What's the best way to protest an unfair grade?

[Shpongolia]

I go to a design school and I worked my ass off on this project this last term. I felt that I outperformed the entire class. Some students had noting to display during finals week since they never finished their work. Some completed their projects but had no display boards to convey their design process, which was 20% of the grade. Yet I got my report card and got a B-. I'm very upset about this because one major reason I took this class was to improve my GPA because it was not a required class. This professor is a hard ass and can be unpredictable with his personality; sometimes he's helpful and kind and other times he's a real jerk. What is the best and most diplomatic way to confront him and possibly raise my grade?

[wpmason]

Based on my own personal experiences, teachers do not give unfairly bad grades. Some will give poor but likable students better grades than they've earned, but I can't think of one actually giving an unfairly poor grade. There's just nothing in it for them. I have seen students that feel as though their grade was unfairly poor, but that was just their feeling on the issue, and not really based on anything in particular. Most schools have built in mechanisms for protesting grades, where if you lodge a complaint the teacher will have to justify their decision to their superiors. You need to do some research at your school to find out exactly how to do it though.

It doesn't matter if other students didn't complete their work. Your grade is not related to their grades. Now, if you can prove that these incomplete projects received better grades than your completed one, you might have a case, but that seems unlikely to me.

My initial reaction is that your project just wasn't as good as you thought it was, or you are leaving out some significant details.

[CindiluvsFriends]

Talk to him but do so in a mature way and SHOW him how much time,effort and hard work you put into it.

I don't know though. That really bites and I can understand your frustration.

Good luck.