Harrier and Gator,
I totally agree with the replies you both gave. I guess because it was not the marks and comments I had been receiving previously I discounted it as more of a stan issue. Who knows I could have needed the kick in the nuts, but after talking to some students who flew the same flight that night it seemed as if I was being nailed on things that weren't even considered in their flights or their IP backed them up on some things without question and didn't dock them for it. This was just meant to reinforce Otto's point about stan problems.
To me this contributes to the problem of a lack of understanding of your performance. If your IPs consistently say "Good job", "Good progress", "Solid hop" etc etc etc, but you end up with a 40 NSS, then how the hell would you know you need to work harder? Granted, you should bust your ass as hard as you can in primary (and flight school in general) but if you have an idea that you're NSS is in the 70's (just an example), then you're not hurting to study harder or put more time in. If that expectation ends up being false and you have an NSS in the 40s when you expected 60s, you have a problem.
I think debriefs, gradesheets and IP comments should really reflect the student's performance relative to his peers.
I had a rough idea what my NSS was going to be before I finished, but that was only comparing my GPAs for various blocks with a couple other studs. Had I relied solely on my gradesheets and overall consensus of IP commentary, I'd have guessed it was maybe 8-10 points higher than it turned out to be.