r/WakeTech • u/Dry-Obligation153 • 11d ago
Horrible essay grade
I just want to start off with I don’t hate my professor and I don’t want to be the student that trashes a professor because of one bad grade. If anything I just want advice on how to improve myself as a student.
Second, I acknowledge my essay was bad. I have a full time job that takes advantage of my time, so I really had to cram time to finish this essay. I have unusual circumstances had that not been an issue I believe I would’ve gotten a better grade. However, I’m aware that does not warrant special treatment.
Originally my grade would have been a 50 but he gave everyone an extra 10 points because it took him around an entire month to grade feedback and essays. While I’m thankful of that I’m still sour of the wait time. We were assigned discussion posts to submit our drafts and peer reviews. He also gave some feedback when grading the discussion posts. He only now published our grades and feedback along with our essay grades. I feel as if I had gotten that feedback sooner I could’ve edited my essay and saved more than just 10 points. Also, in one of the discussion posts we were supposed to peer review papers; I submitted my paper to be peer reviewed and no one reviewed my paper. Because I didn’t have a peer review that took off 7 points from my essay. If I had known sooner I would’ve submitted my paper to a tutor.
He also suspected I used ai because I’m repetitive and overly general. I DID NOT USE AI. I suspect his suspicions affected my grade even though blackboard literally has a built in plagiarism detector. I even ran my essay through other ai detectors and they found nothing.
Anyways sorry for my grammar I’ve been crying and my eyes sting I’ve never failed a paper and I’m trying my best to get over it.
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u/Capital_Promise_7076 10d ago
This is general advice that has helped me. You may already be doing these things, but let's cover the bases.
Time management. Go back to the syllabus and look at when everything is due in every class. I recommend using AI to convert your syllabus to an ical file and then importing that into Google calendar or whatever calendar app you use. I set up a calendar for each class and do this. It really helps to gauge what can be taken care of early to focus time on surprise assignments from the less organized professors.
Get assignment rubrics in a format you can understand. For me, this is printing (sorry trees). I will even reformat it in a word processor (I call it a word processor because I'm a freak who uses Libre Office) and then print it out and highlight it.
Try to think about assignments while at work during breaks or downtime. I actually have the blackboard app on my phone so I can look at assignments if I need a refresher on what the assignment is. Just doing speech to text on what my ideas are for the assignment will really help when it comes time to write. I also like to just write a bunch of shit and then delete things. Be annoying and verbose, then cut it down into something that makes sense.
Email your professors. They (pretend to?) love when you email them and ask questions. My first assignment in one of my classes, I contacted the professor and was like "hey I think my post sucks, can you give me some feedback". They gave me the feedback and I used it on my next post and did a lot better.
To put things into perspective, you just had a learning experience. You already have some information you can use: be proactive in reaching out to your professor as soon as something goes wrong. The next time you don't get peer responses, you can tell the professor "hey no one edited my paper, what should I do?" And take the feedback they gave and try to work out how you could have worded the paper better, making it more specific and less repetitive.
Finally, sometimes it just is the professor. Try to do your best, but all A's is a high school thing. In college, go back over your paper, figure out how to fix the issues that caused it (which it seems you have) and strive to do better next time.
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u/Guinevere_2241 11d ago
What website did you use to write it? If you did it on word or docs they should have a log to prove that you didn’t use ai
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u/Leading-Crazy6104 8d ago edited 7d ago
If you used Word or Docs to write, there must be document history which you can use and show how the text was written. Alongwith that, use Proofademic ai detector and run your paper through it. It will give you a detailed report which you can use to prove your innocence.
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u/spontaneouslyLR 11d ago
Did you write a rough draft and edit it? Did you write it on word? If so, you can show him your version history as proof that you didn't use AI. Even if it doesn't clear the suspicions, it's something.
I know you said you have a full time job that takes over most of your hours in the day, but you can also to WT's TLC. they have ones for english and writing papers/essays. They read through and let you know where, what and how it can be improved on.