Irritating. I remember one of my papers, on the interwar devaluations, coming back to me with no comments whatsoever, one solitary tick at the end - and, especially gallingly, every instance of "1930's" circled and corrected to "1930s".

If your teacher is grading papers without reading them, then yes, you should speak to the department head.

1. Speak to the department head.
2. Do not take any more journalism classes.
3. If you're in journalism school, drop out or at least start taking some classes in public relations.
4. If you insist on continuing on this insane path, please do not consider making any large purchases until you either (a) get rich from doing something in addition to journalism, (b) inherit a large sum of money, or (c) marry someone who has a large sum of money and wants to share it with you.
5. If you become a journalist and find yourself writing stories every day of the week, sometimes as many as three or four, please don't be surprised when folks call you up to complain about them without having read them.
6. It's a lovely thought, journalism. You know, there's a certain altruistic nature that goes along with the idea of bringing news to the world. But alas, dark days have descended upon journalists. This is no time to become one.
7. If you are really serious about this, and you make the ridiculous decision to go into print, please get an internship with the Associated Press or with a Time Inc. magazine. These are the only companies where you may one day have some job security.
7.5. But probably not.

Oh, and back to the subject: Go to the department head. For a professor to grade a paper without having read it is atrocious.

I HAVE HAD THAT DAMNED RICK ASTLEY SONG IN MY HEAD FOR ABOUT THREE MONTHS NOW AND IT'S DRIVING ME CR—

I'm sorry, I thought this was a shouting thread.

That does seem really, really poor. I'd probably say something. I remember my major uni work coming back and the assessor had circled the one word I'd spelt wrong. And the only reason it was in there was because I didn't believe the spell checker. What an ass!

To carry on from what Brina said: one of my brothers is a journalist. Many years ago, when he was still in school, he spent a day at one of the UK national papers. He asked every journalist he sat with whether he should do a journalism degree. Each one said no; yes, get a degree, but no way in journalism. He's still a journalist - an award winning one at that. He's also published a book and is now writing for publications around the world. He dropped out of uni and has no higher level education at all.

Er, that probably hasn't helped at all. Sorry. But, yes, go say something - your tutors are paid to mark your work. If they aren't doing that then that needs fixing.

Yike-o's. Oh wait. Maybe that's Yike-os. I don't even know anymore.

Academia can really suck. When I was in uni, in my third year, a prof told me that the department I was in didn't give out A's (Or As). This was at a time when I needed at least 90% to get into teacher's college (or is it teachers' college? Or teachers college?).

So, in effect, their dumb unwritten departmental policy forced me to arguably waste years of my life getting a BA in History, prior to futzing about for years, making minimum wage, and then stumbling into the exciting world if Information Technology. It wasn't free to attend this university either.

So yeah, academia can really suck balls.
P.S. Please do say something, but don't expect anything to come out of it. See above.

Definitely go to the department chair, but recognize that a) probably nothing will be done about it, and b) your professor may find out and get pissed at you.

Plan A) what brina said.
Plan B) if I every make good on my plot to win the lotto, you are always welcome to bring your bike out to Denver and join my he-rem. *wiggles eyebrows significantly*

ahem. sorry. While I agree that a metaphorical, and perhaps even literal arse-kicking is in order, you now know why I no longer work at [redacted] (large state uni). Academic types can be major blundering doodyheads. It's cos they don't have to actually function in the so-called 'real world', yanno.

Rawr!

Should I contact the professor about it? Part of me just wants to shove in the footnotes and just get my good grade, and another part of me wants to contact her and be like "hey I was wondering could you actually read the paper and let me know what you think?" or something.

God damn it.

I think the answer might depend on whether she had required you to turn in a first draft, or whether you were asking her to look at it as a special favor to you. If the first, I might complain. If the second, I'd suck it up.

contact her and be like "hey I was wondering could you actually read the paper and let me know what you think?"

Personally, I'd go this route, if you actually care what she thinks. (But I'm a nerd that way.)

