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To start with, I've been a Research Methods TA for 2 years and never had a problem until this one summer class. However, for this summer course, I'm under a new professor who, unlike my past professors, is an extremely poor communicator (this may adding to my problems). Basically, for this class, my responsibilities include grading assignments (mostly papers for APA formatting). Yesterday, I graded my first assignment. The students didn't do particularly well because they messed up on APA formatting quite a bit. This is pretty standard for the first assignment in the course. However, three students went to the head of the department to complain about me and try to say that I needed to attend the course. They said they had no access to me (despite my email being on the syllabus with a note saying I would meet per email request). Then, I got several angry emails from students about the assignment demanding that I add points back to their grade. The thing is my previous students have never been so hostile towards me about grading. Sure they've asked about grades, but I've never had any of them command I change their grades. In addition, I found out that one of the girls who complained about me to the head of the department was a girl who failed the Research Methods course I was a TA for last year. Evidently, she got all her friends to jump on the bandwagon. My thoughts are that 1) the girl who went to the head of the department (without ever once talking to the professor or me) is angry because she failed last semester with me grading and this is some kind of revenge 2) the professor is somehow coming across as not having my back; thus, the students are trying to stomp all over me as the grader. Am I being paranoid? What should I do to improve the situation? Any advice would be appreciated (even if the advice is I'm overreacting).