See if your professors will meet with you and give you suggestions on your paper before it is due, and then make all of those edits. Then take it to the writing center, revise it again and turn it in. If you get a poor grade, do the revisions suggested (for the second time), and if it is still a poor grade - I'd walk into her office with a copy of every paper revision you've done, with notes on who suggested changes at each step. If she honestly believes that your paper, after several personal revisions, being evaluated by a writing service, and twice by herself is still a "C" paper, you're dealing with someone impossible to work with, and I'd throw an email at the department head about her, personally.

Great suggestions! My best friend is an English major and does some tutoring/writing review at her college. One of her comments about helping students is that many of them are missing fundamental concepts about writing a good paper, and they get marked down for it but don't understand why because usually at the college level... those things are expectations without explanations.

She also said that sometimes students tell her that she did a better job explaining some things than their professor. Sometimes it helps to get the same lesson from a different source-- it might just click better. I think checking out a campus writing service might go along way if you also try to meet with her before due dates, as Trilt said.

I'm bad at humanities, if it makes you feel better. 🙂

 

[AllieGoat]

This reminds me of my freshman English professor. I took freshman English as an honors class with a priest that I didn't know had a reputation for being hard in even regular English classes. The class had only small number of students and we would have one class devoted entirely to editing papers before they were due. We could exchange them with one another and the priest would read them and go over them with us. Then, after we made the initial edits, we were sometimes allowed to go and visit him in his office to go over the paper again before we turned it in. Despite this, I still received Bs or Cs on all but 1 of my papers (which I honestly did not feel was any better then the others). I also went to the writing tutors and had them look over it, but it did not help and when I showed them the papers he had checked they reached the same conclusion that I had, that he was just nitpicky. His problems with papers mainly consisted of the way my arguments were constructed, and although I think some of his points were valid, others were just him being picky or him disagreeing with my viewpoint. He would take off points for writing anything in a paper that could in anyway be considered offensive (I got points taken off in a paper because he said I was trivilizing slavery for making one example that he considered bad even though my whole paper was the effects of slavery on the slaves and how awful it was). He would also find problems with your argument if it did not agree with his points of view and was much less critical if your paper agreed with his social and political point of view which were very easy to pick up on from class (somebody that read one of his critiques on my paper even picked up on it).

I ended up with a B in the class because he loved my journal entries (I was having a really awful semester personally and wrote about some of that), and couldn't find anything wrong with my arguments in them.

I didn't really get emotional about this particular class because I had a lot going on in other areas of my life then and I was doing really well in my other classes, but it was really frustrating because it felt like no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible to get an A. It was an extremely frustrating experience.

Some professors are just like that, try your hardest, and don't let it get you down.

 

[spicykimchi]

Hey yeah that's what they called my teacher at the writing center: nitpicky.

 

[twelvetigers]

I made a B in a class because I apparently could not argue points as 'deeply' as the prof wanted. It had a sort of 'utopian Brave New World' theme, and even now I doubt I could get all deep and psychological and argue for or against some of these things he wanted. I don't think I could use the words 'social constructs' with a straight face.

There was a girl in the class that WAS making As the whole way through. The prof had me go talk to her. We are still great friends, and we were roomies for a while, so I got to see her expertly BS her way through many other papers. 🙂 Some people are just really good at that stuff.

 

[Trematode]

I just made an A on a paper that I totally did at the last minute and was 500 words over the word count 😕. Want to trade for a little bit?
Is it possible to ask the prof to give you an example of what an A paper is supposed to look like? Does the professor tell you what the class average is? Do you have any classmates that you can compare papers with?
If there is no bell distribution (IE very few or no people making As, lots of people making Cs, Ds, etc.) then there is something wrong with her teaching style and it is worth approaching someone higher up.
I was in a class where the highest mark was a 74 (no scaling). Only 3 people passed the second midterm (pass is <50 here). It SUCKS. I feel your pain.

Try not to get discouraged. If this is the only course that is bringing you down, vet schools are not going to reject you based on it. By the sounds of it, I do not think anything is else is going to bring you down as much as this. I wish you luck. .

