I am so frustrated and angry with my school

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Hello everyone. Just a little background info, I am going to nursing school for my bachelor and this is only the third semester of an accelerated program. My school is notorious for slacking, being rude, and not being organized. I've dealt with all these in the hopes that as long as I do what I need to do nothing else matters.

I've had clinical instructors who "don't like to work hard" as they themselves said, and now I have a clinical instructor who I really like and I am learning a lot from her.

We had our first care plan due and I got an A, turns out that another lady from the dept (who is not the chair, coordinator, or anything else but an advisor and who always wants to control everything) told her that she would regrade the care plans who got A's. We heard rumors about this but did not believe them since this lady is not even our instructor so why should she be the one grading us. After this lady regraded my care plan, she scored me with an F!!!!!:no:

A little background hx about this lady: she is rude, nasty, no one ever wants to register in classes with her because of the way she is. She has a lot of say about how the dept is ran and a lot of times things are done the way she says (for some reason everyone kisses her butt).

She has suggested to our med surg professor to only do case studies in class and to post video lectures online, this has not worked in our class since we all failed the first exam. She teaches med surg also but she is not doing that with her class, she actually teaches. And she was mad because no one wanted to register with her.

Everything set aside, I am just angry because ever since the program started, I've had bad experiences. I would understand if she graded me in a way that would be constructive, but she was just so rude and nasty, and also graded me as if I was in a master's program. Taking points off for not using a med surg book to describe the patho of the disease (which I used my patho book for that -_-).

I don't know what to do. This semester has just been hell and to add this on top of it. I really do not understand why someone who is not our instructor has to grade us. Is there anything I can do about this? I guess this is more of a vent than nothing else.

PS: I know life is hard and not everything will be easy and that nursing school is not easy so we should not be spoon fed. Trust me, I know.

Thanks

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Specializes in Neuro, Telemetry.

Yes you certainly can do something about it. That is unfair grading practice on so many levels. First, she cant selectively grade the As and change all the grades. If she thins you got an F, but your actual instructor gave you and A, what about the B and below students. They should also be regrades. Also, since she is not your instructor, your actual instructor does not, and should not, change your grade based on the F. You need to go above the lady who gave you an F. Try with your instructor first and ask that your original grade be given back to you. IF they do not do that, then go to your schools dean of nursing to file a complaint. If they dont do anything, you can even go to the board about the unfair grading practices at the school. All around, this just seems unfair. I could understand if the grade was maybe changed to a B because of her being more strict on grades (still not her place to change your actual instructors grade), but to get an F is absurd. Your actual instructor seemed to think the care plan was A level.

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Yes you certainly can do something about it. That is unfair grading practice on so many levels. First, she cant selectively grade the As and change all the grades. If she thins you got an F, but your actual instructor gave you and A, what about the B and below students. They should also be regrades. Also, since she is not your instructor, your actual instructor does not, and should not, change your grade based on the F. You need to go above the lady who gave you an F. Try with your instructor first and ask that your original grade be given back to you. IF they do not do that, then go to your schools dean of nursing to file a complaint. If they dont do anything, you can even go to the board about the unfair grading practices at the school. All around, this just seems unfair. I could understand if the grade was maybe changed to a B because of her being more strict on grades (still not her place to change your actual instructors grade), but to get an F is absurd. Your actual instructor seemed to think the care plan was A level.

Thank you. I did not even think about the part about if she grades A's then she needs to regrade everyone then. I guess she's appalled that we would get A's therefore she has to care of it. I told my instructor, please do mot ever give me an A again if this is what happens, and she said we would talk about it.

How disrespectful is it to an instructor that they provide a grade, someone else comes and thinks that its not right regrades it and finds 5 letter grade differences. Why have clinical instructors if you do not care about their opinion? And I actually like my clinical instructor, she is way better than ones I had before. If i wanted this lady to grade me, I would've registered with her.

Thanks

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Specializes in Forensic Psych.

Wow, I'm so sorry you're dealing with all that garbage. It must be extremely frustrating!

We've had situations that warranted regrading, but NEVER like that. Even without all the details, I think it's entirely inappropriate and unprofessional. Whatever is going on between your instructor and this other woman isn't being handled properly

I don't even think the proper solution here would have been to regrade everyone's. It's done and over with, everyone had their grades. It should be left alone. If they suspected some sort of favoritism or something like that, then there are ways to handle it. Better ways. Like having a couple unrelated

Complain. Does your handbook mention an appeals process? Do you have access to your DON?

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I don't even know if this is the situation, but one of my instructors was new and she essentially gave everyone A's and B's for our clinical grade. She had to go back and lower everyone's grade since she was being too easy. Very subjective grading checklist but it turned out I got a 74.

