<p>Has anyone else had a teacher who, upon request, refused to return a graded paper? My prof finished grading our first paper 2 weeks ago, and complained about how poorly written they were, and how several people received a 1 or 2 out of 10(we have 4 papers worth 40% of our grade). She will only show us our grades the day that midterm grades are do. I am completely serious.
Is this a common practice?</p>
<p>I've definitely seen not physically returning papers/exams before, though most professors I know will, if not return them outright, at least let you see the papers/exams in their office.</p>
<p>But not showing you the grades is ridiculous. I've never seen a prof that withholds grades.</p>
<p>You may want to bring this up with the department head or dean of students.</p>
<p>Duh, go in their office hours and ask for the papers and to review what went wrong.</p>
<p>Sometimes they don't want you to obeess over your grades right now and just keep your focus on the midterm. You have plenty of more papers to go anyway so don't let this one bother you.</p>
<p>Go to the Dean, that isn't appropriate. Professors are not allowed to be control freaks like that.</p>
<p>To the poster who said that he had never seen a professor withholding grades before: one of the professors teaching a mandatory writing seminar for freshmen doesn't reveal students' grades until the end of the semester unless a student falls below a C average. She does however return the papers promptly along with extensive comments. I think she wants students to work on improving their writing rather than keeping a certain grade.</p>
<p>But I agree with the above posters who think that withholding both papers and grades is obnoxious. You should at least get some indication of what went wrong in the first paper so that you can avoid similar mistakes in future papers.</p>
<p>To the person a few posts up:
She will not let use see the grades, period. It doesn't matter if you go to office hours or not. She is the dept. head for poli sci.</p>
<p>Do you know why she is withholding grades and papers? I am wondering if she always does it or if there might be a particular reason now. For example, she might expect some student to cheat but may not have enough evidence and wants to wait until the midterm to see how the student does in a controlled setting.</p>