Resist

Recent events have reminded me of these three pieces of wisdom:

"Never argue with a fool; onlookers may not be able to tell the difference." -attributed to Mark Twain

"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig, you get dirty; and besides, the pig likes it." -George Bernard Shaw

"I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to." -Wendy Donnahoo

So, I'll try to be the adult and let it go.

Document Not Found

I just tried to update Hero Designer v3 (a program used to create Champions characters). Alas, HDv3 uses Fifth Edition rules. Hero Games has now moved on to a Sixth Edition, so Fifth Edition is no longer supported. So when I tried to update, I was taken to an error message on the company web site. This is the error message it spelled out, letter by letter and line by line, over the course of 2-3 minutes:

Document Not Found
Nope. File not found.
No object, no file, no bundle of joyous data.
Nothing. Zip. Nada. Zilch. It's not here.
The requested document is totally fake.
It's not here.
Even tried multi.
Nothing helped.
I'm really depressed about this.
You see, I'm just a web server...
-- here I am, brain the size of the universe,
trying to serve you a simple web page,
and then it doesn't even exist!
Where does that leave me?!
I mean, I don't even know you.
How should I know what you wanted from me?
You honestly think I can *guess*
what someone I don't even *know*
wants to find here?
*sigh*
Man, I'm so depressed I could just cry.
And then where would we be, I ask you?
It's not pretty when a web server cries.
And where do you get off telling me what to show anyway?
Just because I'm a web server,
and possibly a manic depressive one at that?
Why does that give you the right to tell me what to do?
Huh?
I'm so depressed...
I think I'll crawl off into the /dev/null and decompose.
I mean, I'm gonna be obsolete in what, two weeks anyway?
What kind of a life is that?
Two effing weeks,
and then I'll be replaced by a .01 release,
that thinks it's God's gift to web servers,
just because it doesn't have some tiddly little
security hole with its HTTP POST implementation,
or something.
I'm really sorry to burden you with all this,
I mean, it's not your job to listen to my problems,
and I guess it is my job to go and fetch web pages for you.
But I couldn't get this one.
I'm so sorry.
Believe me!
Maybe I could interest you in another page?
There are a lot out there that are pretty neat, they say,
and some of them were put on *my* server, of course.
Surprised you didn't I?
You thought I had only crappy s___ here, didn't you?
Well no. Some crap I have is actully pretty cool.
Problem is a lot of people are interested in this s___.
That makes me depressed too, since I have to serve them,
all day and all night long.
Two weeks of information overload,
and then *pfffff*, consigned to the trash.
What kind of a life is that?
Now, please let me sulk alone.
I'm so depressed.

This is why I love Hero Games!

For the Love of an A-

School has been out for less than a week, and already the e-mails have started to appear. The verbiage is different in each case, but the message is pretty much the same:

Dear Mr. M,

I was just checking my final grades and I saw that I got an A- in your class. I am only x% away from an A. I worked really hard in your class/I know that other teachers will round up if the grade is this close/I feel that I deserve an A/I’ve always had a 4.0 GPA before this term/I need as high a grade as possible to qualify for such-and-such scholarship, and I was wondering if it would be possible for you to raise my grade. Please let me know. Thank you!

-Student

The answer, of course, is no.

That’s not to say that I won’t raise the grade if the listed grade is, in fact, incorrect. I make errors sometimes in data entry, and if I happened to enter 68% instead of 86% for a final exam score, then yes, I’m happy to go back and fix that. But I don’t raise grades just for the sake of giving a student a higher grade--no matter how smart or talented they are or how much I might like them personally. Here are some of the reasons why not, a few of the explanations:

1. It opens the proverbial Pandora’s Box. I know that the moment I do it for you, I’ll have ninety-seven others asking me to do the same thing for them. And they won’t all be A- cases. If I raise a close A- to an A, then will I have to raise a close B+ to an A-? How about a close C+ to a B-? Or a close F to a D-? And how close is close enough, anyway? 0.05% too low? 0.1% 0.5%? Where does it stop? I am so not going there.

2. The Disclosure Statement I gave to all of you--and asked both you and your parents to sign--clearly states that 92.97% is an A-, not an A. Here, take a look. I have to draw the line somewhere. This is where the line is. It’s where the line has been all along.

3. I give students several extra credit opportunities each quarter. If you, as a student, have taken advantage of these opportunities, then your grade has already been raised. I’m not going to raise it a second time.

3a. On the other hand, if you have not taken advantage of these extra credit opportunities, then you’ve already had a chance to raise your grade, and chosen not to use it. There’s not much more I can say about that.

4. Wanting (or even needing) to qualify for a scholarship is a great incentive for you to earn a good grade. It is not a reason for me to give you a grade you haven’t earned. That’s an important distinction.

5. I understand that you’re a good student and that good grades are important to you. And I know that a 4.0 is a big deal. I get that, I really do. But this isn’t middle school any more. The simple reality is that not everyone gets a 4.0 in high school. Mine is an advanced high school science class, and in classes like this, even good students don’t always get an A.

6. Other teachers may round grades on certain occasions. That’s part of their classroom policy. But it is not a part of mine. Other teachers’ policies are independent of my policies.

7. Finally, I’m not going to raise your grade because it wouldn’t be fair. Look at it from the other side. Let’s say that you earned a 93.01%, but I didn’t feel like you really deserved an A, so I lowered it to an A-. You wouldn’t tolerate that. You’d rant and rave and complain about how unfair it was and raise all kinds of a ruckus to get it changed back--and rightfully so. Asking me to raise your grade is really no different. In both cases, I would be giving you a grade that you haven’t earned and don’t deserve. That fact that one of these two cases would be an error in your favor does not make it any less an error.

In science, one of the most important principles is that of the integrity of data. The numbers say what the numbers say. We can’t change the data just because it doesn’t agree with our hypothesis, no matter how fond of that hypothesis we may be. Grades are the same way. If the numbers say that you have earned an A-, then that’s the grade I have to report. I can’t raise it--or lower it, for that matter--just because you or I don’t like it or agree with it. The numbers say what the numbers say.

So in conclusion, no, I will not raise your grade from an A- to an A.

There are students who don’t like me because I ‘gave’ them their first A-. I’m okay with that. If you choose to respond that way as well, I can only say that you aren’t the first and almost certainly won’t be the last.