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[pubtoboot]

I just got a seminar paper, which I finished early in the semester, accepted for publication . It is a journal published by a very reputable (even 'prestigious') press, although the journal itself is not that prestigious. (the blind review process had taken two months ... I was exceptionally quick)

I am a little concerned about my grade though. If I got anything less than an A-, should I appeal? I do not want to come across as arrogant .... but I am really concerned.

How likely do you think this is going to happen?
The professor likely knew my eagerness to get a good grade. He went over my initial draft and gave me some good feedback.

[tinyzombie]

I just got a seminar paper, which I finished early in the semester, accepted for publication . It is a journal published by a very reputable (even 'prestigious') press, although the journal itself is not that prestigious. (the blind review process had taken two months ... I was exceptionally quick)

I am a little concerned about my grade though. If I got anything less than an A-, should I appeal? I do not want to come across as arrogant .... but I am really concerned.

How likely do you think this is going to happen?
The professor likely knew my eagerness to get a good grade. He went over my initial draft and gave me some good feedback.

Wait: you want to appeal your (hypothetical) grade because the same paper was accepted to a journal?

[pubtoboot]

I know this is strange - I am probably getting slightly neurotic lately.

answer to your question: yes, I would be very unhappy if I got a B+ or below.

[tinyzombie]

I know this is strange - I am probably getting slightly neurotic lately.

answer to your question: yes, I would be very unhappy if I got a B+ or below.

Strange is not the word that I would use.

[kedves]

Wow.

Think about it this way.  If you think you would be unhappy with a B+, how unhappy do you think you would be if your professor and others in the department interpreted your grade appeal as ------ [fill in the blank with the worst they might think]?  Is it worth the risk?

I hope your professor saw your consulting him as eagerness to do good work rather than eagerness to get a good grade.

[bewilderedta]

I'd wait to see if this is actually a problem before worrying.

That said, I think appealing a grade (barring some extreme circumstances) would put you in an unfriendly relationship to your faculty and be tantamount to shooting yourself in the foot. The fact that your paper was accepted for publication does not necessarily mean that it should have gotten an A according to your professor's standards, which may be different from those of the journal.

In any case, course grades are often based on more than the paper alone. And as discussed in the recent "getting a B" thread, a grade less than A is not the end of the world. You got a paper published and that's great - and more important than your GPA.

[the_honey_badger]

What "bewilderedta" said with the addition that beyond the other components of your grade (drafts, other assignments, discussion)  the parameters of what you were supposed to do/learn in the course might be different than what makes an acceptable journal article.

On the other hand, to be completely cynical....if your prof is untenured and "new?"  Drop the word that it was accepted for publication.  That likely will get you an "A" from Dr. Insecure.


Also---the press that prints the journal might be "prestigious" but its the journal's ranking that usually matters. I can think of a regional sub-field journal published by one of the top U presses in the world that is considered *3rd tier* at best in one of my sub-fields.    Frankly, I couldn't tell you what press currently publishes either the AHR or the JAH but I do know where they *journals* rank in my discipline.

[bread_pirate_naan]

I know this is strange - I am probably getting slightly neurotic lately.

answer to your question: yes, I would be very unhappy if I got a B+ or below.

Strange is not the word that I would use.

+1

and what bewildered TA said.   

You don't want to come across as arrogant, but you seem to have a lot to prove and this consistent desire to give your professors unsolicited publications (prior OPs) and challenge grades is not collegial.  I encourage you to put some of this energy into achieving positive human interaction unrelated to work. 

[bread_pirate_naan]

You know, I've been thinking about this and I am pissed off on behalf of the professor.  Pubtoboot, I don't know what your issues are, but you have a deeply screwed up idea of what it means to be an A student.  

Your seminar paper is supposed to be the result of a semester of work which probably includes reading and discussion.  You professor probably planned a complete course with a beginning, a middle, and an end.  You are being graded, presumably, on your mastery of the material over the entire term.  You are not earning any grade for getting a midterm paper published in some no name journal.  That is not the purpose of the course.  Again, the purpose of the course is to master the material presented, not check out in the middle.  Now, you did get something in press, but it sounds like you didn't do any more writing or revision of your paper based on subsequent  instruction, course content, discussion or real learning after that.  

I would think that there would be revisions of any manuscript based on new questions, or deeper insights, or just better work.  Work that could be produced as a result of completing the course.  Also, you took your midterm paper to your professor for feedback.  I am pretty sure you did not ask your prof where that paper might be well placed, nor did they discuss it with you as a manuscript.  That doesn't reflect well on you.  It seems simultaneously clueless and unbelievably manipulative.

And, not only are you jumping the gun on the course material, you are planning how to continue to manipulate your professor by expecting to challenge a grade you haven't been given, for an A grade that by any serious scholar's standards YOU DON'T DESERVE.

I think you need to sit back and think about what ever your issues and goals are, because your idea of what constitutes a good student and good work in grad school is seriously flawed.

[immigrant]

I think BPN and others have said it well.

This isn't an independent study where *maybe* the paper constitutes the entire end product of the course. Plus, there is nothing to say that the reviewers' judgment of your work is necessarily superior to that of your professor's.

Anyway, if you have a paper published in a halfway decent journal, nobody is going to care whether you got a B+ or an A in the course. There are plenty of things worth worrying about in graduate school, and this isn't one of them.

[the_honey_badger]

Based on what you have said elsewhere about prior phd work---my first thought as an instructor who found that the semester research paper was finished early in the semester is to ask if you are "double dipping."

[grasshopper]

I am pretty sure you did not ask your prof where that paper might be well placed, nor did they discuss it with you as a manuscript.  That doesn't reflect well on you.  It seems simultaneously clueless and unbelievably manipulative.

