[Evaluations...]

Hi respectyourheart, hang in there! I believe that as long as you know you have held up your end of the bargain by being clear about what the expectations are and giving them the tools to do a good job, their issues and complaints are something you cannot control and stem from a grade inflation/everyone is special culture that they've grown up in.
So be honest with them and yourself and don't lower your standards for any fear of them. They are not customers.

[Evaluations...]

Thanks, PowderRiver! Indeed here at Maryland we do seem to get a lot of kids who believe the 4.0 gpa they had in high school should automatically translate into the same in college. And yes, this is an entry level course (the student in this exchange of emails is a freshman). Anyway, it is possible that after this semester, I will not teach anymore, because my husband got into Stanford so we might move there in the Fall! And then I will just be a dutiful housewife/dissertation writer ) No more bad evaluations. Ever.

[Evaluations...]

Case in point: here's how I handled someone's complaint about not having high enough grades this morning. Was this okay? I am discouraged by the fact that the first instinct they have when their grades are not up to their expectations is to blame the questions or the grader, rather than look at themselves and wonder how THEY can do better. I must be crazy...

 

His email:

 

Hello I am contacting you in concern to the grades ive been receiving on the homework quizzes. I notice i've been getting 3.5's when a lot of the questions are opinion related. I know I read all the excerpts and try to answer the questions to the best of my ability so I'm wondering why or what i can do so i receive full credit or close to it.

 

 

My answer:

Hi X I am glad you are concerned about your grade. However, the questions are not opinion-based. They usually ask for a specific point straight from the reading and they are designed simply to verify that you comprehend the material. If you would like to come to office hours on Thursday to talk about where you could do better, I'd be happy to talk!
In your last quiz, you lost a point on question 3 which was a true/false (not in any way opinion based - the author clearly stated the reasons why "balance" is not always a good thing). In the last question, you lost half a point because your answer didn't really "answer" anything - "speaking on certain issues" is very vague and doesn't show what Murrow wanted to do in his reporting. While there were many ways to answer this question, I was looking for some key words like "watchdog", "educator", or anything that would indicate that Murrow was acting as a conscience for the public and basically telling them how to think, based on what he believed. As for your first quiz, the problems were similar: the places where you lose points are because you did not fully answer the question (for example, question two specifically asks about the popularity of mass society theory between the years 1930-1960, so you needed to answer relating to what specifically happened during that time to make this theory more plausible).
In general I think you need to stay closer to the reading and make sure your answers are actually answering the question. But I guarantee you the grading has nothing to do with opinions. I'll be happy to show you various 5/5 quiz responses in office hours if you'd like, maybe that could help. Have a good weekend, X.

[San Francisco Bay Area, CA]

I think we might stay in the states, but I am not sure. That's a good point you're making about thinking of it long-term though. I will definitely talk to my husband about it that way, too. Thanks for all this help. I basically did some calculations and while life would be much easier here in DC (with my salary added to his), we would have about $700 in Palo Alto to spend on food, gas, books, every month, after paying rent and all the bills. I think it is still doable, though of course not enviable (eating out is out of the question, as are many other things).

 

I am also thinking about looking into the off-campus employment option for F-1 students. Apparently if you can prove "economic hardship" and that you lost your on-campus funding (as I did in Maryland by moving away), you can get an authorization to just take on a job (probably part-time) to supplement your income. Any F-1s here who have experience with that?

[San Francisco Bay Area, CA]

Just assume that everything is at least 30% more expensive here unless you really search out cheaper options. Someone I knew came down from Portland and bought a pack of cigarettes. $4 in Portland, $7 here. "You're killing me here!" he said. Yeah, pretty much.

 

Re: the cigarette pack, that is a good thing I suppose. Nobody should smoke, it's stupid. Thanks for your tips. The other offer he got is actually significantly lower (24k and no summer funding guaranteed), so I don't know if that lessens his bargaining power. But if he took the other offer, I would be able to continue working at Maryland and that means I would have 22k to add to the table. So the total would have been 46k instead of 26 - big difference. But he is convinced that Stanford is better for his career than the other option (Georgetown) and I can't blame him for making that assessment. 

 

Thanks starofdawn also, I will watch out for those areas. 

[San Francisco Bay Area, CA]

Dear seeingeyeduck, thank you so much for your reply. Indeed, I am planning to write my dissertation (I am ABD) while he will begin his doctoral studies at the History dept at Stanford. It is a problem that we are both F-1 (non immigrant) students from Europe so technically I would not even be *allowed* to work (I can only work at UMD, where I am enrolled). History is not as well funded as Physics, for obvious reasons, but do you think he can indeed mention to the graduate director at Stanford that if he comes (and therefore rejects other offers he has received), he will have to relocate himself and his wife (me) which means she will lose her funding? And do you think they would possibly increase his funding? 

