On Discourse.

From the moderators of RYS:

Over the past 18 hours or so, we've read a ton of mail regarding a deep divide between - for lack of better terms - junior and senior faculty. It's made us awfully sad about the state of this virtual faculty lounge. So, we want to take a minute here to say a few things about the discourse that occurs on these pages.

We read through the mail and choose posts. We try to choose posts that capture the climate of what our readers are writing us about. If plagiarism stories fill up the box, we choose the best or liveliest and put it out there the next morning. If a lot of mail comes in saying cigarettes are better than cheese, we publish something on cigarettes and maybe make fun of those damn cheese-eaters!

Obviously this site started with a focus on students, those lovable but maddening creatures who stare up at us each day. But, this forum has gone much wider, and we've let it. The folks who write to us want to talk about a lot of things surrounding being a professor, and so we go where the flow goes.

We also confess that we publish posts that we think will make for an entertaining read between your 9 am and 11 am classes.

Aside from giving these things titles - which some of you think sublime, the rest ridiculous - we don't chart the course for RYS. We answer the mail, take the temperature of the crowd, do an image, and put it up.

So, we were moderately annoyed today when a number of writers (both young and old) took shots at us as though our coverage of the "Gumdrop Unicorns" issue was so clearly biased in the favor of whoever they disagreed with. It's rare you can get people on both sides of an issue mad at you! And we're overstating it saying we were even moderately annoyed. Bemused, we guess, is better.

The mail continues to come in - although it's slowed down a bit as little ones around the country are ringing bells and jonesing for chocolate - and we'll post a couple more pieces tomorrow. It's worked out that there's a bit more mail in favor of "Professor Mushy Brain," than there is against him, but we're going to pick posts for tomorrow that address the issue without some of the unhinged vitriol that absolutely bleeds out of the messages we've been receiving today.

We do think it's been a powerful enough message, however, that this issue - the seeming transience of junior faculty - has resulted in our biggest mail day ever. You would not believe the name calling and attacks that we've read today, including hateful and hurtful stories that come right from writers' own departmental struggles. We think there is a simmering and dangerous divide here that we all should think about, all might want to consider talking about. And not on a blog that spent most of yesterday urging you to buy the new Britney CD - although we're still urging you in that direction.

THE MAIL IS BLOWING UP - The Debate Over "Junior Faculty On The Move."

We've never had a flood of mail like this so soon after a post has appeared. The folks who want to lynch Professor Mushy Brain are not quite as plentiful as those who wish to throw him a parade, but it is close.

We will likely post some longer pieces tomorrow, but here is a sampling (ping pong style) of what we have already:

• Your brains are not mushy, my brother! What you say is exactly what I've been feeling for a very long time at my own college. I mentor countless junior faculty, opening up home and hearth to one and all, showing them that this fine college in a lovely town is a place where you can have a great life. But nearly everyone we hire is secretively running up our copier bill every September and October dying to find the "next" job. It has gotten to the point when a new hire comes in, almost nobody wants to mentor him or her. What always gives me such a bad feeling is when we hear that the same person who left last year is already looking again. How many reference letters am I expected to write for these colleagues who stay here a year, then somewhere else for a year, then somewhere else again?


• Being a junior faculty member means the university has made no long-term commitment to you, instead -- depending on the university -- you are on a series of 2-3 year, generally renewed, but not always, contracts until tenure time. I would argue that its worse if a junior faculty member isn't working hard to be attractive to another university. First, if they aren't attractive to another place, they probably won't be attractive enough for promotion and tenure. Second, tenure isn't guaranteed, so at some level you need to think about options.


• OMG! I know the blog you're talking about. I nearly spit my coffee out when I read your description of the "gumdrop unicorns." The blog in question is a hilarious look at the inner workings of a professor in some Midwest university. She's always talking about the damn cat, and her so-far fruitless search for a REAL LIVE BOY to share space with her and her feline counterpart. And, there are others, endless yammering bloggers who are every bit as selfish and as entitled as our worst students. "What about MY needs?" "If it's selfish to put my needs above the needs of students, then color me selfish." Indeed, honey, with a fucking glitter pen.


• If your junior faculty don't feel loyalty, blame yourself, not them. If you don't have enough resources to retain your talent, it's not the talent's fault.


• I fear I must side with the NOT-MUSHY-BRAINED poster from this morning. I probably wouldn't admit it, but I've had conversations on this very issue with a number of my colleagues, all of us sick of the transient junior faculty who speed through a year with us never taking a moment to recognize that for some of us, this "job" is a calling, and this college is indeed a place that we cherish and love. If any of them stayed anywhere long enough, they'd recognize the immense pleasure that comes from really being a part of a college, the life of its students, the faculty, the administrators. Just walking past these buildings every day makes me realize that what I do actually matters. Could I do it somewhere where it didn't rain so much? Sure. But the "one year and out" professors never learn the real beauty of any job. At least until they grow up.


• You are demanding a level of commitment and loyalty from your junior colleagues that they are not receiving from you in return. To put it in simple language: until you give your junior colleagues tenure, they get no loyalty from you--at least none that counts--so why should they swear undying fealty to you like some medieval serf?


• Today's "Gumdrop Unicorns" post won't be a very popular post, I predict, but it is a brave one and one that is right on the money. I was a "striver," a searcher, and I bounced around to 4 different t-t jobs before I finally realized that my career wouldn't be right until my mind was. I was a kid - that's the unadulterated truth of it. I never gave my college a chance. I stayed 1 year, 2 years, 1 year, and 1 year before ending up where I am now. Some health issues made me nervous about moving again, so I stayed in a position for 3 years. It made a world of difference. I began to think of the college is MY college, and I began to stop thinking of teaching as some "job," and started thinking of it as what I did, what I am. I know that I would have been happy in those other positions had I only given them a chance. But I watched my grad school friends always scrambling for greener grass, and so I did, too. I am so thankful I realized that I was running for no reason. I tell this story to every new faculty member, letting them know that I was like them, looking at the yearly job lists as if they were an FAO Schwarz catalog. And I tell them that when I got invested in my career, my college, my students, and my college family, my whole life came into focus.


• If you want junior faculty to be loyal (and since when did loyalty become a virtue operative in employee-employer relationships independent of contextual factors?), pay them more, or adopt preventive retention policies. If you don't like junior faculty getting counter-offers (because seeking and getting counter-offers are very different things), don't set the tenure bar so high that junior faculty become marketable. People respond to incentives; if they respond to an incentive (publication count, for instance) and find that they are now marketable because they have been productive, why wouldn't you expect them to go on the market?

POW: "Bright Gumdrop Unicorns in the Center of the Universe." Junior Faculty On the Move.

While I admit RYS is my favorite blog, I do read a number of other academic blogs, and had occasion to let loose on some selfishness I saw among a group of junior faculty who were spending a good deal of time congratulating one another on working in tenure track jobs while slaving like mules to get better jobs in more attractive situations - close to Mommy, warmer weather, a place where their own peculiar preciousness will be admired by all.

