The last piece of advice my dad had for me when we were eating dinner a few weeks ago was, "You want the A. You just need to get the A. Don't worry about anything else." We'd been talking about an HTML project for my Intro to Computer Science class. I complained for an hour about how my instructor was teaching my poor fellow classmates antiquated, deprecated and obsolete code. "His coding vocabulary hasn't been updated since 1997!" I scoffed. "He is still telling us to make sure our code works in both IE and Netscape when Netscape hasn't had a significant piece of the market in years!" I would never fall into the trap of writing incorrect code just for a grade. I would not settle for appealing to his ancient (by web standards) sensibilities. I've been working with web design for eight years. I have principles.
So I worked it all out. It took me a few hours but I got through all his criteria (make it so text sits between two images, make a table of these test scores, put horizontal rules here), plugged in a bunch of text that I was planning to use for a blog post and even some extra stuff because he said he was giving extra credit. For a page including his discontinuous criteria and created with nearly no thought put into it, it looked great. I used CSS for all the style elements (ignoring the <b>, <i>, <u>, and <center> tags he wanted us to use) and commented every piece of it so he knew what parts did what things (such as when he said he wanted us to make the links blue, for which he indicated we should do in the <body> tag with link="", I commented next to the a { color: #00f; } part of my style). I turned in a print out. I knew I had the 100.
So a few days later he passed the code print-outs back. I usually sit in the back of the class so when he was trying to hand mine back he just stood at the front and folded it over, waiting for me to stand up and take it from him. My instructor is small man, certainly from somewhere near or on the Subcontinent, so I towered over him, pulling the packet from his hand. Then, out loud, to the entire class he says in his thick accent:
"You did this in a program so I took 20 points off."
I was shocked. I handcode everything I do. Dreamweaver and the demonspawn that is Frontpage put out horrible code usually. Why would he think my beautifully-formated, web-standard code was put out by a machine?
Me: No I didn't.
He: Yes you did.
Me: I've been a web developer for 8 years. I know how to handcode my stuff.
He: See me after class.
This exchange prompted giggles from some others in the class who asked me, "If you've been a web developer for 8 years, why are you here?" Some buddies in the class answered for me, and I paraphrase: "For a film degree. Bite it."
My heart was pounding. Normally I would try to avoid the confrontation, accept the authority of my teacher and get along with the grade he gave me. But I couldn't wait to see him after class. I couldn't wait for me to show him how I did everything right, everything validated against modern web standards. I couldn't even pay attention in class because I was preparing myself for anything he could say. What about my code looks like it was from a machine? I could barely contain myself.
Class finally ended and I walked up to him. He took the code from me and said again, "You did this on a program." "No I didn't," I said firmly. Then he pointed to the item he believed was his evidence:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
The Doctype declaration. He said that was something programs inserted into code. I explained to him what this was: a way to tell the browser agent what code was to follow in order to avoid the browser having to make assumptions and displaying code improperly. Programs put that in there to adhere to web standards. I showed him in the code where I commented next to everything he wanted in the document to make sure it was obvious I knew what I was doing. A buddy of mine came up, saying, "Nick's just really smart." My teacher, with balls like cantaloupes, shook his head. "No," he says, "he's not smart." My jaw hit the floor. "But I'll give you the 20 points anyway." He couldn't prove that I did do it on a program. So he wrote my first name down ($10 says those extra points go to the other Nick in my class) and +20.
Amber Rhea warned me, telling me tales of people in the same situation with the same result. My dad, convinced my instructor gave me a hard time because I showed him up, warned me. So now I'll be accepting "Told ya so's."
I don't know if it was what he ate for breakfast that morning but he should probably switch off from the Unprofessional-Os and get on some All-Bran or Frosted Mini Wheats. I have his final in 45 minutes, which includes an HTML portion. I can't wait. I still have his evaluation to do at the end of the year and it's going to be something else.
Update: He offered us something as I walked into class. If we were happy with our grades up to that point (before the final) we could walk out and not take the final but keep those grades. I couldn't be sure what my grades were in that class since he (a) lost some of my homework and (b) might have screwed me on that HTML project. But when he handed the grades back to people, I looked and saw an A (including 100 points for the aforementioned assignment). I ran for that door so quick I almost knocked people over.
