I just got my final grade in my History and Popular Culture class. I got an 89.8%, which translates to a B+. Yay me, right?
This was a tough term. Not because of the class, that was easy. But because of the logistics involved in taking it. Suffice it to say that many of my assignments suffered due to my inability to properly focus on my school work. I know, it's a poor excuse, and I only have myself to blame. But even so, I worked hard on it. And that research paper, though it had its flaws, was damn good, IMHO. At least good enough to warrant just a couple of points (I got 250/300) to bump me up past that 0.2%.
The thing about it is, the flaws were mainly in my citations. Because I didn't cite things properly in my bibliography, or in my footnotes. Ugh! I fucking hate that shit! Seriously? I got deducted points because my bibliography entries weren't properly indented? Never mind that the citations are clearly defined, and there is no question where the information came from, and you can clearly verify that I got the information from that source (which, you know, is what citations are for, right?).
At this point, I wish I could just drop out of school. I'm so irritated with academia right now.
3 comments:
I feel your pain. That's close enough that the grade should have been rounded up. It would have been in my class. Some instructors are just jerks.
Sorry to hear about that. When I assign papers in my writing class I do a "rising" scale for things like references. First paper, I indicate the correct formatting but only take off a minuscule amount for mistakes. Second paper, after they've had the warning and been shown the correct way, I take off more and give another warning. Third time I take off quite a bit.
I would agree with that, Charles. However, in an online school such as I go to, you generally do a single paper per term. And each teacher has different things they look at. For instance, most of myclasses have used the Turabian style (one used straight Chicago), but this class was the first time I had ever heard of indenting the bibliography entries. I'm sure it's there and I missed it. But if no other teacher brought it up...
My main beef with this is that citations are so heavily graded. And for what? It just doesn't make sense to me, which is why I often wonder if I am cut out for this stuff.
And the .2% is like a thumb in my eye.
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