Nobody seemed to understand what happens to a department when a junior faculty announces his/her departure, almost always late in the Spring semester, when suddenly the department must engage in high-speed job searches for another junior faculty member probably also looking elsewhere.

They also were unapologetic about being eager to go to what they imagine will be a "better situation," saying among other things that they while they understood that their institutions would be saddled with the difficulty of replacing them (the funding, the job search, the interviews, the entire new dynamic of the department and the college), that it just "wasn't their fault."

Most of the writers also wanted to make it clear that their teaching job was really "just a job," and not their whole life. There was a certain haughtiness to this, as if they themselves were the first group to discover joy in family, friends, and pinochle. I wonder if they're comfortable with their students seeing them as "just some guy who taught me Math"? Or would they be satisfied if their colleagues saw them as "just the lady who worked on the budget"? I hope not. Of course if they're only staying in their jobs for a couple of years, maybe that's all they are. Maybe they are easily replaceable. I know it's not true in my own department, where we do everything we can to nurture the life and work of our junior colleagues.

On this other blog - which has the requisite pictures of a mangy cat, as referenced so beautifully earlier by one of your readers - I said, in part:

I can't believe not a one of you has been a senior enough member of a faculty to know the damage that this "casting around for a better gig" does to a department.The junior faculty of present day academe is made up of people like you, uncaring and selfish, not giving a shit about the students and colleagues you leave in the lurch with your pretty "look at me, love me, and miss me" announcement of departure in April of each year.

I've even offered support in the past to jumpy and nervous junior faculty so sure that there's a world of demand out there for their particular preciousness, because what else can we do? We have an endowment, trustees, the work of the university, the rest of the department, the students.

These all remain once you put your shit in boxes and go off to be unfulfilled in another institution that just will never love you as much as Mommy and Daddy. Oh, yes, it's "just" a job to us, too, but we're adults and we take it seriously. We're not children with overblown egos; we've long ago recognized that we're pieces of a larger puzzle, not a big bright gumdrop unicorn that rests in the center of the universe.

I wanted to check in with the readers and writers of RYS - because you all have saved my sanity with your own posts over the past year - to see if I'm right on this. Or, if maybe the years of sniffing whiteboard markers has turned my brain into mush.

Age Shmage!

Oh, people are touchy about their ages! You can't believe the mean notes we got last night about the recent pool. Really, we weren't trying to make you feel bad - like the poor fella who's 39 and got caught up in our mean-spirited grouping of 39-50!

But the results are in, and once again we've learned something. Not sure what it is, exactly, but over a 14 hour period or so, the ages of our readers - the ones with the huevos to actually vote, mind you - are as follows:

• 16-21: 15% [you know, college "kids"]
• 22-28: 30% [those "young" instructors]
• 29-38: 29% [the "strivers"]
• 39-50: 19% [ the...er...veterans]
• 50+: 5% [the fogies...just kidding...one of the moderators, for instance]

BRITNEYDAY!

We confess that here at the compound we're often spinning some pretty rad music, everything from Bob Dylan to John Cage to Charles Mingus to Rickie Lee Jones. But, on those dark days - most of them - we also dip deep into pop music to save us.

And that brings us to Britney.

We love Britney. We see in Britney's tragedy elements of Elvis Presley's fate, fans and friends who become sycophants and moneygrubbers. Nobody was there to tell Elvis to get off the pills and the peanut butter, and nobody (so far) has encouraged Britney to replace the frappacinos with some Aqua Vita and to get a fucking driver already!

So, Britney's new album Blackout (CD for you kids) comes out today, and we've already got it. We encourage you to buy it. We know the money is probably lost to legal fees or to that dipshit husband of hers, but somehow we're just a sucker for this lovely white trash mommy from Louisiana.

The disc has gotten mixed reviews, but there are so many haters out there, it's hard to know what to believe. We drop some flava below if you're interested.

Britney, seriously, we could help. Call us.

---

Pete Paphides
London Times


Finally, a good week for Britney Spears? Just as we were getting to think that a lunar eclipse might come sooner, here’s some tentative cause for celebration.

In the space of 24 hours, the woman who yields roughly 82,000 results if you Google her name along with the phrase “troubled singer,” has been granted temporary visitation rights to her children and seen her new single "Gimme More" leap into the British chart's top three.

Now, if Britney’s record company is to be believed, a good week just got better. Apparently, “unprecedented popular demand” has prompted SonyBMG to bring the release date of her comeback album Blackout forward by three weeks.

Cynics might point out that, one way or another, they would have been compelled to do so. MP3s of songs from the album have been circulating among fans over the last few weeks. That they have been moved to do so, does at least, serve reminder of the very thing that is perhaps most easily forgotten among her recent roll-call of infamy.

She is first and foremost a pop star. In a life not exactly saturated with joy, she should take a certain amount of pleasure in the fact that Blackout coheres far better than sprawling recent sets by her fellow Mickey Mouse Club alumni Justin Timberlake and Christina Aguilera.

Far from apologising for a roll-call of adversity that takes in custody battles, hit-and-run offences, extreme hairdressing, sudden lingerie loss and umbrella-on-pap savagery – she comes out fighting on the utterly wonderful "Piece Of Me. "

“I’m Miss bad media karma/Another day another drama/Guess I can’t see no harm in working and being a mama,” she declaims over an adhesively catchy chorus.

Britney may have grown up in front of MTV, perfecting Madonna’s dance routines, but she isn’t the self-determining control-freak that her heroine turned into. Neither, it should be added, does she need to be. Her recent mishaps have only compounded her status as muse of choice to top-notch writer producers such as Swedish hitmakers Bloodshy & Avant, Timbaland protégé Danja and The Neptunes.

On the Pharrell Williams-written "Why Should I Be Sad" and, indeed, most of what precedes it, Britney is a strangely disembodied presence – her heavily treated voice suspended amid an icy fug of minor chords and brittle synthetic beats.

"Perfect Lover" and "Toy Soldier" are quite simply two of the most strangely wonderful tunes to emerge on any record this year – exercises in sonic risk-taking that, until this point, have never hitched themselves to a Britney Spears record.

So why now, then? Well, perhaps it was in the spirit of having nothing to lose that someone suggested Britney try her hand at a marching-pace sex-fantasy about a soldier which pitched itself somewhere between Prince’s female alter-ago Camille and the sensation of watching Full Metal Jacket as ten Glade Plug-Ins infuse the air with amyl nitrate. Who knows?

Furthermore, does this stuff work on any profound level? Well, ever since she appeared in 1999 with "Hit Me Baby One More Time," Britney has enjoyed a certain status as metatextual plaything of talk show guests and chin-stroking post-ironics (no mean feat, this – Kylie and Madonna had to ensure years of highbrow snobbery to get to the same point).

When it comes down to it though, the answer is no, not really. A gaggle of schoolchildren exchanging ringtones on the top deck of the bus will just as easily tell you why these songs work. They tick almost every box in the checklist of great pop, period.

