<p>So im in a bit of a situation...i had my final grade (A) reduced to a C+ because i had apparently missed 2 classes more than i was allowed to stated by the syllabus. The thing is, i sent my professor an email on two occasions explaining reasons beforehand that would have prevented me from attending class, to which he responded well. I thought that he had excused my absences for these two occasions (i had to miss other classes on the days i emailed him about and my other professors excused my absences, so i was under the impression that he had done the same) only to find my final grade tanked because of something i thought was previously resolved. To make things worse, this 1 grade is preventing me from making the GPA cutoff for my major and could affect my scholarship stance, so if remains a C+ i am COMPLETELY screwed. Do i have any hope or basis for convincing my professor to change my grade? I participated in class, asked questions, did very well on the quizzes and exams but am getting a C+ because of missing two classes which i thought i was excused for? <em>Sigh</em></p>
<p>How many days were you allowed to miss? If you were allowed a large number of absences, it’s unlikely, especially if you had other absences without good reason.</p>
<p>wow your grade dropped two letter grades for missing two classes?</p>
<p>If it says in the syllabus that you are only allowed to miss X number of days and you missed X+2, then the professor is well within his rights and you don’t have much of a leg to stand on.</p>
<p>Letting the professor know ahead of time that you will miss extra classes is a good practice and a nice courtesy, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you won’t get the penalty for it. It may not be reasons that he feels warrant an excused absence; maybe he requires documentation that you did not provide or maybe he has a “no exceptions” policy to the X absences rule. If he didn’t explicitly tell you that your absences are excused, you shouldn’t have assumed that they were - so take it as a lesson.</p>
<p>You can, of course, try to talk to your professor about it. Gather the copies of the emails you sent and any documentation (obituaries, doctor’s notes, whatever) and ask to make an appointment to discuss a grade change (be up front - so the professor can be prepared. If he gets blind-sided, he may get defensive). Then very politely explain what happen, but don’t have a tone of entitlement or expectation. He may let up or he may remain firm, but there’s no harm in trying. The most important part is the humble, polite attitude; students who came to me as a TA with a demanding or entitled attitude made me want to dig in my heels instead of help them (and they were almost always wrong anyway).</p>
<p>And summerchica: yes, a lot of professors do this. In college I took an acting class for a distribution requirement that had a limit of 3 missed classes; each additional missed class dropped your grade a letter grade. I missed 4, so I got a C instead of a B. The reasoning is even if you are a bright, participatory student in the class when you’re there, if you miss a lot of days you really aren’t participating as much as you think you are simply because you aren’t present. In a class with 30 sessions, if you miss 5 you’ve already missed 1/6 of the class. Moreover, in smaller classes the class progresses less well if there are missing students all the time - discussions don’t go as well and planned activities may flop if there are only half the students the professor expects.</p>
<p>Besides, when you go to work, you won’t argue with your boss to please not ding you in your performance report or your paycheck because you really only missed one or two extra days on top of your allotted number of sick/PTO.</p>