I am having a back and forth with a grade-grubber who is trying to wring every last decimal point out of his percentage grade. He asks for a detailed breakdown of where he “lost points” (cue gnashing of teeth about how grades are earned, not lost), and I mention a bunch of mini-assignments he didn’t hand in.

Oh, he says, I did those; I was hoping you would have noticed. HOPING I NOTICED. How about actually handing them in, rather than just relying on blind optimism?

It’s the last day of term. I have had 6 emails just today from students who have suddenly realized that their craptacular performance over the course of the semester is actually going to mean something, and what it means is their grades are going to suck.

All of them have tried to guilt me by telling me what grade they “need”. You need a B? Sounds like you should have worked harder and paid attention to the feedback you got earlier in the semester.

The awesome thing about having your students do peer marking is that the smackdown is self-generating. Today I got a complaint from a guy who ended up with a C for his project after the peer marking, saying he was “disappointed” in his grade.

I pointed out that the mark came from the average grade his peers had given his project, but he was still butthurt.

The irony? The guy doing the complaining was the harshest marker of the entire class: he even gave one dude a zero.