Do the Bluto

My pal over at A Cookie Full of Arsenic, Queercat, posted this letter written by one of her students to the plenary lecturer in the course she's teaching. Those of you who are university instructors will find this note familiar. For those who are not currently teaching at an American university, I include it as an exhibit of why I left the idyllic groves of The Academy. The student has received a 'B' (due to the de rigueur phenomenon once known as "grade inflation"). Like so many, however, he knows that anything less than the usual 'A' is cause for alarm and must be argued about with a higher official. Deans, in my experience, want to keep their student-customers happy. Superlative grades for obvious incompetency is normal, and failing a student is frowned upon because it costs the the college money. If this kid makes it to a dean, he may get the 'A' he's after.

Names have been removed out of respect for the victims. The spelling and "grammer" have been left just as it was found out of respect for our once-proud American universities.

HI,Professor _______;
My name is ______ and I was a student in your world civ. class this semester. Grades have been recently posted by our TA. Almost all grades looked terrible or misrepresenting to the amount of effort we put in the class, but I cant speake for everyone. In bringing up this argument, I completly understand that their was a grading system set in place,during the first week of class, and I understood the requried work inorder to succseed in the class. As we began to hand in work to ____, we Immediatly saw that she was unlike the other TAs, which
was fine. But when it came to grading, It felt like we were getting screwed, when we compared grades with our friends in _____'s or the other TA's class. In doing the work, I spend lots of time and was very careful and never took shortcuts. For example, My first article paper, I spent so much effort to get it perfect, and when i got it back I had a D. I was suprised, and asked _____ what what the problem with the paper. Her only reason was grammer, and she even stated that "I did good covering the article, but needed to becarful with the grammer." My grammer was fine, It was just her oppssetion with comas and their use that got me that D(if it was english class I'd understand). Had I handed that paper to another TA which I did, they gave me an A. For the 2nd paper Professor, I did it and went to her office hours to get it inspected, which she did and said it was excellent, she gave me a B, also due to grammer, even-though she fixed my grammer. As for the homework, reguardless of how much you read and write to answer the question, It was up to her wheather she gave you the point or not. For me the only fair parts of the class where the exams minus our Ta's essay questions, which she never probelly warned us about like the other TAs did. And I still managed to get higher grades than other kids in that class, but in the end they ended up getting the A in the class
and I got a B. So Dr. ______, I hope that you could place your-self in our shoes and maybe do something about these unjust actions, if not this semester,hopefully next semester. I thank you so very much, for the wonderful expirence in lec. and have a great summer.

Ps; Can you please respond to me in any matter, just so I could see that yoyu read this.

News completely unrelated to the note above: I signed the contract to teach at the private school, so it's all official now.