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I really should be studying for exams but this pisses me off, so I want to write it down and get it off my chest.
Friday:
Professor gives us an assignment related to immigration law. This is the first assignment we receive before the week on immigration law begins. On the prompt, straight up on the fucking piece of paper she gives us, it says: "Before viewing the lectures, presentations, and readings, document and analyze a case study on immigration and it's impact on immigration law."
So a feeler assignment for the prof to see what we know and think. Sure, easy. I turn it in Monday.
I get the assignment back two weeks later and I get this:
+ Show Spoiler +Hi Golgotha,
Did you see the directions for the assignment? If you don't understand the directions, you should email me, and not waste your time doing an assignment that you don't understand. This assignment required you to focus on a case study and analyze the effects it had on other cases (writing EVERYTHING DOWN).
It sounds like you didn't read the chapter, or see my lecture or the video on immigration law. I didn't see you really pay attention. I can only give you partial credit.
-idiot professor
I received a failing grade...
So I just sent her a scan of the assignment with the directions, "Before viewing the lectures, presentations, and readings.." highlighted and circled in red.
It'll probably make things worse but damn it felt good to hit send.
P.S.
I feel like as students, we have to adore our teachers and kiss ass to receive good marks. I am ashamed to say that I did this and yeah it works. Get them on your good side and A's just fall into your lap. I really wish shit like that didn't matter, our academic performance should be all that matters. /rant
 
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Yeah, the typical school stuff... Dunno how often teachers and professors have taken points from me because they at first specified "only answer the question, I don't want to read a whole page for every question" but then my one-line answer only answering the actual question was not enough.
It's annoying to say the least.
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Lol. This reminds me of when I had a paragraph about "The Islamic State raping women of the Yazidhi minority" and my teacher wrote me back that "an organization can not commit rape".
The paper in question argued for the position that citizens of European nations should receive life time prison sentences upon returning from Syria if they had fought for I.S, for crimes against humanity.
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sounds like typical academic bullshit.. you really gotta feel out your professors, and if they don't like you then you gotta middle ball for a C.. when i first started university i remember i had a religion class where i thought i was cool arguing with my professor being "intellectual," until i realized that i was going to have a much harder time if i made his life harder... so, i started being nice, stopped caring about studying/intellectual integrity, and played starcraft instead of going to class.. eventually i got an A! yay university.
most shitty professors are only teaching for the powertrip, so if you want the A then just give them what they want.. you're in university to get a good gpa and a degree after all, not to learn.
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So a feeler assignment for the prof to see what we know and think. Sure, easy. I turn it in Monday.
what does this mean? i' m sorry but i did not understand what you actually turned in. the Professor wanted you to do a case study on a real situation of immigration. I think the professor wanted you to do an interview with an immigrant, to see how this affected them and the envorement around them.
From what you wrote this assignment is not about theory, but about practice. Not what you know, but what you can gather from a real life source. Are you studying journalism by any chance or social sciences?
About the grades, sure, kiss ass and get the higher grade. I have never kissed ass. I have never got a higher grade. But i did learn the things that i wanted and studied, did assignments the way i wanted, and homework the way i wanted.
If you can put aside your pride, cause thats what some teachers want you to do, you will be able to learn and grow for yourself. Let the others kiss ass. Your grades are not as important as your education
Edit: i would like to live in a world where, the potential employer asks not what grades did you have?, but what did you learn studying this?
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The transfer of knowledge isn't really the only aim of a university, though.
An employer will not look only at what knowledge you bring to a company, but how obedient and easily indoctrinated you'll likely be.
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I had a lot of profs I didn't really like, but never experienced something like that where the instructions were flat out wrong and I received a contradictory grade. Usually just read carefully, do the assignment, and get a good grade. What would make me dislike it is if I thought the topic were tedious or the lectures were boring / not well organized.
Are you sure you didn't miss something out of the context you've shown here? Usually unless everyone else misunderstood too, the teacher is not going to be that sympathetic. If you ask a peer who didn't fail, they'll probably point out the thing you missed.
If you're right and you really didn't miss anything, then just go in during office hours and ask for a second opportunity since it was their fault. Try not to be too upset about it, since it's not like your first go took that much effort.
edit: actually to be honest, there's been at least one occasion where the written assignment needed supplementary oral instruction to be fully understood, which screws over anyone who was sick or heaven forbid daydreaming. I wonder if that's the situation here.
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your Country52797 Posts
On March 07 2016 23:46 pebble444 wrote:
So a feeler assignment for the prof to see what we know and think. Sure, easy. I turn it in Monday.
what does this mean? i' m sorry but i did not understand what you actually turned in. the Professor wanted you to do a case study on a real situation of immigration. I think the professor wanted you to do an interview with an immigrant, to see how this affected them and the envorement around them.