Perhaps that shouldn’t be so surprising. After all, Britney Spears learned to be a pop star way before she learned to be an adult. In a sense then, it’s fitting that her facility for great pop moments is the very last facet of her to shut down.

A Post: About Chocolate: From - are you surprised! - a Student.

So, what you're saying is this: If students are bribed, they will - gasp! - give instructors higher scores. Shame upon students to be so much like other homo sapiens sapiens! How dare they?

Actually, let me rephrase that: As far as I know, students were told that the chocolate had nothing to do with the instructor. The study has then proved yet another shocking fact about students: They - oh no! - like chocolate. They like chocolate so much, in fact, that it will put them in a good mood and cause them to see the their bitter instructors in a rosier glow.

Again: despicable!

Seriously, though - shame on you for latching on so willingly to such a silly result. Next thing you'll try to discredit student evaluations by telling us about a study that proved how perfectly fine professors get lower evaluations just because they beat their students.

Again: Duh.

I repeat: All students are humans. Humans can be influenced by unethical behaviour surrounding research design. Giving students chocolate before the evaluations is unethical. Instructors should not do it.

Any more questions?

I'm Not Taking Any Student Too Seriously When He's Still Carrying a Pokemon Notebook and Wearing a Hello Kitty Hat.

I have been fuming since the student responded and attested that college students are simply children.

Here is my complaint....they want to be adults in everything else. They want to vote, have adult relationships, live on their on as adults do (aside from the whole cooking and laundry thing), drive adult cars, watch adult movies and listen to music that contains adult themes, they want to be free on Momma and Dadda, they also want to drink as adults do, as well as--best of all--be treated as adults.

That is, until it benefits them to pull the 'overgrown child in an adult body' card. The way that I see it is that no one is able to have it both ways. They cannot expect to be treated as adults until it pleases them to be otherwise. It seems that they want all of the benefits of adulthood without any of the risks, costs, or heavy lifting. When the going gets tough, they get going.

If students request the treatment as adults in every other aspect, I say they get the whole shebang. I have decided to call them out on this behavior. I am tired of the whole 'I didn't know we had a paper due today because you didn't email me to remind me" bullshit. I'm sure that somewhere along the line of kindergarten they were taught to write. And I am also sure that they were taught to read at some point in time. If they were to put those two skills together, they would probably be able to READ the syllabus that I gave out at the beginning over the semester and WRITE a note of it somewhere to remind themselves.

What a Big Fudgy Surprise.

More than a few readers have directed us to stories about a new study about student evaluations out of Northwestern University. Researchers passed out candy bars before student evaluations - saying they were left over from a previous event - and found that students who got chocolate rated profs higher.

We're not surprised, as we've received countless emails over the past several months about profs trying to game the evaluation process with pizza, donuts, and the like. One of our colleagues once used his research budget to order a hot buffet line with mini-meatballs and garlic bread on the day he also gave his evaluations.

We suspect as time passes, faculty will only be able to assure the best scores by passing out cash.

Below is some flava of a Daily Princetonian article that announces the shocking study:

"For one section, [the researcher] passed around a bag of mini Hershey bars and told students that they were leftover from a previous event. The other section, where students were given the course evaluation without any chocolate, served as the control group. For each of the nine questions on the evaluation form, students who were offered chocolate rated their professor more favorably than students who were not offered chocolate."

"Uh, Are They All Supposed to Be Green?" Something Else To Worry About.

I teach at a small public university in a physical sciences department.

A student of mine was found to be in possession of a cheat-sheet in the sophomore level class. She was issued a grade of F for the course, as explicitly outlined in my syllabus. In the grievance process, the faculty upheld my decision to assign an F to the student. But, she continued her grievance to the Provost's office, and was allowed to retake the examination in question, and her grade was re-calculated.

Bear in mind, gentle readers, that she was interning out of state during the summer when the situation had to be rectified, and at the expense of the university she was flown in to re-take that examination. In the end she still failed the exam, which lowered her overall grade to a C, instead of the prescribed F for her earlier transgression during the spring semester. Where is she now, you ask? She is mid-way through her graduate pharmacy studies.

It is quite clear that the policies of our department, the ones put in place to maintain a standard of ethical behavior, are incogruous with those of the university administration as a whole. It is also quite clear that those who are establishing rules which our little darlings should strive to follow in their professional lives, don't give a fuck about whether someone who can't calculate a pharmaceutical formulation properly will actually go out and make such formulations.

Customers at pharmacies across this glorious nation of cheaters and plagiarizers beware...there is a slack-ass dipshit about to push your pills to you.

If They Want to Be Kids...

I won't try to refute your arguments. Why? ...because I do not have to--you've proved our point (...and by the same token, why should I argue with a "child"). While most would suggest there is an ever-growing period of adolescence between your childhood and adulthood, your assertion is that children jump at some point in their early twenties from childhood to adulthood. Funny, however, we do not hear the same thing about the hard working individuals who go straight from high school into the working world, but that is another issue.

So, given you are all children who are having such a terrible time functioning without "MaaaMaa" and "Daaadaaa," I want to take your argument and use it productively. It seems to me all of your problems (and mine with you) come from your childhood and that whole "age of maturity as specified by law." As a result, you have written a rather convincing argument that we should raise that legal age for driving (no more problems with parking, tickets, getting lost on the way to class), drinking, voting, [you name it], etc. to at least 22 years so as to be sure you have matured. As for cooking, you are right. You are not to touch the stove because it is "hot." Say it with me, "hot." "Gooooood." You obviously cannot do your own laundry either...or bathe or set your own bedtime based on what I've seen...so we will do that for you as well.

I think perhaps based on your persuasive argument it would be better if we just went to a modified preschool model in which we can give you "snack" and "naptime" every day and then we can double our RA's so there is someone waiting for you when you get home to give you your bath, make sure you eat dinner, and then put you to bed--poor thing. And when your RA takes you shopping s/he can promise that you'll get a "candy bar!" ...but only if you're good. Along these lines, we will need to bring back the "naughty chair" for the corners of every classroom for those of you who break the rules. "See, we've posted the rules right there on pretty posterboard by the door for you all to see!" Don't forget gold stars too!

And to paraphrase, "Yes little snowflake, there is a Santa Claus...and an Easter Bunny...and a Tooth Fairy too. Be sure to be good or they won't come see you, precious little teen/twenty-something. But it's time for bed now. Dream sweet dreams of us all holding hands while we walk you each to your classes tomorrow."

Those Mods in "To Sir With Love" Didn't Have Cell Phones and iPods, And They Still Seemed to Get Their Groove On.

OK, I can't take it anymore. Once again we get a post about obnoxious students texting during class, surfing the web on laptops during class, etc. etc. ad infinitum ad nauseum. Enough already! Ban the fucking moronic devices from your classrooms! It's EASY! (I'm speaking of classes that are reasonably small and where there is personal interaction between the teacher and students. I realize that a lecture hall with 500 students might be an altogether different matter.)

