E-Mail from a Student

After the last semester ended, I got this e-mail from a student:

i do no think i was absent all thoes days because i would email you if i missed class or tell you and i marked down the days in my classes if i had missed for my records and i have only got 5 days missed and i had emialed you for i think two of thoes days. If there isany way i can prove this to you becaus ei have attended all your classes but five. On the days that i missed i asked you what i had missed and you would give me the handouts or tell me nothing meaning papers. if there is any way the absents could be changed because i truely do not believe i was out all of thoes days. If there is any way to resolve this i would greatly appreciate it. You could contact me on my cell phone at 1-000-000-0000. If this would be easier and i think more effiecient to get this resolved faster. if you could contact me i would very much appreciate it. Thank you for emailing me back.

I hate getting these. He's asking me, essentially, to reverse my opinion on his grade and to give him a passing grade. Let's break it down:

1. Audience
I, the course instructor, am the audience. I'm not terribly warmed up by his charge that I'm just plain wrong. Of course that isn't the worst thing about his audience awareness. He wants me to raise his grade, to say that he really wasn't that poor in English. He's sent me a letter that's so illiterate that I suspect his earlier papers weren't his after all. I'm tempted to lower his grade for the course. (Interesting note here: most of the e-mails that ask for a higher grade show about the same writing quality.)

2. Letter content
Even if I do accept his claim that he was only absent five times, that is still two more than I allow before I begin to lower his participation grade. It's interesting that his daily quiz grade has several zeros for missed quizzes. He hasn't done his arithmetic or read the syllabus. If I were to grant his request, he'd get a D+ (and still have to repeat the course).

3. The point of the letter
It's unstated, but the point of all this is "I want to be done with English and move on." That's why his final paper was only three pages for a seven page assignment. That's why he won't even proofread his final communication to me. He writes as if he and I have a legitimate dispute that we need to clear up. We don't. In terms of the real point of the course, did he "get it"? I don't think so.

A last point
We take grades seriously in college. If I want to change one, I have to get several people above me to agree—which means I need to have a decent justification for the change. I've always got to answer the question why this grade was changed and whether everyone else got the same sort of opportunity.