Date: 3rd September 2023.
Remember how a good couple of months ago I posted that I'd failed an essay and couldn't figure out how or why? And had to redo it and if I failed it again (i.e. got below a 40% mark), I would be failing my entire course? Well there's an update on this situation. Unfortunately it's been far from smooth sailing and I am done pretending like I've been treated fairly by the department in question at UCL (SELCS). I'm pissed as fuck at how I've been treated as their attitude towards me has actually resulted in prior trauma being brought back up and my stress levels going through the roof. There's a lot on the line here and I need to simply get this off my chest and in that my support system and ability to offload is somewhat limited, I'm going to take a little angry rant here on my safe corner of the internet in the hopes it'll save my sanity.
So lets go back a couple of months to when this whole scenario began; so you can get an idea of why I've reached breaking point. As I mentioned in early July, I failed a module called The Cultural Narratives of Ageing (CNOA). This module took place in term 2 of my MASC (so Jan - March/April) and during that time, I was facing a traumatic court case. I had limited support and knew I couldn't use my existing tutor support system to access support (namely because they're not allowed to help with wellbeing things). I was really stress, really anxious and having a really hard time managing everything. It made going to one of my MASc specific classes (like Research Methods or Lived Experience) hard at points as I was just not in the right head space to deal with anything outside of "sit and take notes". I think I mentioned the structure of the CNOA course (being an unstructured, unsupported seminar) was my idea of hell on earth in the last update on this. Let me explain why that is so that everyone's on the same page and knows the reasons behind my choice to request to sit out of the classes.
As we all know I'm autistic. While I am very good at many things, I have really severe social anxiety and this stems from my inability to know when/if I can talk in a conversation, how long I am allowed to talk for, the right words to use, what to say, how to say it and a huge inability to read the room, the people in it and judge said scenario. I struggle to have conversations with my friends at points, I can do it but it takes a lot of energy to keep up with things and trust the other person will understand if I mess up a social cue etc.
The CNOA class had nobody I knew in it and everyone else was from the same course, so already had existing relationships with each other. So I had no support system I could link in with. As far as I was aware, it was also not advertised as a seminar structure and if it had been, I would never have signed up for it because I know seminars exacerbate a lot of my already existing anxieties around conversations and social norms etc. After the first class ended (and I'd left early due to being on the verge of a panic attack for the majority of the class), I knew it wasn't the right learning environment for me to be in and would cause additional stress and anxiety that I simply knew I wasn't able to deal with. So I messaged Jack and wanted to know if I could swap class as I knew CNOA wasn't a good fit for me. Jack said I could swap but the deadline to swap was either 2 days or 24 hours away and with everything else going on (as this was about 2 weeks before the court case), I simply didn't have the energy to try and swap to a different class and potentially end up in the same situation as the CNOA class. So Jack emailed Stefan on my behalf, requesting to see if there was a different solution - perhaps not taking the classes but doing the reading and then writing the 3,000 word essay-based coursework. Stefan agreed and told me that I could do the course readings (email below so you can see what I mean). I took said email to mean that if I had questions (which I never did) that I could book a biweekly chat with this tutor. This is important as the head of SELCS (lets call her Florence) brings this back up.
I end up failing the essay and if you want to know more about my reaction and where my precise confusion stems from, I'd recommend you read the blog post titled "I could fail?" as it goes through my issues around the grade. I schedule a meeting with Stefan and Jack and neither Jack or I get any clear answers as to why I failed the essay. Jack ends up going to the head of SELCS (Florence) with concerns of bias against me from Stefan. This was something I agreed with BUT did not suggest to Jack, he raised his concerns with me and I saw the same pattern he did and agreed there might be bias. In the meantime while Jacks investigating getting the essay remarked due to bias, I'm replanning and reworking the essay based off feedback I got from Stefan. I finish this new essay plan and email it to him asking for feedback on it as he'd agreed to read an essay plan and full essay draft and feedback on them both. He doesn't get back in 3 weeks, so I email again. And then shit hits the fan, with Florence leaping in to inform me of a change of tutor and blowing the things Jack had raised to her out of proportion AND pinning them on me. I wasn't best impressed but did agree with the change of tutor and inquired about additional support I could access as I was concerned I was not understanding how they wanted me to do this essay and wanted someone to proof read my essay plan and feedback on that AND read and feedback on my essay draft as well.
Florence was having none of it and brings up the fact I refused to attend class, didn't attend those (now apparently obligatory) meetings with Stefan and a bunch of other shit and basically long story short, claims I'm a lazy shit student who just couldn't be bothered to engage with anything. Which brings up all my trauma from college and not being believed when I asked for help and causes me to breakdown. I was in France at this time, so shut my emails off and explored Paris for the day before firing back an email stating what I've just explained to you, to her and added in a bunch of information about the court case, my prior trauma and the fact I'm neurodiverse. I'm beyond pissed off about how she handled it BUT we end up getting my request for additional support approved.