On DAY ONE of all my classes I go through a little Luddite rant about cell phones, laptops, iPods, Blackberries, strawberries, whatever. And it's all in my syllabus as well. I tell them that we are doing our own little reality show like Manor House or 1910 House. We're playing 1950 Classroom. (I wish I could take credit for this idea, but it was given to me by a friend.) The students get a book, paper, and an archaic writing utensil, like a pen (or a stylus for their clay tablets, not for their PDA). I get to use the classroom computer instead of a filmstrip projector, but that's it!

I've heard all the arguments for why and how laptops can be ever so useful in the classroom under certain circumstances, yadda, yadda, yadda. But it seems that the hassles far outweigh the benefits 99% of the time, and 90% of us can get by absolutely fine without the students ever having access to their laptops during class time. In fact, I tell them that all their little toys are to remain completely out of sight in my classroom. If they are yapping on their cell phone 5 minutes before class starts, they can stay out in the hall, and they can pull the fucking iPod plugs out of their ears before they cross the threshold of the classroom.

During the course of the entire semester I will usually get one cell phone going off accidentally, and I can throw a giant hissy-fit while the culprit makes a desperation dive for the backpack, much to the rest of the students' amusement. I don't think I've ever had a cell phone go off twice in the same semester.

The point is, if you clearly and forcefully establish your Luddite bona-fides on the first day of class, you very rarely have to deal with this crap any more.

When We Politicize Our Classrooms.

I could care less if I have red-state students or blue-state students, as long as they are conscientious students. (I know: Ha.) Since I teach research and writing, however, divisive political issues sometimes creep into class assignments or discussions, and it becomes piercingly clear that some of my colleagues view the podium as a political platform.

It’s their classroom, and therefore theirs to run as they see fit. But consider the fallout of an ideologically focused syllabus both on the student and on the profs to follow you.

I’ve increasingly found that sometimes my students come to me with a former prof’s voting record fully stamped upon the grey matter. It’s hard enough for me to prompt my students to exercise original thought, form opinions that rise above the level of bumper sticker, and present research or these amazing things known as “facts” without having to first scrape off several layers of pre-chewed bromides from my colleagues. Maybe it’s the students' own fault for failing to have honed carefully thought-out convictions of their own, and they deserve whoever they then help to elect. But I’m thinking it was simply easier on the GPA to swallow the pabulum and vomit back the answers the professor was seeking.

This isn’t to say that I don’t think politics should never be discussed in the classroom; we do in mine, and I certainly have my own opinions. But my students don’t know them. I try, although I know there is vast room for improvement, to play devil’s advocate or debate moderator, and encourage them to write about whatever they’d like, provided they leave a thought-and-facts trail. Some students, I know, avoid certain topics because they haven’t figured out where I stand politically and don’t want to risk the grade. They retreat to polite cocktail-discussion ground. It’s a cowardly act, but something tells me these purveyors of discussions on the best poker techniques have been burned before.

If it was because they shot off an eight-page ideological screed without supporting documentation or reasoning, then they should have been burned, and I thank my colleagues for flicking the Bic. But there are a few who dared to hold well-expressed opposing opinions. And now I grow weary of such proposed paper topics as “Why Burger King Is Better Than Taco Bell.” For the further bubble-wrapped, there's the "safe stance paper" concerning an issue upon which most Americans agree anyway ("The Holocaust: That Was Wrong.")

Some of my colleagues, I know, outright announce how they vote so that their students “know where they’re coming from” and encourage them to engage in debate. And the majority grade fairly regardless of politics. I respect that, and I also respect that some hold to certain theories in their respective fields for very good, well-researched reasons.

But please, please, don’t screen NRA ads, Fahrenheit 911, a Pat Robertson speech, or An Inconvenient Truth without at least some sort of challenge to the material and then ship these adultolecents off to various Internet forums or the voting booth. It just makes for another lecture about "The Wonder That Is Critical Thinking" for the rest of us.

Someone's Not Going to Grin and Bear It. We Recommend Keeping Away from Sharp Objects.

MEMO TO MY UNDERGRADS:

Let's get a few things out of the way, shall we?

I realize you don't want to be here.

Guess what? I don't want to be here either.

I am here teaching Stupefying Dull Intro Class because my senior faculty want to avoid you. I'd like to avoid you, too, in fact, and I would if I possibly could.

I am teaching you because my department is screwing me over. Yes, my special, special snowflakes, far from being the little treasures you believe you are, being around you is a departmental task that falls under the heading of "shitwork."

You know why people hate teaching freshmen? Because three quarters of you are so stupid you can't manage to piss downward, that's why. The rest of you are so self-important you think you have nothing to learn in any class that has the word "Intro" in the title, and so you spend your time (and, unfortunately, mine) demonstrating how above all this material you are. This unholy melange of arrogance and stupidity is what makes "teaching" you people the faculty equivalent of cleaning a latrine.

I know the right attitude would be to slap a smile on my face and be the edutainment-pushing proffie-friendie you all think you are entitled to have. Instead, let's just realize that we in this class share a deep, soul-destroying truth: we'd all rather be somewhere else, pretty much anywhere else, than in this class.

Some misguided souls might claim we should make the best of it, but then, what would you post on RMP and what would I post here?

A Subtle Pedagogical Lesson For That Certain Student.

Take a seat and shut the hell up.

This is the only message I have for you. No, I am not going to have a ten-minute conference with you in the middle of class while you are supposed to be doing group work. That's what my office hours are for, and, by the way, I haven't seen you there.

No, I will not read over your essay in the middle of class. No, I do not want you to raise your hand in mid-lecture with a question that relates only to you and your work. No, no, no, no, no.

You cannot come in thirty minutes late, walk up to me as I am in the middle of leading discussion, and start talking to me as if you were the only student in the room. What the hell is wrong with you? Yes, I told you to have a seat through clenched teeth while the rest of the class looked on. You looked shocked. What did you expect me to do? And no, after being put (momentarily) in your place, I do not want you to open your yap ten minutes later with some blather so incomprehensible that the entire class begins to exchange quizzical looks and giggles in your general direction.

I don't know where you went to high school, or what in your educational background makes you so completely inept merely being in a classroom, but it's clear you just haven't a clue about how to act. So just take a seat and shut the hell up.

One Instructor's Set of Guidelines For Walking the College Tightrope Without Dropping Your Books or Beer.

I love how students seem to assume that professors never had to struggle through college, or that we don't know what it is like to transition from high school to adulthood on our own in a brand new world. No, my young friends, the difference is that we were GOOD at college, so good in fact that we stayed here. You, on the other hand, seem to be not so good. Ignorance of the system, however, is not all right; it's a weakness that a student must overcome. In that spirit, I offer some advice from one person who was great at college (and who didn’t have to sacrifice the more earthly alcoholic and social pleasures to do so):

1. College is all about adaptation. Pay attention to the style of instruction your professor uses. If they are close readers, approach readings and assignments by asking "what are the nuts and bolts here, and how do they work?" If your professor emphasizes discussion, read with an eye towards the questions that this particular reading poses. This will make you both a more successful and more efficient reader.


