Date 3rd July 2023
I currently want to curl up in a ball and either cry or scream into a void. My body/anxiety is letting me do neither, so thus I shall vent into my little safe space on the interweb. I recently found out I epically failed a module for my MASc. It's an optional one and so marked by a completely different department to mine and as Jack has said, all departments have their own marking criteria and own expectations of students work. But everyone on my teaching team, all my friends and my course peers are all as flummoxed by this harsh fail (30) as I am. Not only is this mark super harsh as a 40 is still a fail but condonable by my department as a pass, it's also unlike any grade I have ever received in my academic life and the feedback doesn't align with their marking criteria.
I failed a module about The Cultural Narratives of Ageing. It was a module that was already an unsafe environment for me to learn in as the structure was none existent, the tutor appeared to not care about my Statement of Reasonable Adjustments (SORA) and the courses' information negated to mention it was a completely unstructured and unsupported seminar format (any autistic humans literal worst nightmare).
I've gone over and over the marking criteria and each time it makes less sense and stresses me out more. I've reached out to my tutors when I found out about this and to the tutor in question who ran the module - lets call him Stefan after the guy from the 2014 Maleficent film? Now Mr condescending Stefan has refused to give me a clear answer on my question and confusion on the grade (super helpful). Apparently my SORA got taken into account and he's aware "it's hard to get a fail". Understatement of the year when you compare this essay to the high 2:1s I've gotten for EVERY other assessment. And cos I like having a structure and plan, all my essays follow the same research protocol, plan and execution. And all my other essays got 2:1s - some nearly 1sts. I get every department across UCL will have different expectations of their students but how is there this much discrepancy between my department, the one I did Madness with (with that essay getting a 68) and this one? I'm genuinely baffled with how I got 3 high 2:1s and then a 30!? It makes 0 sense.
My tutors then had to break the news to me that because I got a 30 and therefore the mark cannot be condoned as a pass by them, I am now literally at risk of failing MY ENTIRE MASc degree!!! I don't typically stand up and go "I know Im worth more than this" but I know my essays are good. My lowest ever grade at a BA was a 58 and things have been consistently in 2:1/1sts since then. I've worked my arse off this year and done so well with every other assessment and it breaks my heart that a pointless, badly designed and stressful 15 credit module could jeperdise my entire 180 credit MASc in Creative Health. I'd love to know what I needed to do to "pass" this module?
What makes me even more angry/stressed out is that their feedback doesn't seem to align with the grade they gave me. The feedback I got consisted of 4 main points:
1. "you didn't use enough academic references". I'm not even going to bother explaining why that is a load of BS as anyone who knows me knows how much of a fucking huge ass research nerd I am.
2. Going with the references, I didn't cite the PDF page numbers (which my friends were all very confused over cos we'd never heard that before). I also cited one thing slightly incorrectly (?) It was a citation from a paper, which I referenced correctly but they were referencing someone elses work, so the tutor basically said I didn't include that external source of work in the bibliography (which again, I wasn't told I needed to do at BA level, so am a bit confused)... academics following me, let me know if what this tutor said with this point is right? I genuinely don't know
3. My essay topic was too broad (despite the fact they effing signed off on it). You could argue the toss either way on that one but was on three main witches in history (one from Greek Myths, one from Shakespeare and one from Disney) and looking at how they were portrayed and why this isn't helpful in present day narratives around ageing women.
4. This one really got me annoyed as they said the readings I referenced "were not related to the topic in hand"... which genuinely I don't see. They were ALL on the topic of ageing women OR specific to the era I was discussing (e.g. shakespeares treatment of the ageing woman in his plays).
That was all the feedback I got. Which doesn't then align with the lowest grade. Whacked in the marking criteria below, so let me know what you think, maybe it does and I'm just being too blind?
My entire teaching team and my friends group have been over this niggling point with me and are as confused about this as I am. I've gone over and over this criteria trying to make sense of HOW I got this mark because nothing aligns - I mean my other essay that followed the exact same structure as this one (just
with 2 sections rather than 3), got a 68.
My thought process is if a 2:1 is my typical standard of work across this course and I followed the same process with this essay, did I need to get this essay to the publication standard (80+) to get a 50 from this tutor?
If this tutor is the reason I literally fail my entire MASc course he will at least get a very strongly worded email telling him precisely why his course sucked and was incredibly unsafe, inaccessible and unclear for a neurodiverse student to access. He might get that anyway if he continues to be an unhelpful ass and patronising as fuck towards me.
Feel very grateful to have my team of tutors rallying around me and my friends being awesome as well, they are helping to keep me feeling safer and sane. But the stress levels as of right now are unreal. It's making me itch to find a way to get rid of them quickly but I won't revert back to old habits of self harm just because I feel the urge to do so. I know it won't be worth it in the long run but fuck me is it tempting right now.
Anyway, that's it, ya gal could fail her entire course, despite being a fab student across the board. Welcome to the joys of academia, so accessible and makes so much sense....
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