Definitely go to the department chair, but recognize that a) probably nothing will be done about it, and b) your professor may find out and get pissed at you.
c) You may get worse grades from here on in from that professor. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

CF12 -

First of all, good on ya for having a conscience.

Second of all, take the two minutes to ask yourself what alerting a dept. head will do in this instance, best and worse case. Best case = the professor will have a massive change of heart, demand your paper back, spend an entire weekend on it, and regale you with praies and/or constructive criticism that will be so powerful as to catapult your nascent journalism career into the upper ranks of prize-winners and globetrotters.

Worse case? People still have shit to do - grade other papers (or not), attend to a million details of which you are unaware (but are still every bit as important as yours. Chances are there are other students going to them complaining of same teacher or someone similar...), and your paper stands as the prof graded it.

If it's really worth this much angst, go to the prof themselves after the semester is over and tell them how you felt.

Everyone has deadlines, stresses and a million tiny bullshit moments that get in the way of their highest aspirations, be it Student On The Rise or Teacher Giving Time To Said Student.

You are the only one who cares as much as you do about this situation.

That is a beautiful thing in itself, and you have a chance now to do something very positive about a situation that makes you wanna holler.

I would certainly go to your professor first about it, especially since you asked for guidance in the last part of the paper itself. I've had teachers ask for draft papers as a check to make sure that the students are actually doing the work, as opposed to as a check for the substance of the paper. Is there the chance she was doing that? If so, she may very well read the final draft you hand in. Once you've talked to her about it, if you feel like she's adverse to reading it or helping like you need, go to the department head.

I agree with LT. And also: isn't this just a first draft? If you're getting a B+ now, I'd waiting to see what happens with your final draft. It doesn't sound like you need to do much more work to satisfy this prof's lax requirements. If you get an A, then "yay!" and forget it all. If you get something worse than a B+, then you can gripe since the prof failed to properly grade the first draft and provide guidance.

Strictly speaking, I think you're right and the prof is acting improperly. But for a 10-page undergrad paper? Meh...I don't think it's worth making enemies over.

Level-headed folks around here. Hmm. They're probably right. Maybe this professor who doesn't actually read her/his students' assignments has great contacts at the lone surviving media empire. The one that's hiring right now as we speak.

But you should at least talk to the prof about things. Frame it in a very polite way if you're going to approach him/her directly.

But anyway, it doesn't matter, because you're dropping out of j-school, right?

Eh, I don't know what to tell you except to not get too disheartened about this. It just seems you got stuck with a sort of crappy situation. Don't let it discourage you if this is really what you want to do.

If this is the thing that makes you feel a bit disillusioned about the whole thing and not want to stick with it I wouldn't blame you too. But I wouldn't take this too hard to heart because crap like this in academia can happen whatever your major or area of study is.

I don't think a degree in journalism is necessary, but at the same time if you want to go down that path, I say why not. Whatever path you take, it's going to have its own interesting forks and turns. The problem is it's not just a matter of what type of j-school you're going too, but it's too dependent on the professors you have as well. One of my favorite j-school professors I had only one class with, but he was great, he put things into perspective and really I have a feeling I would've dropped out of j-school if it wasn't for having met this professor. Oh, if I could tell you of all the times I wanted to drop out. Too many moments. But I'm glad I stuck with it. I'm sure I could've done a lot of other things, but seeing the trajectory of how things worked out, I'm pretty OK with how I made out.

Don't feel like it's all for nothing. It's one of the most useless degrees you can possibly get, but it depends on where you're coming from. I went to school with a good bunch of all-star high school newspaper reporters and editors in chief who knew who or what they were going to do ten years down the road who had been interning at local papers and the like since 9th grade. I was none of the above. At the least it was nice being able to concentrate on what I knew I wanted to do and hell, I was learning things everyone seemed to have known since forever. You can use the resources. It was through my school's directory of for-credit internship places that I got my very first journalism-related internship. Now did I really need anymore writing type classes after the first couple of basic ones? Debatable, but being able to do classes outside the core like design or even long-form journalism classes were fun and edifying in their own way (especially the latter that had a lot of reading, but I got a lot out of it).

