Grades

Can I make up or redo an assignment?

As a rule, no.

• In rare situations when there is an emergency or documented mitigating circumstances, I may allow students to make up or redo the midterm and/or journal benchmark deadlines. You cannot make up or redo the final group project.

I’m confused or concern about my grade, what should I do?

You should reach out and set up a time to meet with me, if you have questions or serious concerns about

• – the requirements for a particular assignment

• – the rubrics for assessing your grade (available on the respective assignment page)

• – a concept I presented or a comment I made in class

• – feedback I’ve made on your work

• – your ideas for an upcoming assignment

• – a tense or triggering aspect of the course material and/or class discussion

• – dynamics between your group members or other classmates

When in doubt, reach out to me! I cannot stress enough how great a resource office hours are!

Please Note: While I am aware of and sympathetic to the pressure to translate one’s studies and educational experiences into quantifiable forms of institutional success (ex. high marks, strong gpa, etc.) that may be leveraged for future post-college endeavors (ex. fellowships, jobs, grad. school applications), my primary concern is helping students grow as thinkers, readers, writers, and whole people.

When you reach out to me for assistance, please be aware that I am rooting for you, your education, and your growing. I want you to get good grades but not at the cost of quality of content, depth of learning, and the growth that can only come from doing the work and working with your self. To that end, I’m happy to assist you in-class, over email, and during office hours in whatever ways I can, HOWEVER:

• – I will not entertain efforts to debate, negotiate, brown-nose, or (grade)grub for a better grade; (i.e. “grade-grubbing”).

• – I will not suffer suggestions that I should charitably hold you to lesser standard than I believe you are capable of

• – I will not continue any conversation aimed (however intentional or not) at coaxing me to do your thinking for you.

When in doubt, always reach out. Sometimes we struggle to be fully aware of all the motives that fuel and/or the consequences of our requests. So again, if in doubt, reach out!

What’s the most important thing for me to do to get a B+ or higher in this class?

You understand that I’m more concerned with your education and growth than with getting a “good” grade, and you respect this position, but you’re still worried about your grade?! I understand. The class is designed to allow for students to successfully participate and complete the assignments in a variety of ways. However my four biggest tips for success in this class and any other college course are as follows:

1. Come to Class Prepared
   • At least in a humanities, discussion based course, it should go without saying that you need to come to class, but I’m saying it here: Come to Class! And come on time and prepared to discuss the material.
   • Having done the reading does not mean that you just know the plot or can identify the main characters. Having done the reading means you are familiar with the language, the narrative structure, the patterns and anomalies in characters, and above all it means that you are ready to ask questions and make connections to previous discussions and readings.
2. Turn in ALL Assignments
   • Don’t let perfectionism or not knowing how to get a good mark on the assignment prevent you from getting started, doing, and/or submitting your assignment. If you turn something in, the professor can see where you’re at; you can get feedback; discuss in office hours; and get the assistance you need to improve! Even if you don’t choose to respond to the feedback, the worse case scenario is you get an F. An F is better than a 0. Seriously, if you get a 50 on an assignment that’s 20% of your grade, you could theoretically still get an A – in the class if you scored perfectly in all the other areas of an assignment. If you don’t turn it in, the highest you could get in the course would be a B – even if you had a perfect score on the other assignments!
3. Go to Office Hours
4. Know and Respect Yourself
   • Regardless of the goal you’re trying to achieve, it’s generally helpful to know yourself; take stock of your particular strengths/advantages and weakness/challenges at the beginning and then build a strategy that plays to your needs and situations.  You have the option to weight the project more heavily than the midterm or vise versa. If you don’t do well with tests, then you may want to weigh the project more heavily. If you know you’re not the most organize and tend to put off longer projects or if you are not good at group work, you might want to weigh the midterm more than the project. And of course, you can also weight the assignments equally.