I am a graduate student and I just got the grades back for one group assignment and realized we scored much lower than I would have thought.

Upon further investigation of the assignments, I realize that for a group project, my professor deducted extra individual points from me from the total points we received for our final group project – based on the peer evaluation that my group members submitted for me. So while the group project was a certain score, I got 5 points less than the final group grade due to one or more of my peers submitting a poor evaluation for me (we all submitted to the professor directly so I don’t know who or how many if more than 1 – there were 6 of in the group)

I feel hurt and angry because the team never communicated to me during the semester that my contributions or performance were lacking or insufficient, so I feel totally blindsided. I was always clear and communicative with the team, and made sure to do my part of the work. I also stepped in a few times to help other team mates.

However everyone is entitled to their own evaluation and opinion at the end of the day – that’s not what I have an issue with. What hurts is I was never given a chance to address whatever the perceived inadequacies were because it wasn’t brought to my attention, and instead the group member/s share it with the professor, and it results in points deduction and a lower grade for me.

In asking myself why else I feel this anger and pain, I realize that I also prioritized my group work and meetings ahead of my individual assignments in the class, especially because I was forced to ask for deadline extensions for personal work due to personal circumstances. I figured it was better to not let the group down and it would be harder to get group deadlines extended, so I prioritized the group project. This meant whenever I had limited time to devote to this class, I prioritized my part of our group work and our team meetings.

That decision now feels like a stupid one on my part. I feel backstabbed – this is a group that we worked on several assignments throughout the semester – and can’t even work on a model to process the feelings coursing through my body right now.