When Grading is Unfair

There is nothing more frustrating than getting a poor grade on an assignment without an obvious reason. Recently this very thing happened to me after turning in a paper. I followed the instructions, used the sample paper as a guideline, and made sure to include everything listed on the rubric. To my shock and surprise I opened up my grade expecting to see above a 90% and was startled with a 75%. More disturbing than the bad grade was the critique on the paper. It was condescending and rude, and after reading the whole thing I still couldn’t figure out why points were taken off of my paper. I contacted the instructor that graded the assignment as well as the main instructor for the course to receive some clarification. Unfortunately, I did not receive any further information on why I received the grade I did.

Later I discovered that several of my classmates had similar grades without knowing what they did wrong. This assignment was very aggravating to me and another lesson in “life’s not fair” that I have had to go through. Unfortunately grading papers is one of those subjective parts of school that is never black and white.

For the next assignment I made sure to contact the instructor prior to starting the paper in order to get a clear vision of what was expected during the assignment. I can’t say that I learned a lot from the meeting, but my next paper received a 98% so I believe it counted for something.

Has this ever happened to you? How did you handle receiving an unfair grade? Did you contact your instructor? Please share your experiences!