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first off, if you make this adversarial, you cannot win.
second: believe it or not the folk who teach courses are also human beings. they are not parental figures, so there's no need to impute some omniscience to them that they betray when a mistake happens.
subpoint: summer courses are a pain in the ass. they move very fast. it is more tiring to teach them than it is to take them. trust me on this one--i have taught at the university level for quite a long time. so things can happen. mistakes can happen, misreadings can happen.
if i were you, i'd try to make an appointment for directly after the final. like that day or the day after--don't wait--although it's not fatal if you do because grades can be changed, it won't help anything. get it over with.
now to the part you're not going to like:
third: it is possible that your paper sucks.
i know i know, the jewels that issue forth from the mind of almost any undergraduate are a priori genius and it is inconceivable that this paper was not also genius and so obviously not doing well on it must have been a mistake. blah blah blah.
and you spent THREE WHOLE DAYS on it.
THREE WHOLE DAYS.
so a bit of time has passed between the posting of the op and now, so maybe that's enough distance to have a look at the paper from a viewpoint not entirely determined by the assumption that whatever you write must be genius and that the evil professor misread it and have a look. maybe it sucked. maybe it didn't. but you have to be able to argue the case that it didn't suck from a remove. you have to be able to show how it works and why the moves that you use are there.
and like i said, if you make this adversarial, you cannot win.
if you think a department head is going to overrule a professor on a grade---unless it is egregious and you can demonstrate that--you're fooling yourself.
if it turns out that the paper does in fact suck, then suck it up and deal with it. learn from it. try to find out why it sucks, if it does, and change how you work.
if it doesn't suck, then i wish you the best if navigating this. generally, it's easier than you think. but there are folk who are jerks on all sides of such things.
make your case as clearly and dispassionately as you can.
be nice.
you'll either improve the grade or you wont.
it's not the end of the world either way.
good luck.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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