So livid!

So I'm taking Organic Chemistry with the lab. The class is fine but my TA is really starting to irk me. Just as a background: you have to check out all the glassware for the whole semester which we do the first day. The girl next to me did hers, then came back in the next lab and half her stuff was missing. He claimed that nobody had entered her drawer and after about 20 minutes of arguing he finally admitted that he had moved her drawer and never checked to make sure the glassware was in the new one. So she almost had to pay like 150 bucks for new instruments that she didn't lose.

Also, he will tell 1 or 2 people in the lab a specific part of the procedure and not tell anyone else so then half the people don't know what's going on until we track him down and ask.

So we had to turn in a formal report for the oxidation of an alcohol to a ketone. There is an example on the course website from a different class that is a perfect so we all followed it pretty much to a T and just made it over our lab. So we get our grades back today and they are horrible! Half the things he took points off for were not on the example and he never told us we had to have them on the report. Then, I notice that the girl next to me has a better grade so I looked at hers to see why I missed more points and we did the same exact thing but he took more points off of mine! So I kinda flipped. I was like this is absolutely ridiculous. Why even put the example online if it's not what you want?! Why is hers okay to be explained that way but not mine?! We had pretty much the same exact thing but mine had a lower score. So finally I got him to give me the points that he gave her on that same section but I had to leave. I was so upset that I didn't even stay. I was like if I stay here I'm going to flip out so I have to go. I apologized but I almost feel like I didn't even need to.

How is that okay to give people different points on the same mistakes? And he said he used to, in previous labs, be gentler on the first formal report and just make comments and then, if they made the same mistake, he would take off full points - which is how most people work. But he said nobody listened to his comments so now he takes off full points right off the bat. I have never had a TA like this and that one report dropped my grade from an A to a B.

I'm so just friggen mad right now. I feel like I should go through every worksheet and quiz we have ever taken to see if he did different grading scales then too. I just think it's absolutely ridiculous that he can just grade however he wants and if we have a problem with it - tough luck. And it wouldn't be so bad if he flat out said "this needs to be in your report" and THEN we didn't put it but he never even gave us a hint as to how he wanted it written or what information he wanted in it.

UGH!!!!

It is ridiculous for him to grade differently for the same thing. One of the things professors I have TA'd for have ALL said is "be consistent in grading". I would approach the Professor of the class about this. Nicely, with examples. Try not to be attacking towards the TA, but make sure the Professor knows what is happening, and how upset you are about your grade in the class.

Is it too late to transfer to another lab/TA? That does sound horrible. We had a French grad student teacher like that and the entire class ganged up the end of the semester and got him canned and our grades were re-evaluated. Maybe find out the department head in charge of "problems" and go see him with one or two others?