Abstract
This article presents an “ethnographic revisit” of Making the Grade, Becker, Geer, and Hughes’s (1968) study of student–faculty interaction. A three-year ethnographic study of student–faculty interaction at a U.S. research university shows undergraduates engaging in practices of negotiation unheard of in the study by Becker, Geer, and Hughes. These practices of negotiation include (1) defining effort prior to interaction with faculty; (2) expressing entitlement to such definitions with references to “measurable virtues”; and (3) eliciting empathy to restore desired definitions of effort when they appear to be challenged. I refer to these practices altogether as “making my grade,” and I explain why privileged students are more likely to enact them.
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