Phil's G.I. Joe Page
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Sunday, August 22, 2004
I guess I'll be able to make this post sooner than intended. I present to you: The Saga of How Phil Got an "F" Okay, so it's not a great title. That's not important. What is is that I did get an F in one of my college courses. "Contemporary Computer Topics," to be exact. Now, if you remember, this is the course I claimed would be really easy back in Spring Quarter or the last school year. (That's 2004, for those of you keeping score.) Anyways, this course was essentially, meet in groups and make up a 4000 word report about an imagined technology which could be developed from existing wireless internet resources. My group came up with Wi-Scape, a sort of virtual world where art could be displayed, except that the virtual world would be the real world. Simplistically, this was virtual graffiti in an existing 3-D space. Sound pretty cool? That's what we thought, too. so did the professor. We did everything required and did it on time, if not earlier. The teacher was impressed. We were happy. We left Finals Week thinking we'd done good. End of story, right? Apparently not. For the next two weeks after school's out, I'm on my California road trip, and effectively cut off from the internet. I come back home and check my grades, and I'm surprised to find an "F" as my grade for the course. I'm nervous, but I take some comfort in the notice that grades are not yet finalized. So I forget about it for a few weeks. I remember that grades are now finalized and recheck the school website. ...It's still an "F." Now I get into a nice little panic. I use the e-mail address the teacher gave us students to ask about my grade. After all, I checked with one of my group members and he got an "A." This has to be a mistake, right? No response to the e-mail. I find another e-mail address for her and try again, thinking she may have disregarded my earlier message as spam. No response. I wait for a long while thinking the teacher will write back. No luck. Finally, I get up the courage to e-mail the department faculty member in charge of grades. Here's how the e-mails went down. Me: Hello, I'm writing this e-mail as an inquiry into the grade I received for ICAM 130. I believe the F I received for this course has been in error, and I have repeatedly tried to establish contact with my instructor [instructor name] at both her [instructor e-mail #1] and [instructor e-mail #2] e-mail addresses without success. I know confusion has arisen before over this class being cross-listed with VIS 149. Any assistance at all would be appreciated. Faculty Member: Hi Phillip, When did you take the class? [Instructor]'s new email address is: [instructor e-mail #3]. Once you let me know when you took the class and your student PID number, I can try to contact [instructor] to inquire about your grade. Me: I took the class Spring Quarter '04. Faculty Member: What is your PID? Me: Whoops, forgot about that! [PID number] Faculty Member: Hi Phillip, I emailed [instructor] this afternoon. I will let you know when I hear from her. Instructor: [Faculty Member]: This is incorrect. Phillip did not earn an F, but an A. I am very sorry about this oversight Phillip! Phillip may have tried to contact me via my popmail account, which i have just closed because of all the spam. Faculty Member: Hi Phillip, I have received an email from Prof. [Instructor] and she had incorrectly filled in your grade. I am completing the paperwork to change your grade to an "A." The department chair must approve this grade change before it is sent to the registrar's office. The registrar is responsible for changing your grade in the system. Please give 3-4 weeks for the change to show up on your StudentLink account. If your grade is not changed by the end of summer, please let me know. Instructor: phillip: I feel absolutely terrible about the error I made! Of course you did not earn an F. I gave you the same grade as [group member], an A, and thought you guys did an exceptional project. I don't have any excuse-not a good one anyway. I haven't made an error like this before, and I hopefully won't again. I do remember seeing your email in my inbox, and, frankly, becuase i am very tired of being approached by students who are unhappy aobut their grade, I did not check emails about "grade". since I won't change their grade for them. anyway, hope it did not cause too much stress. Good luck with your endeavors. ----------- So it appears as though the whole thing was some sort of freaky clerical error. I just e-mailed both of them to let them know the school website now recognizes I have an "A" in the class. Hopefully, this whole thing is behind me now.
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| The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of Phillip Donnelly. Unless explicitly stated, all statements are those of Phillip Donnelly. So there! |
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