Round your grade up?! Bah humbug!

Crazy (and kinda wondrous now that I think of it): only 2 students writing to complain about final grades. Both with borderline points, both begging to be put up to the next letter, both lacking numerous components (any one of which would have easily boosted them to the C's they want even if they had totally fucked the assignment up of course).

To quote one of them, "...mathematically I'm only .07 points away from the C, assuming you didn't make any math mistakes in our grades." (He has a 68.8 and ignored all the deadlines for coming to talk to me about any grade discrepancies/questions thru the semester.) The other, "I don't think you recorded my extra credit point for the French movie I attended in September. Please add it in." Um, well, her name is nowhere to be found on the movie sign-in sheet, which is well-explained in the syllabus and in various emails as being the only proof of someone's having attended our films. (Oh, go ahead! Call me a Scroogey Stickler! But it's pretty fucking easy for someone to say they attended a movie 3 months after the fact. Which is why the sign-ups exist; what a concept!) Plus that one point would only have put her up to a 66.7.

I very kindly explained both these wee problems in my email back to her, and wrote at length to both of them, quite respectfully, about why I don't round grades up (the Grade Integrity Song! plus the millionth reminder about how the syllabus has stated from Day One that final grades in my classes are NOT rounded up "...if you want a certain grade in this course, make it"), about what specific course components in each of their records kept them from their C's, and about the fact that I routinely round grades up as I grade tests, quizzes and compos all semester and how that plus all the EC available is ample occasion for free points from my end as far as I can see. (But I put it nicer than that, honest.)

Go home already! Maybe you'll learn a lesson, but most likely you'll just blame me. Whatever. You're screwed. Merry Christmas.

...One of those times when sanity is found only by focusing on the responsible ones; thank goodness there are still a sizable chunk of them each semester, be they ever so few and far between.