Now am I straddled with student debt and barely affording rent? Ha, of course, but I'm having fun with what I'm doing in my own way. And really, if anyone goes into journalism thinking about doing it for the pay, I really don't know what to tell them. I knew I'd be poor coming out of school. Though really, it's something you need to think about. If you're fine with that, then you're cool. And it's not just consumer stuff out there. If you're into a niche, try out a trade. Seriously. Some are kind of weird in their focus, but you get to write without working up some ridiculous ladder and you can be geeky about it. They do internships too and you'll probably get more substantial clips through a small-staff trade. At least that's how it worked out for my so YMMV. But remember, in the end, it's all about the clips and the bylines degree or no.

People without degrees definitely make it too, but that's a whole other path. Doable though. I can tell you of some freelancers too who are doing some pretty cool things and how they go about doing it (*makes phone calling motion with hand* facebook me!). Again, depends on what you want to do. Neither's right or wrong. It's knowing what you want to do and get out of all this, which is pretty good advice for this situation as well.

This sitch right now? Handle it. Whether it's doing something about it or coming to terms with it. Don't let it color or discourage you from what you're doing. My college experience would've been way more pleasant if I'd learned how to brush the dirt off my shoulders about shit a bit more (yea, I just said that. You're talking to someone who likes to motivate myself at work to the tune of "Everyday I'm Hustin'"). I understand I was going through some annoying crap, but it really wasn't as bad as I made it out to be in my head most of the time. If this is indicative of how the department's run? Well, then there's a bit of a problem and maybe it should color what you're thinking about what you're thinking, but that's part of the "handling it" that I'm talking about. Think about it. And as stated above, there's no clear cut answer on this. I haven't met your prof, I don't know what her personality is like. If it's really important to you to have her feedback, you could talk to her. The worse she can do is brush you off or be mildly annoyed with it (depends on how you do this). I mean, that's kind of her job, right? If anything at least in j-school you're expecting to get someone with experience to talk to you about shit. But if it's about the grade, you're going to have to debate what the possible pros and cons of the situation are. I agree with LT. It's kind of a weird sticky thing. It's academics but there's also got human relations in it. It sounds like for a first draft you're doing pretty well. I wish my first drafts for any papers written in college weren't half-assed and written the night before.

k5, you're a journalist too? man, this place is just full of current and former journalism suckers. we're all suckers, man.

ps: cf, my vitriol toward journalism in general may have something to do with the number of layoffs i and my friends have all suffered through. it's a rewarding career, as long as you don't care about eating or sleeping. :)

Many of my friends have been to schools where the profs never touch the papers. TAs mark them all. So, hey, you are one up on them.

I've been a prof and read every page but I think that is a minority.

The situation, to my mind, is wrong, but I would never recommend starting a war over it. Bad mojo there.

Ok. I think I've cooled off.

Y'all give some good advice.

It's not about the grade. It's just the fact that she didn't read my damn paper, and then gave me a grade. It could be an A+ and I'd still be pissed because she didn't read it.
It wasn't a favor, she was meeting with every student to discuss their papers. So I had to leave the darkroom, developing prints for my Photo final project, to meet with her to discuss my paper, and she didn't even read it? Fabulous. According to my friend who had her class, you just turn in the paper at the exam period, she corrects it, and we never get it back (because we'll be out of school at that point), so we don't ever know what actual grade we get on the final paper. I doubt very much she'll read the final version of the paper either.

I think I'm just going to suck it up, put the book source she wants to see in the bibliography, figure out when/how to do the interview thing, if I decide to do it at all, and thats it. It's just a class, and I just want it done at this point. I have too many other finals and projects to worry about.

Thanks a bunch you guys. Not sure what I'd do without being able to take this kind of stuff to you all.