You don't know that. You're making an awful lot of assumptions about the nature of the course, the assignment guidelines and rubric, the type of comments and revision the OP made, and the discussion the OP had with his/her professor.

That seems simultaneously clueless and unbelievably arrogant.

And, not only are you jumping the gun on the course material, you are planning how to continue to manipulate your professor by expecting to challenge a grade you haven't been given, for an A grade that by any serious scholar's standards YOU DON'T DESERVE.

All caps? Seriously?

I'm with you on the jump gun manipulation, but how can you possibly know that the paper isn't an A paper? There seems to be quite a bit of gun jumping going on. Now you're making judgments on the quality of scholarship that you haven't even seen?

You know, not all grad courses are like your grad courses. Some professors will allow, indeed encourage, students to apply the course material to their dissertation topics in their final papers. I can see how an exceptional student might find something pertinent to their research in the first half of the course and write an A paper from there.

Could the paper be improved with even further revision? Well, sure, probably. But you know, so could my 3rd year undergraduate Shakespeare seminar paper. But I got an A on that, and I'm not beating myself up over the fact that I could make it even better.



OP, to address your question: quit worrying about grades. They don't matter anymore. It is entirely possible that your paper, although publishable, doesn't meet the criteria that your professor is looking for. So, yeah, you might get a B. Who knows? But the grade doesn't matter. What matters are the comments. A high GPA isn't the prize anymore. Figuring out how to become a better scholar is what's important here.

[bread_pirate_naan]

I am pretty sure you did not ask your prof where that paper might be well placed, nor did they discuss it with you as a manuscript.  That doesn't reflect well on you.  It seems simultaneously clueless and unbelievably manipulative.

You don't know that. You're making an awful lot of assumptions about the nature of the course, the assignment guidelines and rubric, the type of comments and revision the OP made, and the discussion the OP had with his/her professor.

You're right.   I am assuming that the OP gained admission to a program where faculty think submitting papers from the middle of the first term in the program to WTF Quarterly is a bad idea.  She could be at Crackerjack U, but I am also making those comments within the context of past posts by the OP.  Posts where she inquires about the potential problems that might crop up if she misrepresents the publisher of her book on her CV, and oddly contemplative thoughts on purchasing diplomas and falsifying credentials.  She likes to obscure the nature of her activities and has asked what she can get away with repeatedly.  No reason to think that general flavor has changed.

That seems simultaneously clueless and unbelievably arrogant.

Did you write that all by yourself?

And, not only are you jumping the gun on the course material, you are planning how to continue to manipulate your professor by expecting to challenge a grade you haven't been given, for an A grade that by any serious scholar's standards YOU DON'T DESERVE.

All caps? Seriously?

Yes, seriously.  No one deserves a course grade of A in a grad seminar for a final assignment informed by a fraction of the course content.  That doesn't mean they aren't handed out like candy.  Anybody stupid enough to think that getting a seminar paper in press has anything to do with their course grade has grossly misunderstood the nature of their educational endeavor.  I want to fail her on that misguided belief alone.

[larryc]

Pubtoboot, I think you should appeal if you do not get the Nobel Prize.

f***in' Swedes!

[grasshopper]

You're right.   I am assuming that the OP gained admission to a program where faculty think submitting papers from the middle of the first term in the program to WTF Quarterly is a bad idea.  She could be at Crackerjack U, but I am also making those comments within the context of past posts by the OP.  Posts where she inquires about the potential problems that might crop up if she misrepresents the publisher of her book on her CV, and oddly contemplative thoughts on purchasing diplomas and falsifying credentials.  She likes to obscure the nature of her activities and has asked what she can get away with repeatedly.  No reason to think that general flavor has changed.

Well, I can envision an A paper written midterm quite easily, with no reflection on the program. Really, BPN, there are good programs out there that are not run like yours. They exist.

I have not, however, read the OP's other posts. And alas, I have absolutely no inclination to. So I'll just take your word for it.

That seems simultaneously clueless and unbelievably arrogant.

Did you write that all by yourself?

Ha! No, I had help. It's almost entirely plagiarized. Do you think the fora committee will let me get away with that?

And, not only are you jumping the gun on the course material, you are planning how to continue to manipulate your professor by expecting to challenge a grade you haven't been given, for an A grade that by any serious scholar's standards YOU DON'T DESERVE.

All caps? Seriously?

Yes, seriously.  No one deserves a course grade of A in a grad seminar for a final assignment informed by a fraction of the course content.  That doesn't mean they aren't handed out like candy.  Anybody stupid enough to think that getting a seminar paper in press has anything to do with their course grade has grossly misunderstood the nature of their educational endeavor.  I want to fail her on that misguided belief alone.

And I would grade the paper on its on merits. If the first half of the course content had been explored in sufficient depth to warrant an A on the paper, then the student would probably get an A... on the paper.  If the student, however, had simply stopped attending class after finishing the paper, then the student probably wouldn't end up with an A in the course.

Here's what I mean about not all programs being like yours. Maybe the paper doesn't account for the entirety of the class grade. Maybe the professor is requiring students to do significant writing or give presentations throughout the term, by which s/he will judge overall performance. Who knows? You're assuming that any good course is going to require students to use all of the course content in a final paper. I can imagine a good course that requires students to explore one part of the course content in greater depth in a final paper.

What you're saying here is that in your class, you would require students to do x, y, z. But the OP isn't in your class. Maybe there are other ways of maintaining rigor in a graduate program.



But in the end, this whole conversation is moot, because A) neither us, nor the OP, are teaching this course, and B) the OP's grades don't really matter.