Submit an Academic Petition or Appeal

Petition Letter: I have just received my grade for my term research paper and I am shocked with the mark I have received. My TA's main criticism was my incorrect usage of in text citations, however on my Anatomy of the Term Paper, she never mentioned that there was any issues with the correctness of the citation. With reference to the issue with my page numbers, I was referencing the page number of the PDF file at the top of the page and not the number at the bottom of the page and that is why she believes that I was plagiarizing. The page number at the top of the PDF file and the page number at the bottom the document are consistent with each other. If you open up the PDF file it reads: Page 1 out of 15, which is the same as page 39 being the first page of the file. I believe that the work submitted needs to be reevaluated in light of this major issue. The citation style I used was the exact same as my Anatomy of the term paper and she never made any comments about the incorrectness. Furthermore, I believe that the paper addressed the issue in a very substantive and coherent manner and a D- is considerably off the charts considering her comments being: ¿¿ It is evident that you are a strong writer and there are strong points made.¿ ¿¿The major issue being in text citations¿. The comment about plagiarism is completely out of line, simply because I did cite the work directly, however she did not take the time to check my sources and notice that the page numbers did match up. With reference to the author's name being omitted, in my Anatomy of the Term Paper she made no comment of it being wrong and therefore I didn't include it because she made no comment of it being required. She cannot put me at fault for following her comments on my previous proposal. With regards to her comment about the lack of information about socio-economic data, if the paper is read, I have included many instances where I have connected Socio-economic determinants as factors of racial discrimination. If my TA had made it clear in my proposal- the Anatomy of the Term Paper, that there were issues with my citations then I would have adjusted those specific errors in my Research Paper. She never had any issue with my citation in my proposal and therefore I should not be penalized for her misjudgment and miscommunication. Thank you for your consideration.