cowgirlatheart

I don't like the term "grade-grubbing", but when I think something is off, I will go to my profs or TAs. Why not?

I've done this twice so far...

1) Intro Economics. My TA could barely speak english, so I went to see him regarding the "definition" section of our exam. I had a few terms that I had learned straight from the text, and they were marked wrong. They were fixed.

2) Upper-Level Political Science (International Violence). I'm a good student (I mean, most of us on CC are), so it was a shock when I got a C on my short paper this term, which was my worst ever grade on a paper (by over 10 percent!!). It was even more of a shock because I had gone to my professor's office hours prior to writing my paper and discussed my thesis with him. He said it was a good idea and that he was really looking forward to reading the paper. I went to his office hours with my paper and asked him to look over it because I wanted to know what I did wrong. There were maybe three words written on it - not a good indication of why I got the grade I did. He took one look at it and said "oh, I'm sorry, the TA marked this paper and I never read it". It was one of those classes where you don't have a TA in class, but they help with the grading if the professor has a large workload. I gave him my paper to look over and he changed my grade to an A-.

Moral of the story: it is definetly worth going to your professors if you think something is really wrong.