I have a friend who is a teacher, and he complains all the time about parents who call him to discuss a grade he has given their child. Not to ask a question, or to understand the feedback, but to litigate it. The strategy, he tells me, is to tire him out with relentless emails and requests for a meeting, dramatic backstories that explain the recent poor performance, and reminders of the calamitous effects of a slightly lower GPA on college prospects.
Whenever he would tell me one of these stories, I would always nod along in full agreement. Helicopter parents, am I right? I would shout in sympathy. All of this coddling is ruining the country! All of which is true, and all of which I believed with bedrock certainty.
Until, that is, a few days ago, when I received a grade on a final term paper that, in my opinion, was unfairly low. And now I’m wondering if I can convince my mother, she’s 86 years old, but still spry and formidable on the telephone, to call my professor and begin the pressure tactics.
I’m an unusual case, I agree. When I went back to school a year or so ago to get a master’s degree in divinity, I was aware that I would probably be the only student in my class who takes a daily statin. I was also pretty sure that my life experience would be a huge advantage in the classroom. At a certain point in your life, you develop the reliable ability to see through a lot of nonsense language. Academic writing is full of that and to discern what, exactly, is required and what you can sort of let slide.
Here’s what I would say to my professor, or ask my mother to say, were I going to go down that road. (I’m not, just to be clear.)
I would say something like this: See, the final paper was due at a very inconvenient time for me, what with the holidays and etc. Also, and this is where I’m different from most of my classmates, I have a lot of other stuff going on in my life. I have writing obligations, and I maintain (mostly, on good days) an active career in the entertainment business. It’s a tight ship, schedule-wise, is what I’m saying.
So, OK, I wrote the paper I wanted to write, about a subject that interested me, in a way that was perhaps more personal and interpretive, and it turned out to be a really strong example of a research-based essay. My response to that criticism is simply this: no one ever reads research-based essays anyway unless, like college professors, they are paid to do it. So I composed an interesting and highly-readable essay (OK, OK: in about two hours, but I would not say those words to my professor). And even rereading it now in the light of a grade that fell short of my, or our expectations, it’s a pretty good paper, as long as you are not expecting, like, a lot of research and footnotes and whatnot.
That is what I would say. But I’m not going to say any of it, because I’m a man of a certain age, and I made a choice — do other things; keep up with other duties — and that’s life. And also: My final grade in the class is an “A” anyway because I kept up with all the assignments throughout the semester, which earned me what we might call a Two Hours and Hit Send cushion. So, a final essay that’s a little light on the scholarship does not blow a hole in my GPA.
That’s the advice I would give the parents who call my teacher friend: if your lazy little brat had kept up with the classwork, we would not be having this conversation. Life is about trade-offs, I would say. And you can’t have your mother call the teacher every time you get a less-than-perfect grade. You can only really do that once. And I’m saving the big guns for this semester, when midterm exams come right during tax time, which, for a student of my age and financial complexity, is going to take some time.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer, including as a screenwriter and executive producer on Cheers, and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