2. Time allocation is key. If a particular subject is difficult or just plain uninteresting, it's going to take more time to prepare for class than if you are in tune with the material. This means you can’t avoid painful required classes and then lump them into a single semester--a recipe for disaster. Instead, balance challenging classes with those that you have more of a knack for or interest in.


3. A little goodwill goes a long way. You are not too cool for school--this is a toxic attitude and will generate animosity in your prof, meaning that when you screw up, they won't feel like taking the considerable trouble to be flexible. Participating in class, on the other hand, generates a great deal of goodwill. We are constantly looking for students who interact positively with us, and if you find yourself in a tough spot, we will be more favorably disposed to helping you.


4. Empathize with your professor. The common complaint that a professor "thinks this is the only class I have" also goes the other way: students make the mistake of thinking that they each individually dictate the terms of the class. We can't teach 20 different students in individual ways during a single class--we're human beings! This also means that you have to use the golden rule when dealing with your prof and treat them the way you would want to be treated. If you wouldn't want them emailing you at midnight asking you to do something for them the next day, then you shouldn't either. If you wouldn't like them zoning out or falling asleep when you talk to them, then maybe you should be alert in class. And as you would ask that they respect your privacy, you should respect theirs. Much of the complaints here at RYS stem from the frustration that this mutual relationship is ignored by students.


5. By and large, colleges are not vocational in nature. Just because you will not use a particular skill in your work life (and keep in mind that what you want to do at 18 may change radically) doesn't mean it isn't interesting or worthwhile. Think about yourself not as a future employee of X, and instead as a person with broad horizons, who has the potential to do and be many different things--because this is how your professor sees his or her students, for the most part.


6. If you screw up (and you will, we all have), be prepared for the worst but hope for the best. If you communicate to your professor that you take responsibility for your actions but would like any help they might be able to provide, you will be astounded by how willing they are to give that help. If, on the other hand, you assume that they are obligated to give you second and third chances, you will find that assumption quickly disproven. Professors, by and large, become good judges of character through years of interaction with students. They can tell when a screw-up is an honest mistake and an aberration, and when it is part of a larger pattern of behavior.

There are a lot of other pieces of advice or guidelines that my colleagues here could offer, but consider this a start. Remember that we have in some cases decades of experience "being in college" while new students have very little indeed. The less you wear your ignorance as a badge of honor, the more you will be able to have your beer and drink it too.

Slugs and Jerks and Apostrophes. Oh My!

I've been pondering the issue of the time-serving slugs in the classroom, and two incidents over the past two days have added to my puzzlement.

In one class, students occasionally show signs of life, but for the most part they just seem to tolerate me; some sit with their eyes closed, others never crack a book, some only rarely show up. You know, the usual. After class yesterday, during which I asked a number of questions which received more than usually lacklustre answers, I went to my office, feeling a little defeated, and opened my folder to mark the reading responses for the class. Reading responses are short pieces that students are supposed to hand in before the reading is discussed in class - RYS readers, being pedagogically astute, will recognize this as a cunning trick to get students to do their reading.

Imagine my surprise when I read at least 6 responses that demonstrated an intelligent understanding of the reading material. One response in particular, from a young man who sits at the back, never says a word, and looks like he can barely stand to be in the room, was an insightful answer to one of the questions I had posed to the class. Why didn't he offer his opinion during the discussion? He had clearly read the material, understood it, and even thought about it. I have no idea.

This morning in another class, I handed out an exercise on apostrophes. I gave students a few minutes to work on it. I wandered around the room, and noticed one young slug busily texting his pal instead of working on the sheet. I suggested that if he didn't want to participate in the class, he was under no obligation to remain in the room.

"That's a bit presumptuous of you," he said.

Thinking about the student from the previous class, I choked down my knee jerk response - Presumptuous? That's a big word for a boy who apparently doesn't know how to brush his hair - I gave him the opportunity to explain the error in the first example sentence. He gave the classic answer of the student who hasn't done his work, and is hoping to bullshit his way through: "It's a bit vague." Prodded to be more specific, he hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, while other students in the class squirmed on his behalf.

Eventually, I let him off the hook, and asked someone else for the answer. This student correctly pointed out the apostrophe error in the sentence. "Oh that," said slug-boy, "I thought that was a typo." And he tuned out of the rest of the discussion, opening his laptop, no doubt to check how good his hair looks in his Facebook photo.

I don't really know what the lesson is here, except that maybe sometimes students who appear to lack interest in my classes don't, and some of the jerks really are jerks.

Hey! Kid!

• The proto-adult apologist said, "It's completely unreasonable to expect, fresh out of childhood, suddenly away from parents, and out of substandard public education, that we'll suddenly be able to exhibit these skills."
  
  No, it's completely reasonable to expect a freshly minted 18-year-old to be reasonably mature. You (and your parents) knew that day was coming for what...about 18 years??? Look around you. Scores of your peers can act at a reasonable level of maturity. Why can't you? Why can't that guy napping next to you in class? Why can't the person who decided to plagiarize from Wikipedia? I concede you have some maturing to do. Most instructors get that. We expect that. Really...we do. But apologizing for crimes against education is the most intolerable indicator of immaturity I ever encounter. And if you're going to violate the rules of adulthood, be sure to cultivate the maturity to accept your lumps for those violations. You don't get a "free pass" on the rules of adulthood just because you're in college.
  


• As much as I respect your self-confessional impulse, I take issue with your characterization of college students. Making an inference based on your observations of your friends and generalizing their laziness and immaturity to the rest of your academic cohort is intellectually lazy and also insulting to your colleagues. There are, indeed, college students with the ability to cook, do laundry, and grocery shop. Some even actively manage their time, commit themselves academically, are civically involved, and hold down a real job.
  
  Even if they are not always perfectly successful, these students are the ones who make an effort. Rather than blame their shortcomings on "just being a kid," they nut up and start acting like an adult. Rather than view a college diploma as a reward for overcoming the college admissions process, they see it as something that must be earned.
  
  When my brother was very young, his favorite excuse when confronted with something that he had done wrong was to moan that he was too young to know better. It was a transparent excuse coming from a five year old and it is a transparent rationalization coming from you. If you think that wearing pajamas to class is part of some stepping stone to adulthood, you are sadly mistaken.
  
  I was an undergraduate an embarrassingly short time ago and am now a graduate student and TA at an R1 in a major U.S. city. Needless to say, I spend a lot of time with undergraduate students (mostly juniors and seniors), most very near to my age (23). Some seem well on their way to adulthood, but others are simply stalled in a state of arrested development. For them, college is the big summer camp before Adulthood - the last childhood blowout before things actually "count." They cheat on homework that isn't even being graded, lie to my face about missing class, and spend the scant 50 minutes of their discussion section, at best, completely catatonic. These students aren't transitioning from kid to adult; they are simply adults doing everything in their power to continue to pass as children. Don't take their example.

A Snapshot of RYS Readers: Thursday, October 25th, 3:45-3:56 pm EDT.