[Evaluations...]

Good to hear! I will apply that. I definitely don't want to just give them A's to avoid giving myself a headache. That would be cowardly at best.

[San Francisco Bay Area, CA]

Supposedly there is on campus housing for graduate students, including couples, but I looked at the prices and all the units are above $1,500. I did find a few encouraging places on craigslist though, like this one: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/pen/apa/4320709876.html

Do you think there are lots of places like this (obviously this particular one will be gone by September)....?

[Evaluations...]

Thank you vityaz and St. Andrews Lynx for your replies. I did tell them Tuesday that in the future if they really want to waste their energy and my time on arguing over something worth 0.5% of their grade, they should come and talk to me during office hours. So I am applying some of that advice

[San Francisco Bay Area, CA]

Hello, my husband got into Stanford and he would receive a $26,400 stipend. Do you think it is feasible to live on this (the two of us)? I am a phd student at Maryland and I would lose my assistantship if I were to move to Palo Alto with him. Please give me any advice you have. I suppose it would be doable if we could find housing for up to $1,000 a month. Is that possible?

[Evaluations...]

Okay, this is very helpful. In that case, I did eventually email her back saying exactly that - that of course their work isn't bad, and I just cannot give everybody As because there were several video groups that *did* find it in them to use high quality equipment on free rental from the library, that took the trouble to rehearse their dialogues properly, and also had a better script to begin with, and those people have to "stand out" by being given As because, well, they are outstanding.

 

Anyway, that is a very good tip about not getting into grade debates over email. You are totally right. I think I will stop doing that altogether and suggest they come to my office hours if they have an issue. Sometimes (like today) I feel like they write me about a point I took off somewhere kind of like someone would write to a vendor if the product they received in the mail wasn't exactly the one they ordered online (wrong color! zipper is broken! or another issue of the sort).

 

Case in point: this is an email I received this evening about a HALF POINT out of FIVE on one of many reading quizzes which ALTOGETHER amount to 10% of the grade. In other words, this person went to all this trouble for less than 0.5% of her grade:

 

 

Hi Joanna,

I just looked at the comment you left on the last question of my quiz. After reading page 498 of the passage, I grasped that Murrow believed in journalism that was "lodged somewhere in between the neutral and narrative traditions" which is why I explained my answer as I did. The video certainly exposes him taking one side which is why I wrote at the end of my answer that Murrow inserts his own ideas into the report. I feel that I deserve more than half credit on that answer. If you strongly disagree, than I understand however I did grasp the meaning of the video and Murrow's way of thinking. I was simply trying to combine what I gathered from the reading in addition to the video.
 

 

So this was my reply:

Dear X,  thank you for your question about the point on your reading quiz. I understand that you may have wanted to combine the information from the reading and the clip, but the question clearly began with "Based on this clip..." and the idea that you inserted into your answer, that Murrow wanted to remain "basically neutral", was quite far from the truth in this particular case. He was anything but neutral, and "inserting his own ideas" is very understated compared to what he did in this segment. So, I am sorry, but yes I do disagree and I actually would have given you 0/1 but I noticed that you articulated a very well thought-out answer based on what you read about Murrow in general. In general, I would recommend not to worry exceedingly about a point on a quiz like this, which is worth even less than half a percent of your grade. Instead, try to focus on what you can learn from each of these readings - what can you take away? Thank you for writing me, and I'll happily talk to you anytime during my office hours (which are Thursday after class) if you feel we need to talk further.

 

 

Do you think this was the right approach?

 

Thanks for all your help again -

 

J.

[Evaluations...]

My administration sends students email reminders to fill out evaluations with taglines like, "Now it's YOUR TURN to give the grades!" or "You may have already made comments about your professors on Facebook or Twitter; now put them where they count!" Basically, they feed into this consumerist mindset and further portray professors/TAs not as experts to be learned from but as employees to be disciplined or fired--or, even worse, to be slandered and gossiped about online.

 

 

Wow, that is just ridiculous! I don't think UMD takes it that far although they definitely encourage student feedback, and they have this system whereby if you don't do your evaluations then you can't access the data for other courses you might want to take in the future. Anyway, you are totally right about the consumer culture these kids have tranposed unto their college education... it's really sad to watch. I once left a few neutral-tone comments on a pretty low quality group video project and got this response (I quote):

 

 

My group and I are very confused about the grade we received and the comments you made. I don't think it is in any way fair to say anything negative about our video/audio quality, as many groups recorded this on cheap cameras or iPhones, as we were told we were allowed to. I also do not think it's fair to say that our lines sounded stiff and unrehearsed, as we also not actors and a lot of people are nervous while in front of the camera. My entire group contributed to the making of this video and we do not think a B- represents our work. If you could explain this further, that would be great.

