Discuss a thing that you care about something to complain but finally the results were good
I want to describe a complaint that happened about a year ago — it was about my interactions with my university’s academic administration, and although frustrating in the moment, worked out (in as much as these things ever do) well enough that my biggest feeling surrounding it ended up being one I never expected: satisfaction yes, but also bizarrely such a larger measure of confidence in my willingness to fight for myself.
The matter was about an exam result that I was sure had been wrongfully graded. I suspect that I absorbed the published marking criteria quite thoroughly, and compared my submission against it and became confident indeed that what I got did not match the grade now achieved in response as described — especially as at least two major sections of my answer had been overlooked or marked using non-standard criteria.
It is a formal rebuttal and I gave it to the academic department with both an explanation as detailed and as evidenced carefully of what exact aspects I thought were under-marked along with what criteria for marking, appropriate to each section, was in support of my case. The tone I used was assertive — to be very careful if it did not become aggressive, putting my argument as kind of a reasonable request for review and not building a case against the professional competence of an assessor.
This was a process that took ~3 weeks and included a weird range of levels of anxiety about how it would turn out, as well as worrying that appealing the decision might cast a bad light on me. By the time that decision came through, my mark had been moved up with enough room for it to move into a different threshold for that assignment, taking my overall module grade off of those final honours.
The gratifying aspect of the result extended well beyond the letter grade. The experiment confirmed that following the formal complaint route with evidence, civility and merit can lead to just outcomes — an institutional accountability lesson I found both practically useful and personally liberating. It also changed the way I view self advocacy from gross to somewhat justified and a little bit more appropriate.