From what you wrote this assignment is not about theory, but about practice. Not what you know, but what you can gather from a real life source. Are you studying journalism by any chance or social sciences?
About the grades, sure, kiss ass and get the higher grade. I have never kissed ass. I have never got a higher grade. But i did learn the things that i wanted and studied, did assignments the way i wanted, and homework the way i wanted.
If you can put aside your pride, cause thats what some teachers want you to do, you will be able to learn and grow for yourself. Let the others kiss ass. Your grades are not as important as your education
Edit: i would like to live in a world where, the potential employer asks not what grades did you have?, but what did you learn studying this?
He thought it was a feeler assignment because the instructions said to do it before viewing the lectures, presentations, and readings.
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Very awkward instructions and easy to misunderstand.
At the same time:
P.S.
I feel like as students, we have to adore our teachers and kiss ass to receive good marks. I am ashamed to say that I did this and yeah it works. Get them on your good side and A's just fall into your lap. I really wish shit like that didn't matter, our academic performance should be all that matters. /rant
I hate to break it to you, but this gets worse in a professional environment, not better.
EDIT: Should clarify to agree that you should email your professor if you have an assignment that doesn't seem to make sense rather than just do it your way.
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On March 07 2016 17:06 Golgotha wrote:
Get them on your good side and A's just fall into your lap. I really wish shit like that didn't matter, our academic performance should be all that matters. /rant
I don't disagree here, it's absolutely something that happens. Positive rapport with a teacher really does a ton for you as a student. Some of the truly good teachers do a good job letting this have a minimal impact, but I think on some level it's unavoidable no matter who you are.
On March 07 2016 17:06 Golgotha wrote:
I feel like as students, we have to adore our teachers and kiss ass to receive good marks.
On March 07 2016 17:06 Endymion wrote:
you really gotta feel out your professors, and if they don't like you then you gotta middle ball for a C... so if you want the A then just give them what they want.. you're in university to get a good gpa and a degree after all, not to learn.
Really disagree with these, except for the extreme case where you somehow get a professor to just hate your guts. Maybe then something like that happens, but for me whether I had good rapport or not it was more than possible to get an A with quality work.
Harder, sometimes much harder than the same situation with good rapport...but I have absolutely never faced a situation where I felt like the best chance I had for the professor was to squeak by with a C.
Everyone's mileage may vary, but I'd have to be pretty damn lucky to go 5 years and 150 credits and never run into a professor like this if it was a relatively common occurrence.
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Why did you just circle the sentence in red and sent it back to her without actually explaining your actions?
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It would be nice to know the whole context of the instructions. Because there could have been something nuanced that creates a different meaning when you interpret it carefully. But I'm sure there are bad profs out there too
Anyway I'm curious what the result will be.
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Depends for the largest part on the professor in my experience.
I have received barely passing marks because i wrote things down in a way not liked by my professor even though they were correct. On the other hand, I've received bonus points for thinking for myself on multiple occasions.
The end result is a lack of care for grades as long as I pass and understand what's happening. But i guess I'm lucky to have studied in fields with very little unemployment on average, so i can afford such a stance better.
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In my university we have to hand in our work anonymously with just a student number attached and this seems to work quite well from what I can see. Obviously bad lecturers are just bad all the same and we still have plenty of those -_-.
Regardless I get at off as a Math student for the most part as instructions are very rarely stated with any ambiguity and grading is more objective than most other subjects.
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That's poor academic practice to me. I would never allow assessment instructions to be communicated in that way, nor would I allow feedback to be communicated like is either - are these exact words or are you paraphrasing them?
EDIT: Oh, hang on, you're Korean, is this a translation in that case? Perhaps some of the ambiguity here results from the translation.
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If I may ask what university did you go to?
I went through 5 universities (all of which I got credits from) before I went to the state's best university and earned a majority of my credits, and eventually my undergraduate degree. One of the things I always found extremely disrespectful was my classmates not being able to spell the differences between "their", "there", and "they're", "your" and "you're" citing the bible as an academic text, and receiving a passing grade while I wrote something with as few grammar errors as possible and one or two slight misconceptions, earning a B. This all happened in my 2nd university of no real reputation (just a community college with half of my classmates consisting of retired military, single moms, and the odd fresh high school grad).
First world problem, none-the-less. What really bothered me was studying abroad, making all A's and All B's, and then learning that my credits earned abroad were not earned as A's or B's but instead pass/fail, which means it didn nothing for my GPA.
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EPT
