Hobgoblins with Little Minds
Feb. 19th, 2009 01:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
offbalanceThis article is pissing me off for oh, so many reasons. I saw this kind of thing occurring when I was in high school - people who would study for 6 hours a night for a week before a test, having nervous breakdowns about highlighters and note cards, and then screaming at a teacher if they got a 94 instead of a 98.
The person I really want to slap in the article is the whiny brat who complains that he deserves an A just for working hard. Talent should be also recognized. If a paper or test is only worthy of a B, it's only worthy of a B - it doesn't matter if you worked for fourteen hours or for four. I have always believed it's a matter of quality over quantity. It doesn't matter how long you worked if your thesis makes no sense or is completely unsupported or, even proven wrong by the contents of your paper. If you worked for weeks on end and lived in the library and you still leave your arguments without support and conclusion, you don't deserve an A. Sorry. It's just the way it is. It's not just about working hard, it's a matter of picking your head up and thinking - yes, thinking! - about what it is you're working on. Quality should be the only judge. Perhaps a kind-hearted professor might be swayed to raise a B to a B+ or a C to a B- if you go during office hours with your notes and beg them to reconsider, but in my experience, the paper, the end product of all that work - has to be of a certain quality to deserve a certain grade.
Or at least that's how we rolled up at SUNY Albany.
The person I really want to slap in the article is the whiny brat who complains that he deserves an A just for working hard. Talent should be also recognized. If a paper or test is only worthy of a B, it's only worthy of a B - it doesn't matter if you worked for fourteen hours or for four. I have always believed it's a matter of quality over quantity. It doesn't matter how long you worked if your thesis makes no sense or is completely unsupported or, even proven wrong by the contents of your paper. If you worked for weeks on end and lived in the library and you still leave your arguments without support and conclusion, you don't deserve an A. Sorry. It's just the way it is. It's not just about working hard, it's a matter of picking your head up and thinking - yes, thinking! - about what it is you're working on. Quality should be the only judge. Perhaps a kind-hearted professor might be swayed to raise a B to a B+ or a C to a B- if you go during office hours with your notes and beg them to reconsider, but in my experience, the paper, the end product of all that work - has to be of a certain quality to deserve a certain grade.
Or at least that's how we rolled up at SUNY Albany.
