History

conor.hogan.2

Did fine in exams - got my 2.1 in both my subjects including history.


But that said - bunch of incompetent or lazy....... in that dept.
Each and every essay was a struggle to get the grade I deserved, overall just poorly ran.

Mushy

Just cos you think you deserve one grade doesn't mean you do actually deserve it. I'm more pissed cos two of my essays went down in grade cos of typing on my computer with Office 2007 with proper citations, then printing off in UCD with its more primitive form, the style of citation changed and so lost marks on that. Fell on deaf ears too.

conor.hogan.2

Well thats why you print it in word on their pcs or with openoffice and check the layout again.

Every essay I chased up got bumped up a grade and when I questioned why the grade was so low they could give me no answer other than ''that is what it is worth'' but when looking at the 5 boxes of most important things and the marks I got for them they knew it didn't add up.

Mushy

I'd say they take attendance into account, even though they obviously shouldn't. My essays were printed on their PC's, but differnet specs meant the citations changed. Which is weird, cos I submit them online in same format as print verion, so they'd differ.

bnt

I prefer to save as PDF from Office 2007, then print the PDF at UCD. There's a free Save As PDF plug-in from Microsoft. That way, I know exactly how it's going to look.

(I was going to mention LaTeX, and programs for it such as LyX, but that's another level of geekdom that's not for everyone!)

conor.hogan.2

Well I write all my essays in openoffice and then open them in open office and check and fix a few things and then print.

But for all of first year and most of second year I had to deal with MS Office even though I wrote it on my macbook, so i know its a pain to transfer docs over.

My attendance was grand - b's or a's, nearly always. Plus nearly all the tutors knew me through me talking and asking questions when needs be, so that wasnt the problem.

Just very badly organized and tutors who obv didnt give a **** either way when it came to their time outside of tutorials.

LaTeX and LyX - jaysus talking bout bringing a bomb to a fist fight.... no need to use those.

convert

conor.hogan.2 wrote: »

Each and every essay was a struggle to get the grade I deserved overall just poorly ran.

I'm sorry, but what you think your deserved grade is and what your actual grade is not necessarily the same. A student can put hours of work into their essay, but if it simply doesn't answer the question posed or doesn't contain footnotes, then there is no way that student can get what they consider a 'decent' grade.

Ok, you say you had both footnotes and that your essay answered the question, but it doesn't mean you should get a certain grade just because you feel you deserved it. If an essay is badly written or had poor grammar and syntax, then that essay should and will be marked down - afterall, by final year students should be able to string a sentence together.

If you were that unhappy with the tutors in the school, then the director of (or lecturer with responsibility for) tutorials/teaching and learning should have been your first port of call rather than simply venting your frustrations here. I'm pretty sure every school has one.

conor.hogan.2

As stated in my post ''every essay was a struggle to get the grade I deserved'' - I thought it was clear from that post that I went to the tutor after each essay and argued with them and every single time the essay got marked up one, two and even 3 grades up.

Footnotes, structure and grammar for a history essay can take you down a max of three grades.

Sometimes my structure and grammar was not the best so fair enough I never argued with them taking those two grades away.

But that leaves the essays open to a b+ and on and they could never tell me where those other grades were lost when I didn't get a b+.

In my other subjects it was clear where grades were lost or gained, even when there was no cover sheet with a ''clear'' layout and breakdown of the grade on the front.

ghostchant

bnt wrote: »

I prefer to save as PDF from Office 2007, then print the PDF at UCD. There's a free Save As PDF plug-in from Microsoft. That way, I know exactly how it's going to look.

(I was going to mention LaTeX, and programs for it such as LyX, but that's another level of geekdom that's not for everyone!)

LaTeX/LyX ftw..for science/engineering anyway

convert

ghostchant wrote: »

LaTeX/LyX ftw..for science/engineering anyway

If I was starting college again, I'd definitely use LaTeX - didn't seem worth learning how to use it with only a few months left in education!