Over time, many folks have asked what we know about the readership of RYS. Well, we know a lot in a sense, because of what you write us. But in practical terms we don't know much.

Generally, a lot of readers are checking in from an *.edu domain, a college or university somewhere. We do get the occasional "odd" domain, like the IRS.GOV we see below, or one day last week (5 times in an hour) from FBI.GOV. (You can bet we weren't downloading music or porn the rest of that day!)

Our free account with Sitemeter only allows us to see the last 100 folks who have ended up on our page, and so here's a snapshot of from where those folks came over about a ten minute span today:


niu.edu
wmich.edu
wwu.edu
comcast.net
ub.edu
hancockcollege.edu
avc.edu
southeast.edu
pitt.edu
rogers.com
Stanford.EDU
uky.edu
comcast.net
iit.edu
comcast.net
optonline.net
verizon.net
mtu.edu
MIT.EDU
ubc.ca
wanadoo.fr
usna.edu
qwest.net
rogers.com
cox.net
sasknet.sk.ca
gmu.edu
bell.ca
pacbell.net
rcn.com
uwplatt.edu
comcast.net
harvard.edu
ua.edu
insightbb.com
stanford.edu
wwu.edu
umich.edu
jhu.edu
syr.edu
irs.gov
brown.edu
chronicle.com
cox.net
insidehighered.com
ucla.edu
ualberta.ca
rr.com
iupui.edu
utexas.edu
gatech.edu
comcast.net
alaska.edu
utulsa.edu
rogers.com
verizon.net
princeton.edu
rcn.com
verizon.net
comcast.net
vt.edu
uchicago.edu
bu.edu
yale.edu
cornell.edu
msu.edu
comcast.net
WKU.EDU
uconn.edu
sdstate.edu
verizon.net
mindspring.com
Virginia.EDU
nova.edu
clarion.edu
rr.com
utk.edu
comcast.net
dcccd.edu
umich.edu
bellsouth.net
cox.net
ualberta.ca
swbell.net
sasknet.sk.ca
cofc.edu
charter.com
mass.edu
unt.edu
MIT.EDU
ccac.edu
washington.edu
centurytel.net
aol.com
rit.edu
uidaho.edu
uakron.edu
umn.edu
yorku.ca
ntl.com

Reaching Those We Can.

Over twenty years, I've seen a marked shift, not so much in students' abilities as in their attitudes. The classroom has become, for many of my students, a space where they sit, three times a week, doing little or nothing. Mind you, I do a lot to try to create a very different situation. And the result is sometimes a wonderful class, with students who are surprised by how engaged with the work they can be when they're willing to give it a try. But I see too many students who sit as if they're waiting for class to be over, before they have to go to another class. The end of class seems to come with five minutes still on the clock, when they noisily pack up and then wait a few minutes more.

I've sometimes asked students who just sit there what they're doing or thinking about in class. Why, I ask them, aren't you taking notes? Why don't you have the book out? Why don't you talk? I've never received answers to these questions. I suspect that some of these students have bought what they're evidently told in orientation sessions: "Go to class. You will absorb so much just by being there." If only learning were that simple. If only we were sponges.

An experiment to try: walk past a classroom whose door is open. Glance that way as you walk by and see if someone turns to look back. That's how much attention some students are paying to what's going on: just the sight of a body, any body, even mine, is enough to distract them from what's happening in class.

Pajamas, sunglasses, rollerblades (rare, thank goodness): I've seen them all. I hear profanity-laced conversations about parties and hangovers before class, as if nobody else is in the room. Cell phones ring, despite my frequent requests to turn off phones before class. I see underwear every day I'm on campus, usually on bodies, but once on a classroom floor. I see students sitting or lying down in the hallways, even next to the bathroom doors. In the library lately I see bare feet, flipflops or sneakers on the floor and feet resting on the seat of an adjacent chair. I'm seeing (and sometimes smelling) a squalor I cannot associate with a college campus.

Michael Bérubé (see below) writes of teaching to the six students in any class who are there, prepared, engaged, and interested. I'm sometimes teaching to the one or two. But I still can't imagine not doing it.

---

So why do I like teaching undergraduates? Because I am not dismayed by the prospect of a world in which at least one-sixth (and as many as one-half) of my auditors-students-interlocutors take seriously the possibility that they will use the critical tools I try to wield and to offer for further use. I’m actually rather cheered by the idea. I think of it this way: On my bad days I teach to tbe six young adults who just might pursue literary and cultural studies for much of the rest of their lives, but on what scale of values does that constitute failure? Another twelve, maybe another twenty, might be motivated, by me and by my colleagues, to continue serious, critically reflective reading in their adult lives, and how could I possibly hope for a better "rate of response" from anything I might publish in a "public" forum? College teaching is, as many teachers have pointed out in the past decade, a substantial form of "public intellectual" work. And isn't pedagogy, in the end, one of the principal reasons that literary journalists have such complex and conflicted relations with literature professors —because we work the same beat save that they have readerships and we have students?

- Berube, Michael. Pedagogy, Winter 2002, Vol. 2 Issue 1, p3, 13p

Someone Wants to Be Reasonable About Plagiarism.

Your recent post about plagiarism got me thinking.

I’m an English professor. I hate and detest plagiarism. It strikes at the heart of the whole academic game. And it is a game, a language game, in the sense Wittgenstein meant by that phrase. When a student plagiarizes, it’s like cheating at cards. Which means, also, that the student is assuming that I am a rube, which is offensive in another way. When a student turns in faked work, that student not only violates the rules of the game we have agreed to play, but insults my intelligence.

At the same time, my job consists of getting students to join in the larger intellectual conversation of our shared culture; therefore, I don’t get hysterical about citation. I explain its importance – as in science, others need to be able to follow up on one’s work – but I correct errors and explain procedures. I want students sticking Freud and Conrad and whomever else into their essays and if they have incorrectly punctuated their parenthetical citation, I correct it and move on. (I correct it once and expect the student to be able to generalize, that is.) I don’t want to put barriers between my students and the texts I love. Which is to say, I’m not a pedant.

"We're Still Just a Bunch of Kids." A Student Waxes on Adulthood.

My list of frequented websites has expanded to include Dictionary.com this semester. I bring my laptop to one of my classes to help take notes when the discussion gets too fast (I promise). When the argument dissolves into a semantic debate, I whip up the site, and viola! Problem solved. See how useful computers are in class? (OK, I admit, on slower days I spend some extra time wandering the Internet a bit.)

I've noticed a popular debate on RYS that is somewhat semantic in nature. It has to do with that one word, that high-powered word… we students throw it around expecting fanfares (or at least more consideration) to follow, and professors toss is sarcastically back when our whining disproves its application to us: adult. Why, what does it mean? Ask Dictionary.com!

a*dult [uh-duhlt, ad-uhlt]

-adjective

1. having attained full size and strength; grown up; mature
   If the large and Neanderthal-like boys (men?) who barely fit in the doorway are any indication, I'd say this one can definitely apply to college students.


