They just keep complaining

So the semester is finally over. I may have mentioned that in the last post but now it’s official, all exams have been marked and the grades have been submitted. But of course that doesn’t mean anything to my students.

In this modern age I can submit my students grades and within minutes they can access them online. Worse still, I was dumb enough to email them after I had finished, which I’m sure prompted some to check right away. So within a few hours of submitting the grades I received an email that I will paraphrase below:

I was shocked that you dared to give me an A-. I’m deserve an A. I want to know how far from an A I was. And despite all the work it is for you to create assignments, grades and labs, you should make me some special little project that I can do after the semester is done so that I can get special treatment and get the A you cheated me out of.

I really don’t understand what goes through the minds of these students. I certainly never contested a grade while I was a student, I figured that the prof knew what they were doing and allocated the grades fairly. Sure I may have thought that I did better, but I figured that my subjective measure of my performance wasn’t the same as the empirical measurements the prof was making. Actually that’s full of shit, I never put that much thought into why I didn’t question my grade. The reality was that I trusted my profs and I never even considered begging for a better grade.

Now, to be fair I can understand the logic of asking for some additional work or a change of grade, but only when a student had been doing well and bombed the final, and the result was a failing or near failing grade. But to try and get your grade raised when you already have the second highest possible grade is just galling.