I know it's been a while since I updated. Life has been super crazy between work and school, but it's a little less so now that I withdrew from one of my classes this past weekend. We ended our fiscal year at DG, so there has been a lot of tying up of loose ends in paperwork, but I finished the time sensitive stuff this morning, so a lot of that stress is past. As for school, everything was going great in both my Human Resource and Math classes. I would have stuck it out if not for a very unfair grading curve in my HR course.



I had gotten all A's in every assignment except one where I'd gotten an A- for using no references. I explained that I hadn't used any references and that the paper was written off of personal reflection. She gave me an automated response of:

"Hello Jenna,

Thank you for your desire and commitment for wanting to improve and do your best. All assignments submitted should reflect a source from where additional knowledge on the subject is required. Some examples include reading assignments from textbooks, chat session or additional research. You will be surprised at how much more you will learn on the topic as well as how your writing will improve when you incorporate this aspect...

Good luck as you continue to strive for the best ! :)"

Okay... this was a tad irritating, but not as debilitating as the next day when she gave me a freaking F! =( I spent about 13 hours doing this assignment, and the reason for the F? A misunderstanding in the way the assignment was written. This was the assignment:

Task Type: Individual Project Deliverable Length: 5–7 slides with speaker notes of 200–250 words per slide (excluding Title and Reference slides)
Points Possible: 100 Due Date: 1/21/2013 11:59:59 PM CT [Click here to add this assignment to your calendar]

Weekly tasks or assignments (Individual or Group Projects) will be due by Monday and late submissions will be assigned a late penalty in accordance with the late penalty policy found in the syllabus. NOTE: All submission posting times are based on midnight Central Time.
The process for filling a job vacancy varies greatly, but there is the requirement for information that must be gathered and used to define the position and match the right candidate to that requirement, which is essentially the same.
As the human resources professional, you are expected to work with the supervisor of the position being created to provide the technical competencies in candidate selection.
Research and address the following:

Discuss the sequence of activities that are involved in hiring an accounts payable clerk.
Explain the data that should be included in a job analysis of that position.
Describe how job analysis becomes a position description.
Describe how the human resources professional guides the selecting supervisor in applying good selection criteria to choose the best candidate.


In her class discussions she stated that she wanted the presentation to be substantive enough that those who would be listening to your presentation if given a print out of your slides would have enough information to go back to and glean the info you spoke on. I took that as she'd wanted the 200 to 250 words in the slides, when what she wanted was the 200 to 250 words in the speaker notes... which okay, I misunderstood that point, I can see her dropping me maybe a letter grade, but an F? That's ridiculous :(

Being understandably upset, I emailed her:

I just saw you gave me an F for my latest grade! :( I did not understand that the 200 to 250 word requirement had to be in the notes section and not in the slides. My slides had the word requirements and the speaker notes were references to discussing the topics explained within the slides. You stated that you wanted the slides to have enough information that if they were passed out and taken home that the participants would be able to glean all the important facts needed from your presentation. Please reconsider your analysis of my work.

Thanks,

Her response:


Hello Jenna,

I have all the confidence in you that you will recover from this incident and proceed with success.
I am never happy about giving a failing grade. However, I do take the time to evaluate every student's work in order to grade fairly. The instructions clearly say 200-250 words per slide. I also covered the instructions to the assignment in the chat session. I have reviewed your assignment again and have made the decision that the grade will stand. Please let me know how I can help on future assignments.

Sincerely,

To make a long story short, I was incredibly upset, and I spoke with my student adviser withdrawing from that class. I could have finished out the last 5 assignments and maybe gotten a B+ if she didn't decide to play the above crap on any of the other more difficult assignments, but I found I didn't have the motivation to continue to be that stressed out with a teacher more interested in nit picking than teaching. I also wrote a formal complaint against her, not sure it'll do much of anything, but perhaps if another student down the road experiences a similar situation, this teacher will get reprimanded.

Other than that, I'm acing my math class and keeping my 4.0 average ;)