You Want Me to Give You an F?

As a university professor, sometimes I think I have seen and have heard it all. 

I see the same student behaviors semester after semester, year after year.  When I question a student about something he/she has done (or not done), I hear the same student excuses explaining the behavior. 

Question: Why are you tardy for class again? Common excuses: I overslept; the line was long in the cafeteria; my last class is on the other side of campus, and it is a long walk; there was a lot of traffic on my commute; a professor stopped me to talk about something important; I lost track of time; I just stopped to get a coffee. . . .

Question: Why did you not submit the assignment? Common excuses: I did not know that anything had been assigned; I did not know that there was a strict deadline; my computer drive crashed (or printer, USB drive, etc.); I had many other assignments due on the same day; I have family problems that prevent me from doing any work; my athletic team had an away game and returned too late for me to get my work done; I just broke up with my boyfriend/girlfriend and cannot cope with my schoolwork right now; my dog ate my homework. . . .

Question: Why did you miss the exam?  Common excuses: I had the wrong date/location written down; I developed a sudden fever (headache, cold, cramps, vomiting, etc.); I overslept; I had an important job interview; there was a sudden death in the family. . . .

When do I hear the most emotional excuses from students?  At the end of the semester when grades have been assigned. Grades are extremely important, after all. Now, at this point students are not apologizing to me for their poor performance in the class.  Rather, the student is trying to persuade me to give a higher grade than what he/she actually earned.  I am asked to save the student from the dire consequence of a poor grade – the student will disappoint family, the student will lose a scholarship, the student will lose athletic eligibility, the student will not graduate, the student will lose a new job. . . .

After hearing the same excuses over and over again, it would be easy for me to lose sympathy for students and their problems.  It would be easy to become cynical.  This is one of the reasons why I welcomed the opportunity to become a faculty member at a Korean university.  To be in a new environment and in a new culture held the promise of change and of new experiences.  I was hoping that in Korean universities things would be different.

The hard reality is that certain student behaviors are universal – tardiness, missed assignments, missed exams, and begging for higher grades.  While Korean students are often more polite as they offer up their excuses (with bowing and the use of honorifics), their excuses are similar to their American counterparts.

Maybe I really have seen it all and heard it all?

And then something happened that took me by surprise.  Something I’d never been asked before.  A question that was strange and foreign to me.

At the end of the Spring 2010 semester, I had several biology students make the same request.  Each asked me to change his grade from a passing score to an F grade.  Wait a minute.  Students are supposed to beg for a passing grade when they have failed a class; students show relief and gratitude when they pass a class.  You want me to give you an F?

This request puzzled me.  As a general rule, I do not increase a student’s grade – no matter how much a student insists that the grade be changed.  However, I did not know how to respond to this type of request.  I did not know enough about the Korean system to understand why students would ask to fail.  So I told a trusted colleague about the requests and asked him to explain why students would ask this of me.

American universities and Korean universities differ in their retake policies – the situations under which a student is allowed to retake a class and how the retake is treated in GPA calculations.  In Korea, so much emphasis is placed on GPA.  Retaking a course can make enough of a difference in a student’s GPA to justify retaking a class — and to request an F so that the retake is possible.

Now I understand the reason why the request is made.  And I did grant the requests – at least the students wanted to earn a higher grade on their own merits.  However, I would be happier if the requests weren’t needed in the first place.  I wish that students would worry about their grades in September, October, and November, instead of waiting until December to try to rescue themselves or to ask me to rescue them.

If it were to happen, that would be something new and different.