bigtim6656

My argument essay for english was due a few weeks ago. I took alot of time to complete it. Made sure i did verything correct. I got my grad a week and a half a go. 50%. . Normaly there is a comment link she adds to the grade page. SO i check nope no comment link. I email her. She tells me she added it so to i should recheck. I did nope not there. I email here no respones. I check on 4 computers nope no link. SO i email her again. She says rudly it is on my end so it must be your computer. Why would it not work on 4 computers. SO i emailed her back and finaily got it. I notice it seemed lacking of corrections. There where 8 out of 2000 words. I did mess up my work cit. page alittle. Then i notice two long comments. One was about how i said if we restrict gun sales fo lawful people only the criminals would have them. She says that is not true that you can control guns without preventing lawful people from having guns.
Then on the bottom of the essay she give a paragraph of why i got a F. she tells me how my citations where done wrong and to quote her ignorant thinking "The technical issues are also a big distraction. Overall, this is not college-level writing." WHAT THE ****
The Technical issues are a big distraction. I thought a good argument had facts and technical information not just persons opinion.
Seems to me she gave me a F because her opinion is not what mine is. I guess i deserve that as i knew her opinion before i wrote it
Just pisses me off that i went from a A to a C because she is anti gun. No a c or D i could have took

spaniel

By technical issues it seems she meant your grammar, structure and citations.

No matter the validity of your opinion, argument or citations, the world is not fair. If you want to receive consistently high grades don't write about hot-button topics like gun control, abortion, or religion. Opinions are split and the 50% of the time the teacher is in disagreement with you it is unrealistic to expect them to be impartial when grading. After all, if they disagree with you on gun control your argument is weak to them and they are the ones with the red pen.

You are unlikely to further our cause any and very likely to hurt your GPA. Professors tend to the liberal end so the deck is stacked against you.

Expect significantly harder grading than high school.

Duckbutter48

DUDE!!! Is she anti-gun or pro-spelling/anti-ending sentences with a preposition?

skiking

I learned a few years ago, that when you are writing an essay stay away from common sense and just go with the flow. I received a D on a paper my freshman year, and she flat out told me because I was wrong in my argument. I got a C+ in the class so I just gave her the bird and walked out.

Pawildman

Spaniel pretty much nailed it. If you are looking for someone in the education field to be pro-gun, I'm afraid your search may be long and hard. Most educators are, today, pretty liberal and for the most part, anti-gun. Their little tunnel-view of the world as they see it leaves no room for firearms. Plus, the larger and more prominent the school is, the greater the chance of it being full of "educators" who have no use for hunting and/or any form of gun ownership. They are the pseudo-intellectuals who know what's best for you and this country. But I digress... Stick to non-inflamitory topics for your papers in the future.... and, not to be a chronic critic, but your basic English skills could use a little polishing too. The teacher didn't miss it all.................

Centaur 1

X2, you'd have been better off writing about the legalization of marijuana than gun control. If you're writing about a subject that the instructors strongly opposes it will tend to make them look harder for mistakes. It also may help to stay away from topics that you personally have a strong opinion about. Sometimes you will get so caught up in the message that you're trying to get across, that you'll tend to overlook the quality of the paper. It''s been my experience that the majority of instructors are liberals. You need to feel them out before you write on these sort of "hot-button topics". Oh, and you better add politics to Spaniels list. Use this as a learning experience, it may have hurt your grade in just one class, but the knowledge that you've gained from it may save you from a future disagreement with an employer. Nothing in life is fair, but the way that you handle yourself will determine how far you get in life.

vabyrd

What did I tell you? Yes, grammar matters. Just because she gave you a bad grade doesn't mean she's anti-gun either. You might not have provided much of an argument, only your opinion. If your paper is any indication of your writing skills, I'm not surprised.

Do you use your schools writing lab to proof it? Let someone else read it next time.

Don't say I didn't tell you so. The purpose of the assignment is to provide and cite a side to an argument and be convincing. You made the assignment even harder because of your beliefs about gun control. Not that your beliefs are wrong, but it's hard to remove emotion from equation when you need concrete and cited facts.

Best thing you can do is come off your little high horse and talk to her about what to do to make it right the next time. You're learning, remember?

vabyrd

Genius, pure genius. That's one way to really show intelligence.

Handles

Ok, I'm here to help.
As a professor, the #1 thing you need to do is go to your professor with your paper in hand during her office hours (that should be on your syllabus) and have a face to face meeting with her. Politely ask her to go over the technical aspects of the paper, and how many points off those are from the total. I will tell you that if you screwed up your citiations, you very well could have screwed up your grade. With the internet, students will just cut and paste from different sites, not knowing where the REAL quotes and information came from. Ex. taking a quote from Men's Health, and sighting Men's Health while the author from men's health got that information from a study at University of Indiana. This stinks of plagiarism and sloppy work, and it is very easy to find out about. You see, your english professor's have access to several search engines that are set up just for that. I have failed many, many student papers in the past 5 years because of this, and I'm a Health/Physical Education Prof, not an English Prof.
#2. If you do not feel that she graded the test correctly after meeting with her, ask another english instructor to grade it. Bring him/her an uncorrected copy of the paper and see what he/she comes up with. Do not mention that you think it was downgraded because of content.
#3. If there is a big disparity between the two, ask your professor to reconsider, or at the very least average the two grades.
#4 If she will not do this, you may want to go to the english department chair, and/or to Student Services to appeal the grade. Your professor should not grade on opinion of content regardless of her stance on a subject. However if it was an opinion paper and you didn't express your argument well, she can absolutely down-grade you on that.
#5 if you aren't willing to do #1-4, then you need just drop it, and not complain on hunting forums.
#6 Based on your post, I'm guessing that spelling,grammar and citations were the areas that you screwed up on the most.

CalHunter

+1 on what Handles said. I am not a college professor but I do have a degree in English and also wrote about controversial subjects. They tend to grade you a little harder for that but don't give out F's just because they disagree with your opinion. If they did, they would run the risk of compromising their job (yes, they can get fired for cause).

Nothing ventured, nothing gained and you may get that F upgraded to something that isn't so damaging to your GPA. At minimum, you will gain invaluable experience in dealing with somebody who appears to lack a few people skills.