Oof, I feel... bad for that student, because that was me. I had one professor give me what I assume was a pity D- for a course required for my major because I almost never came to class or did the work because of mental health, and even though it wasn't technically passing, all I needed in order not to have to retake it was a not-F. But at the same time, the professor was aware of how invested I was in the material and how much insight I had because of the way I would participate when I did show up, and I remember talking to him in passing once at an event a few years later and he was straight-up like "you didn't get a bad grade because you were bad at it, you got a bad grade because you never showed up" and it was actually a pretty touching moment for me to know that he recognized the difference.
I also one time elected to fail a course by default because quite a lot of personal and bureaucratic things went wrong all at once... sucked for my GPA, but I retook the same course with the same (amazing) professor and ended up properly retaining a lot more of the material and having a better time with it than before.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2019-05-12 11:21 pm (UTC)Oof, I feel... bad for that student, because that was me. I had one professor give me what I assume was a pity D- for a course required for my major because I almost never came to class or did the work because of mental health, and even though it wasn't technically passing, all I needed in order not to have to retake it was a not-F. But at the same time, the professor was aware of how invested I was in the material and how much insight I had because of the way I would participate when I did show up, and I remember talking to him in passing once at an event a few years later and he was straight-up like "you didn't get a bad grade because you were bad at it, you got a bad grade because you never showed up" and it was actually a pretty touching moment for me to know that he recognized the difference.
I also one time elected to fail a course by default because quite a lot of personal and bureaucratic things went wrong all at once... sucked for my GPA, but I retook the same course with the same (amazing) professor and ended up properly retaining a lot more of the material and having a better time with it than before.