2. of, pertaining to, or befitting adults
   I thought we weren't allowed to use a word in its own definition?


3. intended for adults, not suitable for children
   What, like, heeheeheesex?

-noun

1. a person who is fully grown or developed or of age
   Fully grown - as in the first definition very possible. Developed? Enough to have a lot of loud sex, apparently.


2. a full grown animal or plant
   Sometimes we do seem rather like them, I suppose.


3. a person who has attained the age of maturity as specified by law
   Boom. And that's the issue.

Arrogant and self-absorbed? Slackers, shirkers, and sleepers? Of course we are! We're adults! We finally have a legitimate claim to all the exciting freedoms and privileges that we came to resent in our parents every time they told when we had to be home, when he had to finish our homework, when we could eat and what. Furthermore, the accompanying responsibilities that are meant to sober us up, they aren't essential to our survival yet. The sole requirements placed upon us pertain to academic excellence, and we're already experts at getting by with as little work as possible. Failure to live up to our responsibilities doesn't have dire enough consequences to make us try harder - for the most part, someone else is paying for our living expenses, our housing, our tuition. Nothing is real, yet. We're just a bunch of kids, living together with no idea how to cook, do laundry, or go grocery shopping without buying more potato chips than real food.

Disdainful and needy, at the same time? Of course we are! Of course we scorn the valuable information you give us freely and comprehensively, and then follow you around like incompetent puppies asking for special treatment and more, more, more attention and help. We've graduated high school, gone through application hell to get here, to get into college. All our lives, this was the goal our parents made us work for, college was the reason to do homework or to join the Science Club, college was the ultimate end goal for our parents, and therefore, for us. We've just finished celebrating and saying, guess what Mom and Dad, I made it! And what's this you're telling us? We have to keep doing work, and "make it" all over again?

And on the other side, our professors - the ones stuck teaching the huge intro level course - face year after year of crazy, ecstatic, self-satisfied, newly-freed juveniles, and they have to be wondering, did we get the age of adulthood right? Are we really supposed to treat these people with respect, when they skip class and forget exam dates, forget to shower and wear pajamas all day, when they still waste class time giggling at the word 'penis'?

By law, it is true, we are adults. Does that automatically mean we're mature and that we deserve to be treated like rational, responsible, perfectly capable human beings? Dear lord, no. Eighteen is one day older than seventeen. Just in the way we still need to learn what a derivative is or how to write an effectively persuasive paper (that is why we're taking your classes, isn't it?), we're still learning how to take responsibility, we're still learning how to show humility, how to interact professionally, how to manage our time when it's left up to us. It's completely unreasonable to expect, fresh out of childhood, suddenly away from parents, and out of substandard public education, that we'll suddenly be able to exhibit these skills.

And on the other hand? It's completely unreasonable for us, as brand spanking new adults, fresh out of the factory and new to the grind, to demand respect and equal footing with all the veterans. And yet we still demand it. In a few semesters - and you probably won't know us then - we'll truly begin to grow up, we'll being to be responsible and respectable. But as for right now? Like I said - we're still just a bunch of kids.

Professor Pantywaist Gets Called Out.

Quite a bit of mail came in last night about Sullen Sammy. You can see by the tone of the samples below that Sammy's Prof takes a little smackdown as well.

• Sullen Sammy’s teacher needs to get some self-respect. Screw that going back to your office stuff. And as soon as he went off to talk to his bro the first time, I’d have been in my car heading home to feed the dogs and have a beer. As for taking a phone call when you’re supposed to be talking to your professor – five minutes? Are you fucking kidding me? As for Sammy’s affect, it’s clear that the prefers the Dionysian to the Apollonian and he should be assisted in his preferences, right out of the groves of Academe, or some such shit. And just as an aside, this whole frat-boy “bro” bullshit strikes me as more than faintly homoerotic.


• I'll see your Sullen Sammy and raise you Disaffected Dora, whose only demonstrable skill is rolling her eyes back in her head. In group work she almost melts into her seat. I've never seen anyone speak to her or listen to her. She moves slowly and without interacting with any of the humans in my class. I feel like that busty one on Ghost Whisperer; trying to make contact with Dora takes a whole hour, and at the end she just disappears.


• Hey, Professor Pantywaist, get some balls, would you? Sullen Sammy takes phone calls in your office and disrespects you because you let it happen.


• Sullen Sammy is exactly the problem. The description of his two sides struck me hard. I see that all the time at my SLAC. Many of my students HATE being in college, HATE having to take classes, HATE those 50 minutes they're with me. They slump in unprepared. A dark malaise is all over them. They mumble. They stare at the ground. Then I see them later, on the quad, at the cafeteria, or somewhere in town, and they're lively, happy, excited - positively glowing. Is college a punishment for them? A penalty? Do we suck the life from them? If so, then something is wrong.

First, I Need to Know Who You Are!

Dear Desperate Student:

I would love to honor your request for a recommendation letter. Oh, you're applying to Muy Expensivo U, which only accepts the top 2% of graduate school applicants -- and you're sure you're a lock? That's wonderful. Truly.

I need a few things from you before I can grant your request.

1) Who are you? I I have absolutely no recollection of your name appearing on any of my class rosters in the last year. I will need your full name and your student ID number. A writing sample would be nice, as well as any further details you can give me -- such as your major, your GPA, and which program you're applying to.

2) Which course did you take? I teach several different courses each year --Comp I & II, Introductory Literature, American Lit, Business and Tech Writing, various "Special Topics" seminars -- as well as moderating a few research writing groups. I'll need the course title and number to proceed. Oh, and your final grade for the class would be useful, too. Oh...it was a"C?" But you felt you had potential. I see.

3) Who does the letter need to be addressed to, specifically? This is YOUR grad school package, so you're expected to do the legwork. Don't just drop the name of the school on me, tell me to Google it, and figure out where the letter goes. That's YOUR job, not mine.

4) When do you need this masterpiece of recommendation? You need it when? Within 48 hours? Oh. You're willing to come to my residence to pick it up? Um, let me think ....no. I actually need to decide whether or not I actually recommend you or not. I have to craft my response, not just dash off some generic crap.

Oh, you'd rather I just give you the letter head, blank except for my signature, and you will save me the trouble, and write the letter yourself?Ahahahahahahahahahahaha! Stop, you're killing me. This is my integrity on the line -- if you're a dunderhead, I don't want colleagues thinking that I actually think you're brilliant. Come to think of it, you're right -- perhaps someone else ought write that letter for you. Clearly, I did not grasp your genius, which you've been hiding under an empty beer box.

Please Don't Vent If You're Just Going to Blow My Hat Off.

You know, a bit of venting about student aptitude and commitment never hurt anyone, but when “Gentleman’s B” voices his opinion that “most of these idiots will be passed along by other, lazier professors” I just have to make the call.

That’s bullshit. You don’t know me, you don’t know my classroom, and you don’t know for certain that being a misanthropist jackass with a pasted-on hard-ass attitude means you’ve got more drive than I do.

