- You ask bad questions. You ask questions designed to make you look smart, not to advance your understanding. You ask questions that have nothing to do with the subject at hand, simply to let other students know that you've already mastered these petty concepts, and are ready for something more challenging. You use big words that you learned just this morning because you think it projects intelligence. It doesn't. It makes you look like a pretentious jack-ass. I'm not smiling because I think you're smart; I'm smiling because you just used that word wrong.
- You are lazy. You ask me things that you could find by reading the syllab
us. You turn in assignments with spelling errors. You leave out those segments of the project that are designed to make my life easier. You do this because you survey the world with lazy arrogance, and assume that the 3 minutes it would take you to format the project correctly are more valuable than the extra hour it takes me to grade 60 projects that ignore the formatting. You email me to ask for special treatment to accommodate your uniquely difficult circumstances, which look amazingly similar to the difficult circumstances of every other first year university student. - Your knowledge is bounded by your bigotry. I get it. You're indie. You hate everything that reeks of formalism and conformity. You like bands with names like “The Decemberists” and “A3”, but you will immediately stop liking them as soon as you hear that I know they exist. Every time I give you an assignment like writing 4 part choral harmony, or programming a hip-hop drum part, you have to protect your indie cred by informing the entire class that this type of music sucks, and that you don't need to learn how to do this because your own unique artistic voice will always only consist of poorly played guitar riffs layered 50 times and washed out in reverb. Two things: first, the fact that you think Coltrane sucks does not, in fact, make Coltrane suck. It makes you a narcissist with a myopic range of cultural influences, which is basically the exact opposite of people I like. The second thing is this. Your parents are spending $30,000 a year to send you to this school, where you chose to study music in a formalized setting, from people who make their living in this industry, and where a significant portion of your education will come from imitating the artistic masters who came before you. I don't know what indie cred is, but I'm pretty sure that you lost all of it when you chose this path. Wanna be indie? Drop out, move to Silverlake, rent a room from a cross-dressing coffee shop owner, work at an organic grocery co-op in NoHo for minimum wage, and practice your instrument 9 hours a day. If you want to be the thing, be the thing, don't just wear the clothes.
- You only care about your grade in the last two weeks of the class. Here's the thing. If you don't care about grades, and just want to drift in and out of class to absorb the knowledge when it suits your whim, I can respect that. I honestly don't mind it. But if that's your mode, don't come to me two weeks before the final and ask what you can do to raise your grade up from an “F” to a “B”, so that you won't lose your scholarship. The answer is nothing. There's nothing you can do. I'm not going to grade 15 projects that you turn in on the last day of the semester for late credit, and there aren't enough points in the final to move your grade that much. If getting an “F” in my class means you lose your scholarship, there's a damn good chance that you shouldn't be here on scholarship.
- You assume that your approval is important to me. It isn't. I don't need your approval, or encouragement, I don't need to be hip in your eyes, I don't live or die by how you rank me on www.ratemyprofessor.com. I couldn't care less what you think of me: I have friends for that. When your response to my policies, assignments, teaching method, whatever, is “that's so uncool”, I silently laugh inside at the idea that you think I might care. I'm 31. I teach at a University. I'm a dad. I listen to Jazz. I've played keyboards on songs for Radio Disney. I'm the opposite of cool. And guess what? I'm at peace with it. My job isn't to make you like me. In fact, sometimes my job goes better when you don't like me.
Please, be assured that none of this will affect how I teach you. I'm quite adept at swallowing my own bile and doing unpleasant tasks. I also realize that sometimes, my least favorite students end up maturing nicely, and actually become decent human beings. Here's to hope.
Until then, please stop IM'ing me at 2:30 in the morning to ask when the next project is due. It's due tomorrow. And no, you can't turn it in late.
