<p>Hey, I have pressured my history professor for the last four weeks to return my final paper so that I could keep copies. He has not given back my paper. It’s going on week five, and it angers me that this is still happening. My mother, although optimistic I would get it back, has told me to move on with my life. He has probably never graded my paper but put a final grade he thought sounded reasonable when grades were due last month.</p>
<p>Should I move on since he won’t give me back my paper in a timely fashion? Or pressure him to see what is going on?</p>
<p>Can you go to your department chair? Profs are supposed to give back papers to students who ask for them. It may be the prof is terribly forgetful and that looking for your paper in his mess is not high on his priority list.</p>
<p>Could you make another print-out of the paper and give it to him outside of class? It is best to discuss things that just concern you (and not the whole class) outside of class.
I am guessing your professor has either lost the original paper or is behind in his grading. If he does not grade the paper for the entire class, I wonder if he will just give all the students a perfect grade for that particular paper, or NOT factor that paper into the calculation of the final course grade. I can understand your concern.</p>
<p>Don’t let him blow you off. Period. You met your responsibilities by turning in a paper. It’s only right that he meet his by evaluating it and returning it to you.</p>
<p>Tenisghs, it may be that he is not grading his own papers. He may have hired a ghost grader and he may not have them back. Happens and is not good.</p>
<p>I just fought this issue in my daughter’s hs math class. She has to work hard and get tutorial help in this class from time to time. The teacher didn’t grade papers the entire last half of the six weeks. When my daughter asked her about her average every class, the answer was that she was catching up and correcting the problem caused by the server going down and that she would find out the next class - but she thought my daughter was doing fine. Grades came out, and she wasn’t doing fine. Neither were most of the other students in the class. Basically, they didn’t understand the material from the last three weeks, and some of it was on the all important and blessed TAKS test. (Students who don’t pass are required by our district to take TAKS tutoring as an elective.) I made a trip to the principal’s office. I could get no recourse on the grade because the teacher would have to “admit wrong doing.” However, the principal paid her a visit and papers are handed back the next class now.</p>
<p>I agree with Marite that perhaps going to the department chair is in order, particularly if you won’t have this prof again and fear no retaliation. After all, you are a paying customer.</p>
<p>It is quite possible that Prof. has never seen your paper. It could have been graded by a TA and lost in the shuffle. In theory, the TAs are supposed to deliver the graded papers to the prof., but there’s not a lot of incentive for either to be really motivated to make that happen.</p>
<p>While certainly desirable, I don’t think there is a law anywhere that graded papers have to be returned. I know I rarely got final exams back. I can’t believe anyone today would not have an electronic copy on their computer.</p>
<p>We’re not talking law, here, but college practices and expectations. Tenisghs is absolutely right. The point of making comments on a paper is not for the prof to remind himself of herself of the quality of the paper, but to help students. A prof really has a moral responsibility to return papers to students in a reasonable time. Indeed, I do not see why papers are not made available to students as soon as grades have been turned in to the registrar.</p>
<p>I know that. Many profs don’t even write comments–just a grade. It’s just a college paper-get over it. they’ll write many more just as memorable I’m sure.</p>
<p>Barrons - for $40,000/year, which translates to $5,000 per class, the prof can get her graded paper back to her. It’s his job. There is no law about it, but a student at a university has the right to ask for such a thing. She’s there to learn and get an education, which is not going to happen unless the professor does his job.</p>
<p>Sorry, I don’t agree. If students have the same cavalier attitude toward college papers-- “it’s just a college paper”–, do profs have the right to expect much in the way of effort or originality? How do they expect students to improve? How do they expect students to know when they’ve got a concept entirely wrong? That their style was awkward? That the sources they used were unreliable or were not cited properly?</p>
<p>My S has profited immensely from the marginal comments on his homework (even though he was only an auditor). The homework was returned in a timely enough manner to help him with the next lot of problems. I would wish the same for Tensighs.</p>
<p>I think what frustrates me most when I hear stories like this and go through what I go through with the teachers in my daughter’s hs who demonstate this cavalier attitude is the lack of professionalism. What ever happened to an honest day’s work for an honest wage? I do not think teachers are paid enough in our state, and I know that college pay scales can differ widely. But I also think if you accept one cent to work as a teacher or prof, then you have a moral obligation to teach the student - and that means really grading papers (comments in the margins, etc., returning them in a timely manner) and being in your office or classroom to tutor students during designated times. No phone conversations. No chatting it up with other teachers. No calling the babysitters for non-emergency check-ins on the kids. It means really being there for the student when they need it. I am frustrated with many of the teachers in our public school who want a part-time job and a full-time paycheck. I think they should be accountable to the tax payers for their job performance just as I think college profs should be accountable to the students and parents that pay the tuition that pays their salary. </p>
<p>Thanks for letting me vent. I feel much better now!</p>
<p>i’m in high school still but i have one of those teachers too. i turned in my massive junior thesis, which i worked so incredibly hard on, 3 months ago. our teacher still hasnt given them back, and says she wont for a while. every single other class (this is a grade-wide paper) has gotten their papers back, and half of them turned theirs in a full month after we did (and got them back a month ago). this woman has a total of 40 papers to grade, and we’ve had 2 week-long vacations during the 3 months she has had to grade them. it is absolutely ridiculous esp since this paper is worth 40% of our term 4 grade. and she continues to assign us more papers, projects, and tests in the meantime. it really makes me mad because she is getting paid to teach at one of the top schools in the country, it should be her 1st priority. we get penalized (aka we get a ZERO) on the paper if we turn it in 5 MINUTES after the due date, and yet she just acts like its no big deal if she gets around to correcting them. esp since junior year is so stressful and grades are so important. </p>
<p>I don’t think final exams must be returned to the student; in fact, usually they are not. However, papers should definitely be returned to the student, or else how would one know what one got wrong and improve on the next paper/come exam time? I would try sending the teacher an email or go in during office hours and reason with him/her. Also, it might be more effective if you had other students come with you.</p>