A University of Georgia Professor Had A "Stress Reduction Policy" Where You Could Email And Ask For The Grade You Wanted If You Felt Stressed About Your Real One
Campus Reform – The University of Georgia has made Professor Richard Watson remove a “stress reduction policy” from two of his course syllabi after facing national backlash for the practice.
As Campus Reform reported Monday, Watson had adopted a policy that would allow students who felt “unduly stressed by a grade for any assessable material or the overall course” to “email the instructor indicating what grade [they] think is appropriate, and it will be so changed” with “no explanation” required.
“If in a group meeting, you feel stressed by your group’s dynamics, you should leave the meeting immediately and need offer no explanation to the group members,” the policy added, saying such students could “discontinue all further group work” with their remaining grade being “based totally on non-group work.”
The policy was later scrubbed from both syllabi, though an archived version remains, and the university has since confirmed with Campus Reform that Watson did in fact remove the policy after media coverage.
Nothing and I mean nothing prepares you for the real world like being able to ask to review your own performance because you’ve been kind of stressed and don’t think it’s fair for someone else to judge you. Little known fact, most of corporate America works this way. When it comes time to meet with your boss or another superior to get a review of how you’re doing at your job, you can just ask them to please remove themselves from your safe space and wait by their inbox for your assessment of yourself. You’ll send it when you feel like it. That’s how your salary is assigned actually. The most stressed out people who don’t feel like they make enough money just shoot their boss over a figure they’re more comfortable with and HR has payroll updated by the next morning. No explanation necessary. That’s what we do with Portnoy, money is no object when it comes to our anxiety. Same with our yearly performance reviews. Only positive comments.
Turns out there is still a little bit of sanity left though. UGA shut this down real quick.
Also it’s fun to make fun of this stuff from a distance but I’d be lying if I’m not a little jealous I can’t be back in school to take full advantage of policies like this. I mean I may like to stand on principle but there’s no way I’d be too proud to capitalize on this. Just email my professor with the grade I want? Finally bump that Astronomy lab grade out of the C+ range? Hell yeah. I just can NOT see the fucking constellations.