We’ve all had them. Professors who are so conceited and unforgiving. They don’t grade according to their own rubrics, their instructions disagree every other paragraph, and they do not give a specific answer to the question you just asked. Some people should just not be professors. I had two of these this semester. One of them decided to say that I was incorrect when I was clearly correct. A post will be coming on that, in line with my How to Argue With Your Professor series. The other said I wrote horribly, gave me a bad grade (for things that were not in the instructions or the rubric), and recommended me to the writing center.

In my seven years of college – from dual enrollment to graduate school – I have never been recommended the writing center. Ever.

Oh, and she also deducted points because one of the sources I cited was behind a paywall for her, even after I explained that I have credentials from four universities (potentially 6, although I didn’t try the others) that got me around a paywall (interlibrary loan also exists, crazy, right?). Also, that would be poor science if I excluded articles because my professor was too lazy to navigate a paywall.

So, what did I do? For starters, I didn’t change a single thing about my writing. I did submit my next assignment to the writing center, just to see what they would say before I submitted it. You want to know what they said? I had a couple commas that didn’t need to be there (mind you, this was NOT what my professor had deducted points for). But I’m not an idiot, I know that professors like this will not change, unless they are proven right. You will continue to get a bad grade for no reason, and I’ve learned that from experience.

So I submitted my assignment (with the removal of a couple of commas), and made a comment. “Thank you so much for recommending the Writing Center, they took a look, helped me edit grammar and format, and I feel so much more confident submitting this assignment!” It wasn’t a lie, but it did exaggerate the writing center’s help in the matter. Would you like to know what I received? A nearly perfect score. And I didn’t change a single thing about my writing style, which for the first paper she said was severely lacking. I continued this cycle throughout the course, not changing my writing, having the writing center edit my comma splicing, and submitting with a note saying how helpful the writing center was and how my professor’s suggestion was such a help. My final grade was submitted this morning, and I received an A in that class.

For the last two weeks, she was really hung up on the references ordeal and she was deducting substantial points for her own laziness. I did navigate this by linking a pdf, and I put in the comments since she did not have the credentials I did, I submitted a pdf, even though that was against APA format, so that she could see that I was able to access the article (which, side note, why is that even important? I can pull information from the free abstract for my paper, but whatever). She did not deduct points off the second time because I included the article for her.

Unfortunately, you are going to run into professors like this who are so conceited and self-righteous that they present themselves as idiots. But, there is a way to get around it, as much as it may grind your gears. You essentially just have to suck up. I didn’t want to take this class again, it was painful enough the first time through. But even though I told her the writing center helped my papers, I know that the writing center was useless for my papers. She didn’t grade on comma splicing, she graded on content and transition, which the writing center did not change or suggest edits to. So, I know that my papers were good enough, even though she was biased in her grading.

If I wasn’t almost done with the class, I would have gone above her for the references conundrum. She had an idiotic point of view that I know the university would not have upheld, but I was two weeks away from the end, I found a way to appease her, and I passed the class with an A. If she had started this in the beginning, I would have gone above her. And that leads into when you should argue with your professor…only do it when you know you are right. Next week, I’ll share an example (from my other professor) of how I successfully did that.

Annoying and idiotic professors will always exist (even at a “Christian” university, which I am currently attending) but knowing how to get around it is a skill that you will unfortunately need for a good grade. Sometimes it’s not worth it to prove you are right, just knowing that you’re right is good enough. I didn’t need to prove to her my writing was good…I knew that it was, and that’s all that mattered.

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