My question is about the papers we were assigned to write. I'm guessing that the papers were graded randomly by all three professors. I'm extremely unhappy with my grade, and the worst part is that when I compared my paper to a classmates, who used the same layout as me for the paper, his grade was 15 points higher than mine. My paper was penalized for the way I organized it. I was criticized on every part of my paper, while he had NO comments that I could see. My paper wasn't perfect, but I thought it was a quality paper and I deserved more. My question is how can these papers be graded so differently, making it unfair for some of us?

-- Serafina (sargese@excite.com), April 12, 2001

Answers

Anyone who wants to discuss his/her grade needs to speak directly to the instructor who graded it. The three faculty who teach this class met and discussed how papers would be graded. Some instructors marked grammar, punctuation, etc. mistakes directly on the papers, others didn't. That doesn't mean that they didn't take off for these mistakes -- they did. There were also standard deductions for lack of references, missing peer review sheets, etc.

-- Sharon Gabel (gabel@oswego.edu), April 23, 2001.

I definitely agree with Serafina. My paper was torn apart. My paper was marked off for cites, commas, organization...everything! I would't be so upset if it weren't for the fact that a another class mate's paper had nothing marked on hers and didn't even do most of her cites. I'm not a science major and have never used this format of citing but I did all the research I could and cited the best I could.

I have to wonder how well I could have done if one of the others had graded my paper.

-- Jamie (Freshair@rochester.rr.com), April 22, 2001.