To be gutted at this grade for my dissertation proposal?

[goodgradeshavewine]

I'm in my third year at uni and worked so hard at my research and inquiry module, I worked really really hard and found it fairly easy because I'd been putting in the work for it.

Anyways I submitted my dissertation proposal 4 weeks ago and got results back this morning. I thought I would at least be mid 60s as I truly thought it was a well put together and thought out dissertation plan. I only got 60 %.

I'm totally gutted, I know that still leaves me in the 2.1 range but only just. I'm frustrated because my other module that I didn't follow nor understand I got higher results for both my assessments in that. Overall for this term I am sitting at 63 percent.

I'm just so upset and like demotivated now. At one point in the feedback he says I spoke in a detached manner and that it must have been difficult for me to write in the third person. I literally have an email from him confirming I was to write in the third person...on top of that my friend that really rushed hers got a first. We have different markers but the marking just seems so random at my uni.

AIBU to be so gutted about my grade? Am I being pathetic?

[PurpleyBlue]

[quote goodgradeshavewine]@PurpleyBlue no but it is a bit demoralising when you have spent weeks on something and tried your absolute hardest and your friend hasn't and she gets much higher grade. It's okay for me to be disappointed at that. [/quote]
Not really, she just wrote a better proposal. You can be disappointed in your own performance but she might just be naturally talented in her area of expertise.

[CaptainThe95thRifles]

It's fine to be disappointed that your hard work didn't yield the results you hoped for, especially when someone else can do less work and get better results. Unfortunately, this is life. The world is full of people who are more talented than you in some aspect of life, and that's true for everybody in the world. I was an annoying bastard who could turn out essays and reports overnight and get a better grade than most of my friends. I'm shit at a lot of other things though so it all balances out. You'll be a lot happier if you focus on what you are good at, and on working on your weaknesses to get the grades you want. Being disappointed that someone else did better is just wasted energy.

[goodgradeshavewine]

@Blossomtoes I won't say what you need...

[suziedoozy]

I’ve got to be honest with the comments about ethics, GDPR and your need to look at stats the rest of it must have been pretty good to get a 60 as that must have had a significant impact on your grading.

All of this is food for thought and I thought the comments were pretty helpful overall.

It is always difficult to receive a mark you are disappointed with but I would focus on the list of improvements & make sure you hit them all in your actual dissertation rather than being annoyed.

Good luck with the research (I’m in the middle of my PhD!)

[Guavaf1sh]

Colleagues in academia have said that students are much more demanding now and question every aspect of every grade and how exhausting it is nowadays dealing with precious entitled students. I’m guessing it’s just the direction of travel

[DogInATent]

[quote goodgradeshavewine]@PurpleyBlue no but it is a bit demoralising when you have spent weeks on something and tried your absolute hardest and your friend hasn't and she gets much higher grade. It's okay for me to be disappointed at that. [/quote]
No. It is not reasonable to be disappointed at that. This is university, it's not school. You're an adult and you're graded on achievement, not effort. There are no bonus points for taking longer than someone else to do something less well than them.

It's time to adjust your mindset Violet Elizabeth. Your tutor has given you excellent feedback, but you're not reading it.

[partyatthepalace]

Oh, I see you have feedback.

It doesn’t look too bad at all to me - you were just low on detail. Book an appointment with your tutor, and talk through your concerns and get all their thoughts on how to make it as good as possible. And plan to get sections in early for feedback, if that’s allowed.

Good luck

[Aprilx]

[quote goodgradeshavewine]@Blossomtoes why is there a need on here to be so rude? Honestly. Why bother commenting? Hardly helpful. [/quote]
That was actually really helpful. It sounds like you do need to learn to take criticism in a constructive manner, this will serve you well when you get to the workplace in particular. You are not a child any more and won’t always hear what you want to hear.

I went back to university as a mature student in 2018/19. It was made clear at my university that the lecturers decisions on grading were final. I assume there is a process if it was thought there was an actual error but not if it is merely the student thinking it should have been higher.

In any case, I am struggling to see how on earth this matters anyway, you are not borderline in your overall grad so it doesn’t matter in any way shape or form.

[Blossomtoes]

[quote goodgradeshavewine]@Blossomtoes I won't say what you need...[/quote]
Oh, please do.

[MsHedgehog]

Oh gosh, seeing your latest comments, Bluntness100 was right...you are coming across rather immature. If you don’t want people to be honest, don’t post on AIBU

[Oblomov21]

Thank you for explaining.

[goodgradeshavewine]

@MsHedgehog I do want people to be honest. But there's honest and there's rude, there is a difference.

[MitheringSunday]

@adeleh

That's not random feedback - that is detailed and helpful feedback. It also looks like feedback written by someone who'd be approachable enough to talk things over with you. Your marker has clearly identified many positive aspects to your proposal.
You're not being unreasonable to be disappointed. YABVU indeed to think that, because you put in a lot of effort, you would automatically get the mark you think you deserve. Your tutor is recognising your effort but pointing out areas that need to be strengthened. And, it is, after all, only at the proposal stage.

I absolutely agree with this. I've noticed a bit of a tendency among students of my experience to believe that 'working really hard' automatically entitles them to a good grade, and that being upset about a poor grade entitles them to reconsideration. There's quite a lot of the first and a bit of the second attitude in your posts, OP. It's not an attitude any academic will be keen to nurture - working hard is (usually) a prerequisite to a good grade, but not an automatic path. Ask for feedback by all means, but not in terms of 'I think I deserved x grade', and certainly not in terms of 'but she rushed it and got a better grade than me' - that's the sort of thinking you should, frankly, have grown out of by the end of primary school.

