When I taught junior year statistics at UCONN, it was the core course that many loathed and all respected. In my opinion it was the only course in the communications department the kids had to stay completely on top of to get through the semester. Other courses you could skip a week at the beach, copy notes from a buddy or get the 5-minute download. But not COMS301, no way.

Being a stat class, I graded on a normalized curve. And usually a “C” was a raw grade average of about 51. What can I say… for most the ‘curve’ saved their butt - it might have hurt the one or two kids for whom stats was a natural slam dunk, but they too respected the overall shadow stats cast on their peers and accepted normalized grading with their raw scores of 95 or the like converted into z-scores. Yes, it was grade inflation, but I couldn’t turn trotters into race horses in one semester, so you gotta do what you gotta do to get people by in this world.

The beauty of normalized grading is that EVERY raw score falls into a range with PREDETERMINED parameters. There were few cases of kids trying to eke out a higher grade, but the score just ‘fell’ where it fell. And with stats, the problem sets are graded with scalpel precision, either you write down the correct methodological approach and subsequent output, or not (A nice diversion from teaching interpersonal comm and advertising. Maybe tough for them, but a breeze for me).

The instances when students would come to me sulking, pleading for a grade change was not when they received an F, for those kids knew pretty much all along they were ‘toast’, and faded into the woodwork at semester end. Instead, it was the “strugglers,” the poor SOBs who received the dreaded D+, or “below average, plus.”

I knew who they were when they entered  my office. They had that look of inward soul searching, not knowing how to define themselves, perhaps dancing the razors-edge of their first true identity conflict.

They would totally freak out. They would first start by pleading for the cliff-hanging C-, which would earn them high-fives and a few free beers from their pals.  Then, they would finally grovel, pleading for a straight D, which they perceived as a normal grade,  even eking by with a D- by a few last gasps. But nobody in their right mind wanted to receive, or even worse, show their parents a D+.

I even had an instance where a gal took the class over to try to eradicate her dreaded D+. I don’t remember what grade she finally ended up with, but she was pale all summer long.