I did NOT deserve a ';B'; in my class! Am I being unreasonable?

I attend a California Community College and I just found out today I received a B in my Beginning Photography class. I am planning on filing a grade grievance (or academic appeal) form because I actually deserved an A in the class. Here is my reasoning:



During the semester, we had 12 different assignments. Each assignment (100 points possible) consisted of turning in a print to be graded. About half way through the semester, my teacher had his car broken into and his briefcase was stolen, which contained all of his students' grades. Near the end of the semester, he decided our final grade would be based on only the last 3 assignments and the final. The lowest grade I ever received in that class was a 90 (out of 100 points). My attendance was near perfect. The final was worth 100 points. Before the final I had a 90.6% in the class.



I understand it is not my teacher's fault for getting his car broken into, however I did not deserve a B in the class. I deserved a A. I am a straight A student and I have a gpa of 4.0. If he had included all 12 assignments in the final grade, I would have gotten an A.



How likely is it that I will get the grade changed? Do you think it was fair for the teacher to do this? Could he have gotten in trouble for doing it that way? Any opinions/advise would be greatly appreciated.I did NOT deserve a ';B'; in my class! Am I being unreasonable?
If you still have all twelve of your assignments, with grades written on them by the teacher, I think you have a good argument. If not, he did the best he could under the circumstances, and while it is unfortunate, they won't accept your recollections of what the grades were over his method of grading.



While I've never had anything like this happen to me, I, like most faculty members, have occasionally lost a student paper. If the student kept a copy, I can regrade it. If not, then I have to come up with some alternate method of grading, as this professor did. No, I can't imagine that he could have gotten in trouble for grading this way. He was left without much choice. The only way he would get into trouble is if he was supposed to have recorded his grades on some sort of classroom management system and didn't (I don't know of any faculty in this day and age who keep all their grades only on one piece of paper!).



By the way, I have to tell you that the WORST thing you can do is to argue that you are a straight A student and have a 4.0 GPA, and therefore should get an A. I had a 4.0 in college too, until I took a bowling class to fulfill my PE requirement. I was great at academics; not so good at bowling! The fact that you have done well in other classes doesn't mean that you deserve an A in photography. Furthermore, you are at a community college, which is a 2-year school, so you can't have taken that many classes. I'd try to leave that argument out of it, especially since you obviously didn't do all that well on the final for that class. It speaks against the idea that you are somehow an infallible student..I did NOT deserve a ';B'; in my class! Am I being unreasonable?
Were you able to talk with the professor personally? If so, what was his reaction?



If you haven't already, talk with your professor first and see what he has to say. The grade could have been because he marked something down wrong, too. That's happened to me three times throughout college, and it was easy to get it switched.



If you have copies of the work that you've turned in (the work that was stolen), ask if he can take a look at those. And keep in mind that your final may have been lower than you think.



If talking with him goes nowhere, absolutely file a grievance. If you did the work to get an A, then it'd not unreasonable at all to expect an A! It's not fair for the instructor to change the grading criteria midway through the semester.



One thing I would advise you is that when you talk to your professor, you need to stick to just your grade in the class. It's not going to help you to mention that you're a straight A student and that this is hurting your gpa. He might be inclined to believe that your issue is that you don't deserve a B because you've never gotten a B (it's not a good impression to make), instead of being that you don't deserve a B because it's not actually what you earned. So when you go in there, just stick to scores, numbers, and your work in the class!



Good luck with all that!
Have you spoken to your instructor? If you had a 90.6 going into the final then a B on the final would have lowered your grade to a B. Note that 90.6 is a borderline A. You should definitely talk to your instructor about your grade before filing any sort of grievance.



Though the grade redistribution most likely worked to your advantage (unless your worst grades were earned in the last three assignments), you can appeal to your instructor to have your final grade calculated under the old grading scheme. For this, you would need to show him all of your returned assignments to verify your grades.
If your grade was a 90.6 before the final, then what did you get on the final? If you did poorly on it, that could be enough to drop your grade to a B.