Is it normal/okay if my professor grades me lower "in comparison to my peers"? My Uni is in Minnesota and classes started a couple weeks ago.  I'm taking a class for my undergraduate degree. I knew it was going to be writing intensive from the syllabus.  Every week we're going to have at minimum one short writing assignment due.  In the syllabus he said we would be graded on:


Structure/Organization
Word selection and sentence structure
Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization
Content


My first two writing assignments were bad, 60% on them.  His feedback was:


I didn't cite my sources
"Your grade is based on how you compare with your peers"


First of all, I didn't use any sources because they were basic questions that only required critical thinking and my opinions.

Second, is grading my work compared to my peers something that is actually done?  It seems bizarre to me, I've never heard of something like this being done before.  I have absolutely no control over the other people in my class.  It's frustrating that in a class with 20 writing assignments, I'm getting docked points for something outside of my control.

If this wasn't such a writing intensive course I wouldn't be as upset.  Is this normal to deduct points because someone subjectively wrote better than me?
Sounds like you're in a course which is grading on a curve. The idea here is that everyone's score is going to fit a Bell curve with a predetermined mean. This means there won't be any "Christmas-comes-early" results where everyone scores A's, but also no "what-the-hell-everyone-is-failing" panic attacks either. Grade inflation is unlikely in a class that's grading on a curve, because there'll only be so many students who get A's.

If you're in a class which is grading on a curve, then yes: it's normal to "deduct points" because someone wrote better than you. "Deduct points" in inverted commas because you don't actually lose points, you just get a lower grade.

If you want to score well in such a class, you'll need to outperform your classmates.