 

[twelvetigers]

If this is the only course that is bringing you down, vet schools are not going to reject you based on it. By the sounds of it, I do not think anything is else is going to bring you down as much as this. I wish you luck. .

Kimchi is just an interested observer here, not a future applicant. Correct?

Regardless, she is right - a B or C in this one dumb class won't have a negative impact on your future.

 

[spicykimchi]

Kimchi is just an interested observer here, not a future applicant. Correct?

You talking about me applying to vet school? No, I wasn't planning on it. I come here because I like to hear about science, animals, and medicine--all of which are quite prominent in vet med 😛

 

[lostbunny]

Gah!! how irritating!!!

Your frustration reminded me about the biggest thing I learned in uni about getting good grades... its not about learning the material effectively, its about doing what your prof says!

We had two T.As in my animal physiology lab, and one TA marked half our labs, and the other TA marked the other half. Well my lab partner and I handed in pretty consistent work, but half our labs were always marked about 10-15% lower then the other half. Lo and behold, one TA was a tight arse and the other wasn't.

Props to you for going in an speaking with her, and taking the time to go to the writing center, etc. Maybe let her know all this you've been doing (but be really sly about it) and perhaps she'll mark properly. I like trematode's idea of asking her for an example of an A paper.

In the end, she's still a person and sometimes you just can't get an A out of someone for all its worth. But stick to your guns- if I were in your situation I would have cried about it, then crapped out on the class and either dropped it, or accepted the C's lol.

Good luck- and show that b*tch who's boss!

ETA.... do you HAVE to take a humanities? Can't you take a psychology or something? Psych is way more awesome and especially neuropsych lol.

 

[LetItSnow]

My inner philosophy major is crying at all the humanity and writing hatred going on. 🙁

I'm with ya. This has come up on SDN before, and those of us with non-science backgrounds get shouted down a bit. 🙂

The science types do the virtual equivalent of rolling their eyes and making comments about how humanities writing is all 'flowery' and 'frilly' and whatever.

In reality, though, that wasn't my experience. The best humanities writers were concise. They drew connections from one idea to the next in an orderly fashion that articulated their point clearly. They avoided 10-letter words when a 5-letter word would do. That was my approach in my theology major, and I walked away with straight A's. Nobody had to crack open a dictionary to read anything I wrote.

The worst writers - the ones who got low grades - tended to be poor thinkers. They couldn't generate original ideas or explore existing ones. They'd take an assignment, collect a random assortment of quotes related to the topic, string them together in a haphazard fashion, and then bolt on an opener and closer and call it good. Usually they read about as awkwardly as you'd expect, because there wasn't any substance. Usually half their quotes would come from class texts, which gave you the sense that the writer was lazy to boot because they couldn't be bothered to hit the library for a few hours.

Go read some biology research papers and come back and tell me that science teaches us "to be brief", like bbeventer suggested.....

Clearly I have to tune down the grumpitude. Sorry. The next few days of testing have me down.

 

[StartingoverVet]

I have to admit I am mostly in LetItSnow's camp (not just because I am a dinosaur)....

Without making any judgment on SpicyKimchi's writing ability... not everyone deserves an A in every class, and even a person who works very hard and does everything that could be asked of them, doesn't necessarily earn an A.

Writing is a skill that needs to be developed over time, and I don't think you can fully develop that skill in one class. BUT if you work hard at it, like kimchi is doing, than you will probably start to improve that skill. Maybe you start at a C level to start the class and end up as a B. Or start as a low B and end as a high B. Is that really so bad? The key is to keep working on it during the class, and not focus on the grade so much. That is something that is not emphasized enough in my mind.

In some ways, I wish grading in certain classes were given as follows:
A - Improved the most during the term
B - Showed some improvement during the term
C - No change during the term
F - Lack of effort led to worse results during the term.

This way, we would reward those who improve themselves in a class!
Oh boy, looks like I exceeded my preaching allotment for the week.

SOV out.

 

[RadRadTerp]

My inner philosophy major is crying at all the humanity and writing hatred going on. 🙁

Ha, my focus besides Genetics was Medieval Jewish Philosophy (even though I'm agnostic 😕) & Epistemology.

