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I agree. I remember spending significant effort on a creative essay in highschool. I had been a high performance, motivated student who was willing to jump thr

I agree. I remember spending significant effort on a creative essay in highschool. I had been a high performance, motivated student who was willing to jump through every hoop and do the work. My english teacher took the essay, gave it a C. I asked them for clarification about the logic of how they gave me the grade. They simply couldn't answer. There was no explanation. It seemed to me that they just picked a random grade out of a hat and couldn't explain why (probably more than likely). My teacher blew up and accused me of "grade grubbing." At that point I realized that the grading criteria was arbitrary, probably based on how they felt and if they like you personally and decided that school didn't matter since there was no actual standard for grading. I never recovered my ability to care about school and stropped trying. My reasoning was: "Well...if I try really hard and do all the work, they will give me a random grade based on how they feel anyways so this is a waste of time." It was entirely a disagreement and disrespect for institutional authority. Likewise, I have had constant struggles with VPs and Directors and CEOs I have worked with, challenging them on their behavior and lack of analysis, strategy, deep thinking. Pretty much I need to work for myself, it is usually only a matter of time. God help you if you try to tell me what to do from an authority position and I don't agree with your plan. I just start fighting with people, can't stand it.

skissane 3y ago
I think this really depends on the quality of the school. I went to a Catholic school (in Australia). We had to write a year 9 religion essay on a moral issue. I wrote this lengthy essay on why drug prohibition was immoral, with copious references. Our religious education coordinator was some hyper-conservative Catholic, when he saw my essay, he took it off my religion teacher, and in his rage at it he gave me a mark of 1.5/20 and accused me of plagiarism. I appealed to the school principal, who was a religious brother (De La Salle brothers). He upheld my appeal, dismissed the plagiarism allegations, and ordered my mark changed to 19.5/20 I totally admit that my essay was designed to cause controversy-it was an expression of my anger at the school, by deliberately choosing a topic they would dislike. This was not a new thing for me - in year 2 I was asked to write a short story about a clown. I hated the task, so in my anger I wrote one about a clown that gives primary school children cocaine. At the end of the story, he was executed in the electric chair. The school was so disturbed by this they called my parents in for a meeting-why is an 8 year old writing stories about cocaine? My parents assured them they were respectable people who had nothing to do with drugs, and my knowledge of the topic came from watching the evening news
cgriswald 3y ago
I had a college professor change my first grade in the class from a B to a D and give me a lecture about “subjective versus objective grading”, after I asked him for feedback. Apparently my B was supposed to be one of those and the D the other one. His rant didn’t have anything to do with subjectivity or objectivity so I’m not certain which was supposed to be which, but he acted like giving me the B was doing me a favor. This guy clearly grade-grubbed through school and assumed everyone else is just there for the grade too. I just wanted some feedback other than “B”, so I could, you know, learn.

skissane 3y ago

I think this really depends on the quality of the school. I went to a Catholic school (in Australia). We had to write a year 9 religion essay on a moral issue. I wrote this lengthy essay on why drug prohibition was immoral, with copious references. Our religious education coordinator was some hyper-conservative Catholic, when he saw my essay, he took it off my religion teacher, and in his rage at it he gave me a mark of 1.5/20 and accused me of plagiarism. I appealed to the school principal, who was a religious brother (De La Salle brothers). He upheld my appeal, dismissed the plagiarism allegations, and ordered my mark changed to 19.5/20 I totally admit that my essay was designed to cause controversy-it was an expression of my anger at the school, by deliberately choosing a topic they would dislike. This was not a new thing for me - in year 2 I was asked to write a short story about a clown. I hated the task, so in my anger I wrote one about a clown that gives primary school children cocaine. At the end of the story, he was executed in the electric chair. The school was so disturbed by this they called my parents in for a meeting-why is an 8 year old writing stories about cocaine? My parents assured them they were respectable people who had nothing to do with drugs, and my knowledge of the topic came from watching the evening news

cgriswald 3y ago

I had a college professor change my first grade in the class from a B to a D and give me a lecture about “subjective versus objective grading”, after I asked him for feedback. Apparently my B was supposed to be one of those and the D the other one. His rant didn’t have anything to do with subjectivity or objectivity so I’m not certain which was supposed to be which, but he acted like giving me the B was doing me a favor. This guy clearly grade-grubbed through school and assumed everyone else is just there for the grade too. I just wanted some feedback other than “B”, so I could, you know, learn.