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Specializes in Neuro, Telemetry.

Stephalumps comment made me realize something about my comment. I just want to clarify that I don't think you should actually tell the instructor to regrade all of them (not that you would). I would not want to be known as the student who caused the whole class to get crappy grades on an assignment, even if my grade was unfair. I just wanted to make a point that changing your grade from an A for merely being a good grade is not fair because of the people who initially got lower grades, presumably meaning there work wasn't as good as yours, now have higher grades for lesser work. Totally not fair to you. Just hoping to clarify in case someone confuses what I was trying to say. But I digress.

This is just overall sucky and unfair to you. I'd be happy with a solid B in the class over getting Fs on my A assignments.

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Wow, I'm so sorry you're dealing with all that garbage. It must be extremely frustrating!

We've had situations that warranted regrading, but NEVER like that. Even without all the details, I think it's entirely inappropriate and unprofessional. Whatever is going on between your instructor and this other woman isn't being handled properly

I don't even think the proper solution here would have been to regrade everyone's. It's done and over with, everyone had their grades. It should be left alone. If they suspected some sort of favoritism or something like that, then there are ways to handle it. Better ways. Like having a couple unrelated

Complain. Does your handbook mention an appeals process? Do you have access to your DON?

We never received any student handbooks but I dont even know if they do have one. The grading was just unfair and this should not have happened. This is the first semester that they are doing this and I believe that is because they have crappy instructor and maybe they want to make it better. My clinical instructor was recommended and she is awesome so I dont understand why they dont let her do her job. But you are right, it is over with but I dont want it to happen again to anyone.

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I don't even know if this is the situation, but one of my instructors was new and she essentially gave everyone A's and B's for our clinical grade. She had to go back and lower everyone's grade since she was being too easy. Very subjective grading checklist but it turned out I got a 74.

Our instructor is not new and she is very good. They are doing it with all the clinical instructors, even with the teachers that have been there for a while, which i dont think is fair

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Stephalumps comment made me realize something about my comment. I just want to clarify that I don't think you should actually tell the instructor to regrade all of them (not that you would). I would not want to be known as the student who caused the whole class to get crappy grades on an assignment, even if my grade was unfair. I just wanted to make a point that changing your grade from an A for merely being a good grade is not fair because of the people who initially got lower grades, presumably meaning there work wasn't as good as yours, now have higher grades for lesser work. Totally not fair to you. Just hoping to clarify in case someone confuses what I was trying to say. But I digress.

This is just overall sucky and unfair to you. I'd be happy with a solid B in the class over getting Fs on my A assignments.

I agree with you, I rather have a B. And i would never try to make them regrade everyone, it happened to me and I am starting to accept it but I did warn the other students and they are pretty upset about it also because it could happen to them.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

I wonder if there is something going on below the surface at OP's school. It is not unusual for faculty to engage in a 'peer evaluation' process, especially during orientation/development of new faculty or to validate educational competency. However this should never be done in a way that is 'visible' or disruptive to students.

Accredited schools are required to have a number of policies & procedures in place - including a defined process for handling student complaints/appeals. They have to provide students with copies of these policies. This is normally done in a hard copy (handbook or paper copies) but it's OK if they are all online, as long as the student can access them. OP needs to review these processes & utilize mechanisms that are in place at the school.

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Specializes in Forensic Psych.
We never received any student handbooks but I dont even know if they do have one. The grading was just unfair and this should not have happened. This is the first semester that they are doing this and I believe that is because they have crappy instructor and maybe they want to make it better. My clinical instructor was recommended and she is awesome so I dont understand why they dont let her do her job. But you are right it is over with but I dont want it to happen again to anyone.[/quote']

What I meant by "it's over with" is that you already received an A the first time. Whatever reason they have for getting into your professors business, it shouldn't have been on something that was already graded. The next care plan could've been done differently, but I'm sorry...you don't go in and lower people's already graded work without a MAJOR excuse.

It wouldn't be over with for me. I'd pitch the worlds largest fit.

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Wow! This sounds insane. I can understand why you are upset! At my school, all of the policies are outlined in the student handbook. We also have a syllabus for each class that lays out the specifics for that course. No one can just randomly regrade something for no reason. Do you have a department or course head that you can talk to? There usually is a chain of command for settling these kinds of things. I would pursue this further because this does not seem fair. You can't have different sets of rules for different people.

And just a word of warning, don't get angry or super emotional if you go to address this with your school. There could be some weird politics going on that don't have anything to do with you. But if you are less than professional when dealing with the administration, it can bite you in the butt, even if you are 100% right.

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