Imagine being in your final year of college and working on your dissertation with the guidance of a supervisor. The dissertation is a big part of your grade, so it’s really important to do a good job.

What would you do if you got a much lower grade than you expected? Would you blame yourself or your supervisor?

In this story, one young woman is in this exact situation, and she blames her supervisor. She thinks he set her up to fail, or at the minimum, wasn’t helpful, considering he was the one guiding her on the project and also the one grading her on the project.

Now, she’s thinking about filing a formal complaint against her supervisor, but she’s also wondering if that’s going too far.

Keep reading to see what you think she should do.

WIBTA for filing a complaint against my supervisor?

I (F22) am in my final year of university and in April submitted my dissertation.

In May I received my grade and discovered I only got 55% (pass mark was 40%). After months of hard work, I was devastated by this.

My dissertation was written with guidance from my assigned dissertation supervisor, who read every chapter (except the conclusion) and gave notes before submission.

I had several video meetings with him where he praised my work, including one right before submission where he stated it was going very well and “needed very little changes” (this feedback was overheard by my parents who were in the same room).

This would be very dissapointing.

The kicker is that my supervisor is the one who marked my dissertation, along with a second marker, so he is the one who awarded 55%.

After all of his positive feedback, this totally blindsided me.

The poor mark for this module has also dragged down my entire degree classification and left me completely demoralised, especially after finding out that I received the lowest dissertation grade in the entire class.

I’m supposed to be graduating (virtually) today and feel like I can’t enjoy it at all because I’m so disappointed.

She’s thinking about complaining.

WIBTA if I made a formal complaint to my university about his misleading advice?

I feel if he had been honest with me about his feelings on my work from the start that I could have improved and achieved a better grade (academic writing is usually my forte, which is why I am so disappointed with this result).

I can’t help feeling that since he was the one who marked it- and he knew that he would be marking it- that he set me up to fail.

Everyone else who has read my work agrees that it deserved a higher grade.

She only had one warning sign that he didn’t like her work.

However, he is just doing his job, and I feel like I might be TA for complaining just because I got a grade I didn’t like.

He did ask me several months ago (at the beginning of the writing process) if I wanted to change my proposal idea, which suggests he didn’t like it from the beginning, but when I said I wanted to stick with my original idea he appeared completely supportive.

That would be very frustrating! I can see why she wants to complain.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a team that agreed to work overtime, but then not everyone showed up, leaving the rest holding the bag.

Let’s see what Reddit suggests.

Here’s a vote for reporting him.

Another person has a question.

This person makes a good point.

Another person experienced a similar situation.

He clearly misled her. If he didn’t think she was doing a good job, he should’ve made that clear. Obviously, she’d want to know if there were changes she needed to make.

But, at least she passed, and at least she’s graduating. It’s not like a future employer is going to look at the grade on her dissertation. Still, reporting him might help future students.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who stops speaking up in his Zoom meetings after getting constantly interrupted.