[ItsAllGoingToBeFine]

I'm quite jealous OP. That is amazingly useful and specific feedback that you can act on.

In terms of writing in 3rd person my first piece of advice is to read lots of papers in your areas and try to mimic the language those papers are written in (style wise, don't plagiarise!

Secondly, this is a very useful resource if not that confident with your writing style www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/

For your citations if you don't have "Cite them Right" get it. But be sure to read the specific guidelines for your course / dissertation as well.

If you are not already using a reference manager consider getting to grips with one over the summer - they can do citations automatically (but take a bit of time to set up so it cites how you want it to)

[wishfuldreamer]

OP, I am going to say the same thing to you that I say to my own students when this happens. It is one of the hardest lessons to learn in life, that sometimes the hard work that you put into something, does not translate into the results you want. It totally, and utterly sucks, but it's good that you are encountering it in the relatively safe environment of university. Learn skills to cope from this experience - because you will encounter it again in the workplace, and you can't just decide you're crap and leave your job every time it happens.

This is one mark in what i'm sure will be at least 10 modules contributing to your overall grade. One mark. What percentage of your grade is it? This one mark says nothing about your overall ability as a student, it says how you did in this one assessment. Learn from it - that is really excellent feedback, which gives you a very clear blueprint for what you need to work on, as well as outlining areas where you re good.

It's been a hard year, and it's easy to let little things like this knock our confidence. Don't internalise it. It doesn't say, or mean, anything about you as a person. Pick yourself up, and start again :-)

[Cowbells]

YABU. Go to your supervisor without any emotional reaction, and ask for some pointers on how to make it a more secure 2:1 - somewhere in the mid-sixties. It's their job to advise you and yours to take on board the advice.

FWIW, DS2 just got his uni results back. For the subject that is his weakest, that he struggled in, he got a first and the one he is passionate about and claimed he knew so well, he only got a low two-one. It's easy to miss out important stages of argument or counterargument in a subject you are close to. Could something like that have happened?

[TheMerrickBoy]

I do understand when students are frustrated that some of their friends seemed to, or claimed to, or actually did, less work but did better than them. It's a hard truth that sometimes some people do better though.

It is really difficult though when they say things like 'I felt like I deserved a better mark considering how hard I worked and how much I care about my marks/the module' - we're not marking for that, we're marking the work. And unfortunately some people do sometimes have more aptitude than others.

[Blossomtoes]

I've noticed a bit of a tendency among students of my experience to believe that 'working really hard' automatically entitles them to a good grade

It’s societal. I wish I had £1 for all the posts here that tell us “DH and I worked really hard for our six figure incomes”. Like supermarket and care home staff don’t work their arses off for minimum wage. It does my head in.

[Frymetothemoon]

I feel your pain. For me it was almost 20 years ago but it still hurts. I was marked down for doing things that I had been told to do when I submitted my draft. I appealed, with written evidence of the advice I had been given, but the grade stayed the same. I was gutted at the time, but in the grand scale of things it has made not a single bit of difference to my life.
You are entitled to feel disappointed, of course, but don't let it take over your life.

[MitheringSunday]

@Blossomtoes

I've noticed a bit of a tendency among students of my experience to believe that 'working really hard' automatically entitles them to a good grade

It’s societal. I wish I had £1 for all the posts here that tell us “DH and I worked really hard for our six figure incomes”. Like supermarket and care home staff don’t work their arses off for minimum wage. It does my head in.

I'd never made that connection before, but I think you're right.

[dreamingbohemian]

That's a great amount of feedback!

I suggest looking at it positively. If you can get a 60 despite having some rather serious flaws in there, then if you fix those flaws you should do rather well.

[navigationcentral]

The OP's responses make it amply clear that there is a lot of learning yet to occur.

[MitheringSunday]

Yes, I wanted to add that's terrific feedback from your lecturer (terrific in the sense of detailed, helpful, balanced and specific, not in the sense of fawning).

[ThumbWitchesAbroad]

Sounds like your received feedback is very useful, actually, and if you take it all on board and maybe have a discussion with your mentor/supervisor, then you should be able to remedy most of the omissions etc. and improve your mark.

Re. the third person thing - yes, a PP has already commented on it and I agree that you need to maybe read a few more research papers to see how "third person" works. You don't talk about yourself in the third person, you take the person out of the discussion entirely - thus:
instead of "I found XYZ data in the research papers I looked at..." you would write "The research papers that were used showed XYZ data".
"Results of the polls showed..."
"The data from the interviews was managed using ABC system, and the results were collated thus..."
and so on.
The subject of the sentences is always the science, the data, the research, the results - not the person writing it down.

It's also worth knowing, for your own peace of mind, that your end result will not be based purely on the percentage outcomes - your overall marks/grades will be assessed and collated, and it will be clear (usually) whether you are a straight 2:1, or borderline - from what you've said, you appear to be a low to mid-range 2:1 on aggregate, so keep up the good work!

[Shimy]

I've noticed a bit of a tendency among students of my experience to believe that 'working really hard' automatically entitles them to a good grade

I've lost count the number of times on MN when someone posts about how unfair society is. The surgeon/investment banker down the road who owns the mansion, when their DH who's a road sweeper has worked equally hard all his life. It's quality v quantity.