> Am I wrong to feel as though this is an unfair mark? In my opinion, **no, you are not wrong**. Furthermore, the arguments that since you knew about the policy to begin with you don't have a leg to stand on, and that since the policy applies equally to all students it cannot be claimed to be unfair, are simply invalid and are missing a key point (which I'll address at the end) about where the unfairness comes from. Let's examine these two superficially compelling arguments more closely. 1. **"You knew about the policy"** You yourself say: > On one hand, I knew that this policy existed and the consequences for > missing 3 classes and StrongBad in his/her answer says > Given that you knew the policy in advance and the teacher seems to > have been consistent in taking attendance, you seem to have no logical > reason to feel the mark is unfair. a sentiment that is also echoed in some of the comments. To this I would reply: if the policy was unfair at the beginning of the semester, **it is still unfair now**. Conversely, if it was in fact fair to begin with, it would still be fair now. *Why on earth should it matter when you come forward to complain about the unfairness?* It actually makes a lot of sense to me that you, being a busy student with many things to worry about, would not devote much time and energy to thinking about (or even noticing) this unfairness and thinking what to do about it until you found yourself in a situation where you saw yourself personally harmed by it. So yes, perhaps it would be more commendable if you had the foresight to step forward at the beginning of the semester and complain about what seemed like an unfair policy, either out of concern that it would hurt you personally, or out of an altruistic concern that some other student might be hurt. So what? That does not change the fact that the logical question regarding the fairness or unfairness of the policy _has nothing whatsoever to do with the timing of the complaint_. Note that I do agree with the that from a practical point of view, complaining now certainly stands less of a chance of achieving anything, but the point is that that's _not because the policy has stopped being unfair_ (if indeed it was unfair to begin with). 2. **"The policy applies equally to all students"** This argument was raised by @user37208, who says in a highly upvoted comment: > Unreasonable? Maybe. Unfair? Certainly not, as long as it's the same > attendance policy for everyone. But this argument compares you to the reference group of the other students in your class. What about all the other students all around the world who have more reasonable instructors who do not penalize their students so severely for missing three lectures in a semester? If we assume the premise that such a grading policy is simply a poor way to evaluate someone's knowledge of the material the course is designed to teach, then by comparing yourself to this much larger reference group (or even focusing on a smaller group of students in your country or region who would be competing with you for jobs, or even just students in your university who took the same course but with different instructors who had more sensible grading policies), clearly you would have pretty good cause to find yourself discriminated against based on what you see as an irrelevant grading criterion. We can further illustrate the falseness of the "applies equally" argument by taking the same argument to an absurd extreme. What if the grading policy said that 15% of the grade would be given for the ability to recite the first 10000 digits of pi? (Let's assume that memorizing those digits was not one of the goals of the class, which seems like a fair assumption.) And let's assume that all the students except the OP managed to perform this feat and got the 15%, and he alone failed. Well, the policy was the same for everyone, so it is "maybe unreasonable" but "certainly not unfair" - right? Clearly that's nonsense, because the point is that (as I explained above) such a policy is grading based on completely irrelevant information, and hence discriminates against the OP compared to _all other students everywhere who are evaluated on their knowledge of the same material as covered by the course_. -------------- Now, I still need to explain why the policy is unfair (I only explained so far why two specific arguments saying it is not unfair are incorrect). In fact, that is somewhat more debatable, since grading for attendance is clearly more commonplace and at least slightly more logical than grading for one's ability to memorize digits of pi. Nonetheless, I think ultimately it comes down to the question of whether the grading policy, however well-intentioned it may be, is evaluating you for the right things, or for anything valuable at all, so that the grade will contain at least some minimally informative value about you to future employers or decision-makers. **I argue that it simply doesn't**, and hence is just as silly as the digits-of-pi policy in my example. The bottom line is that you have missed three of the course lectures. I don't know why you missed them, but one would be hard-pressed to convincingly argue that that says anything negative about you whatsoever. When I was a student there were many courses in which I missed such a number of lectures, and I did just great and am now a successful academic (and am probably considered an expert on some of the subjects those courses I missed lectures in were about...). Many of my students today are making equally reasonable and good decisions about when they want to come to class and when not to. They are grown-ups, and are using their time at university to acquire not just concrete knowledge but also to learn productivity and work skills, which include developing the judgment and self-knowledge to be able to make those sorts of decisions. Occasionally they make mistakes and learn from them. This is precisely as it should be. On my part, I give them exams and other assignments to learn whether they learned the material. Again, this is precisely as it should be. Nowhere in the process does it make sense for me to abuse my grading authority by requiring them to learn in a specific way, whether it be to do their homework between 8:17 p.m. and 9:44 p.m. every night (which I'm sure everyone reading this would agree would be outrageous and unreasonable) or to sit on a chair in a specific room in specific hours of specific weekdays. ---------- Finally, this answer is already too long, but let me briefly address your other, more practical question: > How should I approach this situation to help repair my grade? The other answers already addressed this. I share their somewhat pessimistic view that in practice there's not a whole lot you can or should do. In any case, since the main part of your question was about the principle of whether you're reasonable to feel that you are being treated unfairly, I thought it would at least make you feel a bit better to have someone agree with you and give a reasoned answer. My recommendation is to treat this as a learning experience and hopefully show your instructor through your excellent performance (and even more importantly, show yourself) that you indeed mastered the material, which is the main thing that counts.