Posts Tagged "better grades"

Why You Fell Just Short of Perfection And Got the Wrong ‘A’. What To Say When You Do.

Posted by on Jan 8, 2013 in Communicating with Professors, General, Interpersonal Communication | 20 comments

(Happy 2013, my fantastic blog audience! I am back and can’t wait to interact with all of you! As students return to school, some are rebounding from grade goals that weren’t quite met. I struggled with my return topic because this post–“You Failed Your Class… Now What?” –from 2011 on the old Blogger site had over 2,000 hits in a two week period. I worry about so many students concerned about failing grades. I promise to cover that topic further in many upcoming posts. Let’s start on the opposite side, which can be frustrating in a different way: When you are thisclose to getting a 4.0, but you don’t. What then? Once...

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Flo-Rida Gets Millions for Doing This. You’ll Get F’s (Or Worse)

Posted by on Sep 17, 2012 in Communicating with Professors, General, General College Success/Responses to Other College Entities | 10 comments

(I’m back already! I guess I was more on the ball than I thought. Don’t you love it when that happens? Ready to talk about the subject all faculty looooove? Flo-Rida, of course! Let’s do it…) My fabulous readers, I can’t wait to see students again, but there is one part of my job that feels a little daunting when I think about coming back to it (And, no, it isn’t the fact that my building only has one single toilet for a whole bunch of women, though that does get a little dicey sometimes): Speech outlines will come in for grading. One or two, maybe three, will sound just a little too good. The body won’t match the introduction in...

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Freshmen: Wondering About Textbooks & What To Call Your Prof? Just Ask!

Posted by on Aug 28, 2012 in Communicating with Professors, General, General College Success/Responses to Other College Entities | 13 comments

I think I’m going to pop an artery by the time I go back to school in late September. I already wrote about five college success tips that you don’t have to take. This was in response to college success advice that concerned me… remember? Now I’m seeing article after article of even more success tips for freshmen (and students in general) that I find incredibly overcomplicated. Why? Because the advice tells students what they should do six ways from Sunday… research this, look up that. The advice so rarely tells students to simply talk to people… to just ask questions! Should I be surprised? This piece in USA Today College about “what makes...

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Another Grade Dispute: When an A Isn’t Really an A

Posted by on Aug 13, 2012 in Communicating with Professors, General, General College Success/Responses to Other College Entities | 0 comments

Here we go again! Remember the grade dispute that turned into a four-part series? How could you forget, right? Well, another interesting write-in, this time from a student at a major university. A different situation and for the sake of anonymity, I’m going to heavily paraphrase, but keep the general theme. One other note: At the end of this piece, I found an interesting link written by an attorney about “legally sound syllabi.” Very interesting! Are you ready? Let’s go…) Before I start with this student’s situation, I want to make a huge plea to all students reading this blog. Whether you are just starting college or you are knee-deep...

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“I feel completely powerless.” More From The Student Whose Grade Tanked.

Posted by on Jul 24, 2012 in Communicating with Professors, General | 28 comments

(I didn’t properly message my stay-cation of last week. I apologize about that! Back to business here, and revisiting the post about the student whose term ended and received a grade that he was not expecting because the prof changed the grade standards. Based on a follow-up comment that just came in, we’re continuing that conversation now. I encourage everyone to please weigh in for encouragement or feedback!) Here were some Twitter comments from the last post: Kathryn Siranosian (@corpwriters said): This happened to my son, too! “The class had too many As” on the final (including his). Samra Bufkins MJ, APR ‏(@Samjb said): No! That can’t...

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