 

I had to respond in several 300+ word emails to that one and in the end the student was pacified, but it really shows what kind of approach they have (one of my arguments was, you are not professional writers either, yet you get graded on writing, don't you?)... but very often I found this confrontational attitude and this idea that the grade I give is supposed to reflect what they think they deserve. It's paralyzing at times.

 

To look at it from a more relaxed (although scary) point of view, have you seen this mock piece on Harvard's grading rubric? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/opinion/sunday/leaked-harvards-grading-rubric.html?_r=0 It's hilarious. And terrifying, because my students would think it is normal. The awful truth is that my professor also buys into this grade hyperinflation because she doesn't want them to suffer from this course more than others and because she doesn't want confrontation. It's pretty dismaying, really.

[Evaluations...]

Wow, hashslinger, those tips are super helpful. I do know their names (and some rather scary things about them from twitter feeds where they talk only about boys and looking pretty...) and I do try to stress my availability to them (nobody comes to my office hours, either). One thing I think I improved on this semester is that I provided a rubric out front for each assignment, where each letter grade has an explanation of what you need to do to achieve that letter grade. I must admit sometimes I am dumbstruck when I hear students being disappointed by an A- or a B+ when I know they have done the absolute minimum possible to satisfy the requirements of an assignment. One student last semester complained about getting 7/10 for participation, when in every class he would sit in the back and overtly spend the entire period reading the school newspaper, never looking up. I had to justify not giving him a 10/10, and the discussion ended very badly (he called me unprofessional, hateful, and hasn't spoken to me since).

 

... it's a long journey. But I will apply many of your tips. Thank you so much. I am French and did my undergrad in a "classe prépa" in France which is basically like a very intense bachelor-level study where people scream of joy if they get anything above 10/20 (the cutoff point for passing extremely competitive entrance exams at the end is usually around 12/20).

[Evaluations...]

As I read through these evaluations, a very interesting picture of you emerges: you actually take your job seriously, expect them to learn, and hold them to standards. You didn't give out A's like candy. Maybe you didn't give out candy, either.

 

 

Hi, Hashslinger, thank you for your kind words. You're right, I teach at UMD, and this is a 83 person course. The professor lectures and shows up at social events and field trips we organize, and they love her (you wouldn't believe the number of ecstatic comments about her in the evaluations), they see her as a fuzzy-cuddly awesome smart mother figure. I however set up all the assignments and grade them, and provide feedback, which they really don't like. I think you are right that a lot of this is due to the set up of the course (I am the bad cop by nature of what I do) and that there is a severe entitlement problem (like you said, there shouldn't be automatic A's anywhere in college). So I think I will take the first option you suggested and just continue to be myself, ie. take them and their work seriously and grade it fairly. The one thing I can improve on though is to treat them with respect and kindness - because I think I have let myself be a little sharp/condescending at times because of the way they approach me (Why did I get only an A-? I did everything that was in the prompt!, etc.) sometimes. I think this is where I have to improve.

[Evaluations...]

Reading this thread has helped me a little. I just went through three courses worth of evaluations, from last Spring and last Fall, and I put together a list of the *only* time my name is mentioned. Right now I am struggling to get out of bed and to see the point in going forward at all. I don't know what to do or how to change my behavior. To give you some context, the courses are in a relaxed 1 credit or 3 credit format within a living-learning program (College Park Scholars) and the grade distribution for all of them is 90% A's and a few B's. I am Joanna, of course.

 

Spring 2013 evaluations

 

222 - 3 credit course

 

 

Joanna takes everything too seriously

 

The TA (in response to: “What aspects of this course need attention?”)

 

Get rid of Joanna.

 

The TA was not a great addition to the course. Her attitude was unfavorable.

 

(…) and I did not like Joanna as TA.

Fall 2013 evaluations

 

118J - 1 credit course

 

Teaching Assistant graded too harshly. This is a class where if you put in enough effort, it should be an automatic A.

 

The TA is not engaging nor are they personal.

 

The graduate assistant, Joanna Nurmis was very rude to students.

 

Assignments were graded extremely unfairly.

 

Some of the assignments given are unspecific and I was confused on what the assignment was asking.

 

The TA graded papers rather harshly which felt inappropriate for a 1 credit colloquium course.

 

 

218J - 1 credit course

 

(…) Dr. Chadha is a fantastic leader for the program; it felt as though Joanna, however, was “forced” upon the class to provide something relative to an actual class workload, which consisted of assignments and materials that were largely random.

 

Joanna needs to be replaced. She assigns way too much work when Chadha sets the mood much lighter. Joanna also doesn’t realize one credit is ONLY ONE CREDIT! NOT TEN!

 

The TA (in response to: what aspects of this course need attention?)