Aw CF, I faced the same thing some years ago at my old uni. We had to write a paper about communication with regards to a new technology. I chose blogging, and used a mix of research and my own blogging experience ("blogs usually have comment sections...")

We got our grades for the paper after the end of semester; so far so good. This was about a month after we handed it in. It was the 2nd assignment of the subject, and many of us felt that we were on track for an A. Those who were caught cheating were already dealt with.

Cut to the week before the next semester started. I was about to leave for a 4-month international tour. Holidays had already gone on for about a month or more. Out of the blue, 50 of us top students got an email from the lecturer saying that we have to rewrite our entire essay in a week, or else we won't pass this subject, because the examiners from OtherUni will find our work suspicious.

All of us are surprised. What the hell? I wrote an email to the lecturer asking what's up. Her answer? "You didn't have referencing between page 2 and 7. That looks very suspicious."

So the MOUNDS of in-text citations and the long reference list didn't matter to her? She had TWO MONTHS to look through the papers and let us know if we were missing something? She had ALREADY graded us, and now she wants to change? Mind you, these were all the TOP students that got the email. Some students were told that their essays were "lost".

Bear in mind that this is in an university where students can copy & paste wholesale from websites and pass.

I'm travelling to the US in a week! I have no time to rewrite a paper! I try talking it over with the lecturer, but to no avail. In disgust, I just tack on 2 "(Wikipedia, 2005)"s in there.

I send it in and not hear anything back. It wasn't until halfway through my tour that one of my friends tells me that my lecturer gave me a C+ for the "rewritten" paper.

There's a reason many of us aren't in that university anymore.

Wow, talk to the department head.

Oh, and when you do become a journalist, with or without a degree, don't treat your photographer like a doofus 'explaining' what your angle is and so that's why he should shoot Y and X and stuff. My man is a journalistic photographer which means he took all the writing classes you do and photography classes - so they got degrees. Ticks them off to no end when journalists forget that.

ah, but you're taking photo too? Fun! Journalistic photography is a tough business too.

CF - I agree with those who discourage going to the dept. head right away. Instead, you should make another appointment with your prof first.

For one thing, what were the expectations set for this draft meeting? Could it be that she used the meeting primarily to evaluate your use of sources? Is it a paper meant to develop reseach ability? Remember that academics often actually read papers that way - footnotes first. They want to see how you are building your argument, how thorough your research has been, whether you are relying on outdated sources, etc. You can tell a tremendous amount about the quality of someone's work just by the references. If that was the purpose of the interview, it was achieved.

Second, are you completely sure she didn't read the paper (if that was the expectation)? Did you ask about it? Things like "Did you see any weaknesses in the argument? Do you think I was on the right track in talking about the Joe vs. Schmo case, or was that a distraction? Is everything wrapped up in the conclusion or did you see any loose ends?" If you are meeting to discuss your writing and the direction of your research, those are perfectly reasonable questions. It almost sounds as though you had no questions, and the teacher just talked about whatever she noticed while you listened, rather than having a two-way conversation.

Third, if she screwed up and got in a bind and didn't give time she should have given to the student papers, it's still better not to leap righ to the dept. head. Remember that their loyalties as faculty are to one another. Inserting yourself into that relationship for what is really a minor complaint will probably not be very helpful to you.

Instead, try calling back the professor and asking for another meeting. "I'm still not sure I'm on the right track with my paper, and though your comments about sources were helpful, I'm really interested in knowing if I can bolster the body of the paper. I want to do as well as I can on this project. Can I come to your office hours to talk about it?"

That way, you will achieve the goal you want (for your paper to be read and discussed) and she will understand that having your paper read is important to you. My guess is that she either never intended to evaluate the narrative portion of the paper, only the sources, OR that she got pressed for time and realized that just looking at sources would give her a shortcut that most people would not take exception with. In the latter case, she'll read your paper in full if she has to.

