All I have to contribute to this is that it is definitely, definitely true that it is worth agreeing with your professor if you want a good grade. In humanities classes, I take two column notes: one side is actual notes, and the other side is "buzzwords" that my professor uses. Just putting those buzzwords has taken me from working hard and getting lots of A minuses to breezing to A's no problem. Very simply, people think their opinion and their words are the best ones, so it is best to use those words and opinions to seem most convincing and thoughtful. This is really a lesson I learned from diplomacy.

Agreeing with the professor is definitely not a necessity. I wrote a paper last quarter that basically said I thought the professor's explanation of an event (the Kornilov Affair) was too simplistic. The paper was for 75% of my grade in that class and I got an A in it. As long as the professor is good and has some somblence of intellectual integrity you can disagree all you want. Agreeing with your professor is also not that useful since professors don't usually grade papers. Out of the dozen or so papers I've written this year the only one a professor has graded was the aforementioned one. Then again, if some science majors can't write a decent paper and want the easy way out then sucking up to the professor is always an option.

@Putin33 - Disbelieve me, say I'm whining, I really don't care ^_^

@mrlentz - Thank you for giving the benefit of the doubt and looking at it from other angles.

I've had my wife, another teacher (female), and a colleague (fellow interpreter; female) read it and none can find the sexism. They agree he just took the use of sex in the example as sexist which is not and today he will talk to me regarding the lack of understanding.

**UPDATE**

To anyone that remotely cares:

After 2 minutes of our scheduled meeting he changed my grade to an A. After one hour we had very enjoyable discussions and gave each other homework. All is right in the world of academia.

@ Sayjo

I remotely care. Good for you. Good luck with the rest of that class. Hopefully you will be able to build enough of a relationship with that professor to use him as a future reference.

@Sayjo

Great to hear. I'm glad it worked out well for you.

Awesome, Sayjo. Misunderstandings can usually be worked out if their are true misunderstandings. Sounds like you handled it right and he was receptive.

It's always great to have a conversation with a new person whose awareness is above the ever so sad par.

The suspense is killing me. Where was the source of confusion and what convinced the narrow-minded, doctrinaire, intolerant, anti-conservative academic that he was so wrong that he raised your grade from a D to an A?

I do enjoy how all of a sudden professors are nice people so long as they give conservatives As.

am i the only one deeply confused by this thread?

Were there posts removed or something? I don't even see a post by Putin. e.o

And he was convinced he was wrong in 2 minutes! That must be a record, especially for us arrogant academics.

I see all the posts..weird.

ancient -- you know that threads can be separated into pages, right? the arrows up on top of the thread.

@ Sayjo.. congrats, glad it worked out for you. You'll get to avoid resentful feelings about that professor.

Is this professor one you respected before this incident?

I was upset for a while about an unfair grade I received senior year of my undergraduate degree from one of my favorite professors. I've since gone back for my graduate degree, now 4 years later, and was hoping to take another class from this professor, since his lectures are world class, and set aside the history of the bad grade, but my frist semester back, he cancelled all his classes for health reasons and by the following semester had died from prostate cancer. Thankfully I had been able to meet with him the semester before I started (before he cancelled any classes), and whether he conveniently or truthfully did not remember the grading incident from 4 years earlier, I was able to move past the wrong he did me before I even knew he was sick.

All is wrong in the world of academia! A brief chat and he upgrades from a D to an A? Either he's grossly incompitent in his ability to mark papers, or he's the sort of coward who sees what he believes to be a trouble maker and does his best to appease him to avoid making his own life difficult. My faith in the education system has hit a new low :(.

I never had faith in the education system to begin with so I've been spared from disappointment there.. The problem starts well before the institutions of higher learning..
My wife is an elementary teacher, working to educate children in spite of the education system. Every issue she tells me about when she comes home could be classified as a) "In spite of the education system" or b) "In spite of inept parents", but more often than not, a combination of both. Sure there are bad teachers out there, but how much of that is handcuffing from their adminstration/district/state/Dept of Ed., and how much is the fact the the class they have to manage (note I didn't assume teaching was even possible) is made up 25 kids, over half of which have parents who, intentionally or not, tried their damnedest to ruin their kids before kindergarten?

@Putin33 - All of your reactions are absurd. You are rashly analyzing insights with no context to back it up and only using your own perception. "The suspense is killing me. Where was the source of confusion and what convinced the narrow-minded, doctrinaire, intolerant, anti-conservative academic that he was so wrong that he raised your grade from a D to an A?

I do enjoy how all of a sudden professors are nice people so long as they give conservatives As." -It was just a misunderstanding. My paper lacked a context that caused him to see it as such. That's why people I gave it to didn't see what he did, they knew me. Also, you calling me a conservative? I have no idea where you pull this shit out of.

@Octavious - It's neither, why would you assume those are the only possibilities?

I only posted this thread in a heat of rage because I've never remotely been called a sexist in my life and for it to be true would drastically conflict with my world view and force me to spend a lot of time in reflection. (I have other venues of contemplation to progress in :P)

"over half of which have parents who, intentionally or not, tried their damnedest to ruin their kids before kindergarten?"