My take: Some professors don't grade very consistently or have higher standards than other professors at the same school. Not everyone deserves an A and even when you try really hard, you may not get what you want. My gf is a PhD student in the Humanities and I've "accidentally" read some of the papers she's graded for a 100-level course she's teaching; most of them were not A-material and she feels awful when students try very hard at improving their writing, but consistently fall short of the paper's guidelines.

However, I agree with the other people advising further discussion with your professor and possibly showing your most recent essay along with the assignment description to another person in the English department. It's quite possible that other students have had similar complaints as yours and that it needs to be addressed.

 

[kaydubs]

I'd jump in the SOV/LetItSnow camp. I have a double major in philo and a minor in English lit. That being said, I also went to a liberal arts university and I think something can be said for the importance of good writing. Lately, I've been editing stuff for my one friend who's in her last year of undergrad at my former institution. She's a bio major and super-smart but her papers can be not up to par sometimes. I would wager that the fact that she avoided any English classes or other liberal artsy classes like the plague would be to blame.

So, to the OP, do your best. I'd second the possibility of seeing your prof in advance & the writing center. if things don't improve, that's rotten luck on part of your prof just being a wee bit too cruel. I also wish grading systems were more like SOV's...

I have to admit I am mostly in LetItSnow's camp (not just because I am a dinosaur)....

Without making any judgment on SpicyKimchi's writing ability... not everyone deserves an A in every class, and even a person who works very hard and does everything that could be asked of them, doesn't necessarily earn an A.

Writing is a skill that needs to be developed over time, and I don't think you can fully develop that skill in one class. BUT if you work hard at it, like kimchi is doing, than you will probably start to improve that skill. Maybe you start at a C level to start the class and end up as a B. Or start as a low B and end as a high B. Is that really so bad? The key is to keep working on it during the class, and not focus on the grade so much. That is something that is not emphasized enough in my mind.

In some ways, I wish grading in certain classes were given as follows:
A - Improved the most during the term
B - Showed some improvement during the term
C - No change during the term
F - Lack of effort led to worse results during the term.

This way, we would reward those who improve themselves in a class!
Oh boy, looks like I exceeded my preaching allotment for the week.

SOV out.

I'm with ya. This has come up on SDN before, and those of us with non-science backgrounds get shouted down a bit. 🙂

The science types do the virtual equivalent of rolling their eyes and making comments about how humanities writing is all 'flowery' and 'frilly' and whatever.

In reality, though, that wasn't my experience. The best humanities writers were concise. They drew connections from one idea to the next in an orderly fashion that articulated their point clearly. They avoided 10-letter words when a 5-letter word would do. That was my approach in my theology major, and I walked away with straight A's. Nobody had to crack open a dictionary to read anything I wrote.

The worst writers - the ones who got low grades - tended to be poor thinkers. They couldn't generate original ideas or explore existing ones. They'd take an assignment, collect a random assortment of quotes related to the topic, string them together in a haphazard fashion, and then bolt on an opener and closer and call it good. Usually they read about as awkwardly as you'd expect, because there wasn't any substance. Usually half their quotes would come from class texts, which gave you the sense that the writer was lazy to boot because they couldn't be bothered to hit the library for a few hours.

Go read some biology research papers and come back and tell me that science teaches us "to be brief", like bbeventer suggested.....

Clearly I have to tune down the grumpitude. Sorry. The next few days of testing have me down.

 

[HelloNello]

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[Graduatedly]

Does your school have a writing center where tutors can help you? I used to be a tutor and students always found it helpful to go over papers with the consultants who had taken a specific professor.

Maybe talk to people who have received A's and ask if you could take a look at their papers to see what you're missing ...

Good luck!

 

[nyanko]

I
In some ways, I wish grading in certain classes were given as follows:
A - Improved the most during the term
B - Showed some improvement during the term
C - No change during the term
F - Lack of effort led to worse results during the term.

I would get an F in almost every class with this particular scheme.

Seems like the better I do on the first exam in a class, the less I care about the following exams.

As for what I do when a class is getting me down? I ignore it and do the bare minimum until it goes away. welp...