If you're worried about knowing the final grade and getting any comments, then drop the paper off with a SASE and a note saying you're really interested in receiving it back after grades are in, with her marks. If you don't get the SASE back, call the dept. admin, and if you still don't get it back, call her again, and the admin, and the head, until you get a response.

Profs are always juggling and it's grading that is the real bear. It's generous that she has a draft-review meeting and I think expectations for that need to be reasonable. Seeing your final paper would be great, so you can see what came of it. But definitely use the proper channels. Give your professor a chance work with you rather than leaping over her head, just as, if accused of plagiarism or something, you'd want the accuser to come to you first before reporting you to the dean. It'll work out better in the long run.

To tack on a bit what Miko said, I'm in a research class right now and our papers are due this week and the professor has been extremely available to answer questions, but has repeatedly said that she will *not* read entire first drafts -- that's what the writing center is for, if we feel we need that level of help.

Which may be a good idea if you feel you're still floundering on the paper -- does your school have a writing center, and can you get an appointment there?

For one thing, what were the expectations set for this draft meeting?

The point of said meeting is to go over any changes I should make to the paper before I hand in the final draft.

Is it a paper meant to develop reseach ability?
No. The class is "Foundations of American Journalism." Ironically I seem to be getting my first taste of what American Journalism is like.

If that was the purpose of the interview
It was not.

Second, are you completely sure she didn't read the paper (if that was the expectation)?

It was at that point that I asked, "did you actually read my paper?"

She said that actually, no, she hadn't.

Thus asking any specific questions about the writing and the direction of my research/paper was useless, as she couldn't answer any of the questions I had planned to ask unless she had actually read the paper. I'm fairly certain that was the first time she had picked the paper up.

It almost sounds as though you had no questions, and the teacher just talked about whatever she noticed while you listened, rather than having a two-way conversation.
Yeah, pretty much. See above. There was nothing I could really talk about because she hadn't read the damn thing. She just talked about how I needed to get a source that was a book, and she went on about how "sometimes using the library is better than just the internet because sometimes you find things you weren't looking for by looking in the sections, y'know?" I met with her for about fifteen minutes and the whole time she was just repeating herself, saying the same things over and over, about books and libraries and I've got good sources and a lot of people don't use footnotes anymore and you've got some good footnotes here so that's good and I saw that you had the OJ simpson example, that's good. She was floundering. She hadn't read the damn paper and she didn't know what else to say.
She's the kind of person who will ask you a question, and you'll give them an answer, and you can just see what you said go in one ear and out the other. She didn't really listen to anything I had to say, she just asked me questions, waited as I talked, and then continued. No matter what I said she'd be like "oh ok well..." and just keep on going. Or in one case she didn't even acknowledge everythign I had just said and instead just showed me a windup toy monkey that flipped around when you wound it up. What the fuck? FOCUS, WOMAN. Total space cadet.
Today, she had her other one on one meetings with other students canceled due to "a medical issue." Hmm.

Give your professor a chance work with you rather than leaping over her head
Yeah that's what I was thinking once I cooled off.

Thanks occhi, but I'm not really floundering on my paper. I was just unsure of whether I should broach a whole new subtopic ten pages in when I was unsure of whether or not it would really fit in with the rest. I think I'm going to leave it out now, though. I'm going to shove a source from a book in there, attempt to get an interview by email done, and just get the damn paper out of my mind. It's a 100 level course (the journalism courses here are notoriously difficult to get into, and as a result I've taken a few out of order), it's not worth the stress.

what mullacc said.

ether I should broach a whole new subtopic ten pages

The answer to that would almost always be no. Better luck next time.

It does sound, from your expanded description, like she's phoning it in. Is she tenured? What level prof is she? What's she known for outside of the classroom?

Coming from a family of journalists, and having worked in journalism, I echo brina - journalism classes aren't particularly helpful. I wish journalists would not take general 'journalism studies' - it's not really a discipline - but would concentrate on a field that's likely to sharpen either their writing or reporting skills - economics, foreign languages, international relations or political science, public policy, etc.