I meet the new tutor, send her a detailed essay plan (which she hates) and then I work my ass off for 2 weeks to redo the entire essay focusing on 2014 Maleficent and how it visually portrays the ageing of Maleficent and Aurora (so looking at colour schemes, physicality and their characterisation etc). I alter the "7 stages of (men) ageing" from Shakespeares "As You Like It" to fit females in fairytales and discuss the stages Maleficent and Aurora hit and how their colours etc show this. Bare in mind this was literally based off a conversation I had with the (new) tutor Jenny. I followed what she wanted me to write about as she hated my original essay plan and told me it was "too specific" - having been told by the original tutor Stefan that the essay failed as it was "too vague", so I literally cannot win apparently. Anyway, take 3 of the essay had a minimum of 6 academic sources used (of which one was a peer reviewed article and the rest were books as she'd told me to stay away from secondary sources). It focused on the topic she wanted me to look at and I was happy with it.
And then two days ago, I get feedback that tears everything I have written apart. I get told DESPITE following her original feedback and writing about what she wanted me to, this essay would STILL not pass. I go back to Jack in floods of tears, panicking as this was the last of the support I could access from SELCS (bar one more conversation with her about her feedback). He advises me to go to this meeting the same day she emailed me (and I do) as we both knew we needed to start preparing for an inevitable secondary fail and the more "support" I had accessed and therefore the more of a paper trail of proof we had, the better the outcome of requesting to get the grade altered could be.
I didn't get a clear answer in the meeting why the essay wouldn't pass as it currently stands (I'm starting to see a pattern here). She just didn't like it and had the audacity to bring up my other failed essay to "prove" to me I had a lot to learn about using academic sources and how to write essays. I have never had to bite my tongue harder in my life. I wanted to quit the call then and there or swear at her for being a shitty pain in the ass. But I stayed calm, shut her train of thought down and after being told I needed to redo the entire thing (again) I managed to get her to specify the amount of various things I needed to do to get the essay to pass. She backtracked on a lot of her feedback from the 1st conversation we had about the essay topic (where she also negated to mention a bunch of important things as well) and I found the entire meeting immeasurably frustrating. The points I got her to state I needed to work on were:
1.use at least 6 relevant academic sources (of which peer reviewed papers or reputably published books are suitable). I did that already but apparently it wasn't obvious enough?
2. I need to speak about my “stages of fairytale ageing” in order, ideally referencing only one character's timeline/moment in their life for each one - I was doing this already but there was a bit of crossover between Maleficent and Aurora, so fine, I'll edit that out.
3. Not state a play is published in a certain year - apparently they’re performed in or written in a year (and yes, that was literally something she got pissed off about).
4. Be precise with my points on the use of colour, costume and characterisation with both Maleficent and Aurora (thought I was already doing that but I guess not?).
5. Apparently be “less chatty” in tone, which I’m at a loss about as the essay followed the same tone that's in most of my academic work which (bar a poorly written project set up bit in the diss) I’ve never been told was “chatty”...
These seemed doable and I have her feedback on the essay to follow as well. So I write these new points down, send them to her via email for confirmation and she comes back and TELLS ME I WAS WRONG!!!! I lost it at that point. I didn't do anything just sat and fumed in angry defeat and confusion.
So we now have in writing what exactly she wanted me to do, plus her feedback on the original essay. I'm reworking and redoing this entire essay for something stupid like the 6th time and have just finished another draft. And it now has 19 academic sources, 4 stories, 1 play and 13 movies in its bibliography and follows her feedback and notes to the nth degree. Jack and I are literally preparing to fight them failing me on this essay again. He's roped in tutors with an english lit background FROM MY DEPARTMENT to proof read this essay (AND other departments at UCL as well) because SELCS keeps back tracking on their ideas and are super inconsistent with their feedback as a department. And I officially have no more support I can access through SELCS and we're both still pretty pissed about how they handled things last time when asking for additional support, so we're not even going to try and ask for more.
I'm livid, my friends are beyond pissed, and Jack has decided (to quote him) that "we're going to have to throw the kitchen sink and more at this situation" and is now offering to proof read this essay, give feedback and more if required. Literally not even his area of expertise but we're both reaching a realisation I might actually be failed again, despite doing my best and accessing all support available. Jack has gone from "I'm sure you'll pass" to "we need to start to gather evidence that they have been too harsh on you and inconsistent in their feedback and expectations in case they fail you again. Have you accessed every offer of support etc?". I have done and we have a good long trail of proof if required. I hope it doesn't come to it but we're both literally preparing for the worst case scenario and I've lost all hope I will actually pass this module at all. But if I fail again, I can genuinely say it's not because I haven't tried - not that I think that's the reason the essay failed originally, that one's still a mystery. So if SELCS tries to play the "she didn't access XYZ support/didn't try hard enough/didn't engage with XYZ" card, we're prepared to go to the UCL grades board and request the essay mark be overturned (or something like that, I'm not a tutor so have no idea what we could do if I still fail and get below 40%).
But I'm done with this whole situation and want to ignore it and focus on my research child (AKA my dissertation project, which has also been really impacted by this entire shitty situation as well. Thank fuck I got a months extension on it, otherwise I'd be screwed!).
That's all for now, stay strong, keep fighting and have a little faith my friend - both in yourself and those around you
B xx
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