The usual contract for taking a course involves a syllabus, which contains a rubric and expresses a set of binding terms. Having read the syllabus, a student chooses whether or not to accept this contract. Over the course of four months, there are then openly available scores based on the student's work, which correspond to the rubric, assessed by a graduate student or professor. One is there to protect one's transcript and this contract outlines one's ability to fairly do so. This is not the case at UC Berkeley. I took 15 courses at Berkeley, totaling 60 units, and I do not know what a grade corresponds to. For those thinking this implies only that a grade was lower than expected, I often received an A and I don’t know why, other than that the professor clearly liked me or that they just would not proffer less than an A in a lower-division course.
After being denied recommendation letters from the only two professors in my department I asked, once with an insult, it was suggested that I look back at the feedback on my work. I decided to do so, auditing the assessment across all 60 units and finding that there was nearly none to be found. Of these units, 31 units were in the Philosophy department and 18 were in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies, DAGRS. The remaining 11 units were 9 in Haas and 2 in a student-run course, a DeCal. DeCals function as a resume filler for ambitious students and for the university to fulfill the Department of Education's Credit Hour and time requirements. Beyond the 15 courses, I audited 6 more units in IEOR and Haas, and dropped many courses mid-semester, due to being made to feel uncomfortable by faculty and other students based on my disfavored personal traits and political views or to the coursework being both remedial and not required. Professors would go on daily tirades about politics, or students would direct comments at me about race or sexuality that interfered with my ability to work. The following postmortem is limited to the humanities courses, the 31 Philosophy and Classics units.
