Many of you are preparing to leave for college, and I’m sure you have many questions. One of them may be “I got A’s in high school, will I get them in college?” Well, probably. If you were a dedicated, hard-working, high-achieving student in high school, you will have a pretty good chance of receiving decent grades in college. But there are no guarantees. With that in mind, let me tell you the story about me, my least favorite professor and the first time I ever challenged a grade.
I had an average that fluctuated between 96 and 99 in high school. I had a GPA of 3.8 my freshman year at Naz (which is pretty good). I had A’s in 4 out of 5 classes in the fall of my sophomore year. So you could imagine my surprise when I got a C- on a poem analysis paper in my British Literature class. Especially when I had gone over the paper with my professor during his office hours, before I handed it in. I was not a happy camper.
I went back to my room with the offending C-, and cried for a good hour. Was this excessive? Absolutely. But this was lowest grade I had ever received (still true today) and my professor had told me that my first draft was on the right track. He even made some helpful suggestions, which I followed. Too bad his office hours-self was absent while he was grading the thing. It’s a professor’s right to give you a bad grade, but it is wrong when he makes it seem like you wrote a strong paper and then does a complete 180.
I summoned up my reserve, dried my eyes and went to his office hours to confront him and challenge the grade. He basically laughed at me, smirked (one of my biggest pet peeves) and told me that I could revise like everyone else. I pointed out that I wrote this paper the way he had instructed me to in our conference. He refused to engage in this portion of the conversation. Needless to say, the bad grade stuck, even with the revision. But I’m glad I confronted him and called him out on his fickleness and inconsistency. It didn’t help my overall GPA any, but at least I felt good about myself. And I avoided his other classes like the plague.
Long story short: If there’s a grade you feel you don’t deserve, talk to your teacher. It is scary, and sometimes humiliating, but is worth it. You have to keep the grades the teachers dole out, but at least you know you did everything you could to fight it.
— By Rachel Montpelier
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