Hit the nail on the head.

"You are rashly analyzing insights with no context"

You refuse to give me the context, that's the whole point. All I'm doing is asking questions.

"My paper lacked a context that caused him to see it as such. "

What context? You're speaking in code. For whatever reason you're very selective in what about this paper you want to share and what you don't.

"Also, you calling me a conservative? I have no idea where you pull this shit out of."

A good portion of this thread was spent talking about how academia oppresses conservative thought. Typically liberals don't go around writing papers in defense of the wage gap.

Okay Putin33 you're right. Yes I have been selective because while the group of people that make up webdiplomacy are well above average in intellectual insight. I've noticed a lot of people use their predispositions to perceive what is being said in a forum. I could go on for hours about the gross ineffectiveness of text based communications so instead of letting myself filter crap, I put what I felt was the only necessary aspects instead of spending hours discussing context.

You are just trying to figure out why this happened so I apologize for being a tad defensive. I mostly wanted as much insight as I could get and I got most of it from talking to people in person, and was too lazy to relay it here.

The world is coming to an end! The comunist agrees with me and the I, a libertarian, agree with him, what has happened?

There is a wage gap, a promotion gap, and a disparity in hiring in my field of engineering. The women engineers I know are just as good or better than many of the men. That they are better as a general rule has nothing to do with women or men being better than the other, but that in order to get hired, they had to be much better than the male candidate they were picked over. Yet they still don't recieve promotions they way their male counterparts do.

And Sayjo, while I understand your reservations about posting the paper, it is hard for us to judge the context of the paper without the paper. If you simply want advice on how to handle the situation, that's one thing, but it did seem you are seeking simpathy for your cause, for which I can understand reservations others may have in giving you that sympathy without seeing the referred to context. You did tell us to feel free to argue the points and Putin was seeking the context from which to be able to argue those points.

On the other hand I do agree with you Sayjo that both genders aren't always suited for every job, though that doesn't mean by any means that a gender should be kept from jobs in a certain area, just that naturally, biologically, one gender may be more qualified for a certain job than another. I have one thing to say to anyone who thinks otherwise, arrange an "I'll show you mine if you show me yours" session, and spend a little time examining the differences if you haven't ever done so.

I also won't deny that historically differences in physical ability have been used to assume and promulgate lies about difference in mental ability, and as such enable discrimination, but I also disagree with hiring a less qualified woman candidate simply because she is a woman and the employer is forced to give the appearance of avoiding discrimination.

And how fair is it to the woman really to have more doors opened to you than an equally qualified male candidate simply because you are a woman minority candidate, regardless of your ability? Isn't it an insult that you were picked not because you were the better candidate, but because you are a woman minority candidate and the employer has to fill quotas, avoid impressions etc?

Leif, I agree with everything you said haha

And you're there, of course, to propagate the lie that "unqualified" women are getting jobs to fill quotas. This isn't what affirmative action does, but this is a myth concocted by those who want to maintain the status quo of inequality.

Let's see, Putin has communist leanings, I have libertarian leanings, therefore you must have.. green jello leanings?

Putin.. I've seen it happen. I've seen a woman get promoted because she was a woman. That fact that I've seen it once means that it happens and not necessarily because there is a "quota"

"On the other hand I do agree with you Sayjo that both genders aren't always suited for every job, though that doesn't mean by any means that a gender should be kept from jobs in a certain area, just that naturally, biologically, one gender may be more qualified for a certain job than another."

Funny, that's what people say about engineers. Yet you just admitted that female engineers (and I know this from personal experience as well) have to be much better than their male counterparts to get a job. That's probably true about other male-dominated fields. My mother-in-law is an engineer, and to this day clients refuse to have her do jobs and instead request her male counterparts.

Now it became a debate on sexism ha.

Biologically men have a natural advantage in some high intensive labor jobs but that doesn't mean shit. A woman can easily out perform the men and should be paid for her out performance. What the fuck does gender have to do with a job that requires intellect?

Heck, my wife worked in computers, and when she answered the phone people would immediately say "let me talk to someone who knows something".

The fact is that in the so-called jobs where men supposedly are 'naturally' better, women aren't hired. The few that are are held to much much higher standards than men. So this idea that unqualified women systematically being hired on to fill "quotas" is a damn myth. Men are the biggest beneficiaries of bias in hiring, why don't you complain about that?

@ Putin, I've seen it personally in a sister department to mine at work. A lazy, incompetent, hard to get along with woman engineer was promoted to manager of that group, despite major shortcomings she had in managerial ability and people skills. Meanwhile several well qualified male candidates, with better technical skills and better people skills were passed over. She was the only female in that department and thus the only female available to even seriously be considered for the internal position, despite her obvious shortcomings. Tell me where the lie that women are hired to fill quotas in this example is? I didn't say affirmative action does this in every case, but it sure enables it.. I work on team that is more than half women and the male project lead selected them soley because of their technical ability, and it shows. His projects run more smoothly than other projects in the department. I'm all for ability and I see affirmative action in my workplace hindering progress for both women and men..