Grade Stress
Posted by Stuart at 05:27 PM on January 21, 2004Apparently the grades for my classes last semester finally showed up on my students' records. How do I know this? Because my office has been full of students asking about their grade and even asking about their friend's grades.
This semester it has been the usual comments and questions:
* Ajarn, why did I get a D? (Well, you got a D on the mid-term and a D on the Final and a D in lab. That averages out to a D.)
* You gave me a B+. I wanted an A. (This student actually giggled after she said it, so I'll just assume she was kidding.)
* I just wanted to say thank you for giving me an A. (I don't give grades, students earn grades. So no "thank yous" are needed.)
Actually, I felt a little bit bad about giving the D. The girl who got it was a nice girl who always came to class. But, luckily for me my grades are fairly objective. I am not grading essay papers so there is no room to argue for an A rather than a B+. Either you get the questions right or you don't.
But here was the new one this semester:
* Ajarn, your class is pulling our group apart!
Umm. Excuse me?! Eventually the student explained what he meant, and apparently there is a group of friends who are very upset about each other's grades. One of the friends never came to class but still got a B+ (I'm telling you, this class is not hard!) All the other friends came all the time and only got B's or B+. They were actually upset that the one friend had gotten a good grade seemingly without doing any work. That's the first time I've seen an attitude like that. Usually Thai students go out of their way to help their friends, even if it means that they don't get any credit.
Oh well, I hope they can work things out. Perhaps there is other drama going on, but hopefully friendships are not made and broken over "Computers and Information Technology"!