I don’t want some John Houseman “Paper Chase” wannabe saying I’m lazy just because I’m going to make “snowflake” redo the assignment five times until she gets it right, giving her copious comments each time. The blatant failure to bend a bit to accommodate the students who end up in your class is purely lazy and self-serving, and I get an earful of it every day of the week. “Why are they so stupid?” “Why don’t they understand my instructions?” Oh, and my favorite—submitted to me in writing: “Why don’t they write in compleat sentences, don’t they know what grammer is?”

Yes, I really did receive that one from a colleague. I say get over yourself. There are a lot of instructors out there who are quite successful in reaching the problem children in their classes and getting them to master the material. Calling them “lazy” for succeeding where you didn’t is just nonsense.

If They All Expect the "Gentleman's B," Couldn't They At Least Dress Better?

Last semester, after I added a writing component to a few of my classes, my students were shocked—ABSOLUTELY SHOCKED!—that I was more than willing to give them a zero if the crap they handed in didn't fulfill the clearly articulated requirements on the assignment sheet. It's as if the directions were just general suggestions instead of what they would be graded on.

As an example, one student, upon receiving her zero, actually told me I wasn't allowed to give a zero. I informed said snowflake that I could award a zero…and then promptly proved to her why she deserved it. Right there, after class, I quizzed her on the material to be assessed on the assignment. She had NO CLUE what I was talking about. You see, little snowflake arrived 10 minutes late for the class this material was taught in, decided she didn't need to pay attention, and web-surfed for the remainder of the lecture.

This entire class was filled with students who felt entitled to receive grades they did not earn. They habitually ignored instructions (which were given in both orally and in writing just in case something was unclear), decided that proofreading just wasn't necessary in this class required for their major, and thought that my expectations that they come to class, pay attention, and not web surf were just too high.

They all felt that just handing in something —anything—would at least get them what used to be called a Gentleman's C (which of course is now a Gentleman's B at most schools). Excuse me for actually grading them on their ability to perform to measurable criteria, which of course they all claim I didn't do; to admit that would be for them to admit they didn't do the work. I was unimpressed with most of them, and the fact that most of these idiots will just be passed along by other, lazier professors disgusts me.

The Four Main Complaints. (Low Self-Esteem Day At The Compound, Plus We're Just 20 Minutes Past a Big Egg & Cheese Burrito.)

Many of you were intrigued by the nutjob post we put up late last week. Some folks wanted to hear more. Complaints have always come in. We don't encourage them; we actually didn't expect them. That's hopelessly naive, we're sure, but this is just a free blog that we run as a bit of a lark, and it always amazes us when people are unhappy with it. It makes us think of the old adage about TV - turn the channel, people; there's other shit to watch.

Anyway, we've collected samples of the most common recent complaints. To those who've written the text below - or something just like it - we're doing our best here. If the blog isn't what you want it to be, there are two things you could do: 1) Send us better stuff. We're dying for funny, interesting, and lively material. Or, 2) Check out some other academic sites. You might find a place that covers academic issues more to your liking.

• What is this, Adjunct Nation or something? I'm sick of hearing an adjunct's view of the academy. I know they're working hard, driving the miles, yada yada yada. It seems sometimes that these people teaching 6-12 classes a term - not to mention all their driving around - have far more time on their hands than you'd imagine. Their experience teaching certainly has validity, but this site should focus on the work of traditional faculty.


• Whoever is letting all the student posts get on the site, STOP. Students have their own place to bitch. This is ours. GO AWAY, Gary Greek and Susie Sorority. Rate My Professor allows them a place to be pissy and precious. RYS is a place where we get to come and tell our side of it. I can go back to any week and find posts by students, some that even ridicule us as a group. What can you be thinking to publish that shit?


• Don't you proofread the posts that come in? I think it's ridiculous that you post stories with typos, comma splices, and pronoun-antecedent problems. If this is the work of professors, it's an embarrassment. If we are to protect the profession, the work that appears on this page needs to be the highest quality. I can understand that you might post something with errors when you're trying to show someone up, but there are minor grammatical problems in many of the posts. It's unconscionable that you allow this to happen. It wouldn't happen in an academic journal, and it shouldn't happen here.


• The more and more rare smackdowns are the only thing worth reading on this site. It seems as if RYS has cleaned up its act to be more "professional," and it's made the site more dull than a normal faculty meeting. Whatever happened to the venting and the moaning, and the smacking down of those awful students?

A Plagiarism Policy as An Object Lesson in Customer Service.

My university's policy on plagiarism is nothing short of ridiculous. Not only does accusing a student of plagiarism cost the instructor vast amounts of time, energy, and red-tape, but we are asked never, ever to utter the word “plagiarism” to the student until we have discussed the instance of alleged improper borrowing with a department higher-up.

I have attended one such meeting (my first and last). I brought with me the student’s paper and the online article from which vast paragraphs were copied verbatim. It was a slam-dunk case. I expected to be told something like, “Well, when it’s this obvious, you don’t even have to come see us. Just nail the sucker.” Instead, I was met with questions about my integrity as a teacher: “How thoroughly have you covered the rules about plagiarism?” “How much of your class is devoted to in-depth discussion of citation?” “Did you offer the student the appropriate help with these difficult, taxing citations?” “Have you asked the student if he perhaps simply forgot to cite properly?” In short, “How are you to blame for this?” They then recommended that I return the assignment with a firm but kind comment about the need to revise the paper for a grade, and that I sit down with the student to work out every single detail of how to cite the sources and where the paper “borrowed” improperly.

So I had this conversation with the plagiarizing asshole, whom I now hated even more and who clearly knew that he was getting away with murder. He walked away with a grade he didn’t deserve and the idea that he, as a coddled and over-privileged student “paying for his education,” had all the power in the student-teacher relationship.

I guess he was right. In the interest of having happy “customers,” the department strips students of their integrity, and instructors of their authority. I now enact my own plagiarism (yes, I use the word) code. But I know that if a student ever complains, no one upstairs is going to back me.

The Complex Nature of Two-Faced Sammy.

Sullen Sammy, my least favorite student, sent me a short and almost unintelligible email requesting a meeting after the midterm grades. I didn't reply, but did see him in class and told him that he could see me right after class. He acknowledged me, like he always does, with a bored sort of nod.

Sammy is the dullest student I've had in 8 years of teaching. He looks on the verge of death or heavy sleep at all times. His voice is never more than a whisper, and the slightest motion he makes looks so pained and lugubrious, that I often think he might be suffering from some malaise.

An hour after class he still hadn't shown up. (My office is 40 feet away from the classroom. I've measured.)

It was the end of the day and so I headed to my car to go home. Sullen Sammy came charging (still slow by ordinary standards, but an absolute gallop for him), and said, "I thought you were going to be in your office."

"Yes," I said. "I was there for an hour and fifteen minutes after class. Those are part of my normal office hours."

Sullen Sammy says, "Uh, well I'm here now. I really need to talk to you."

"Okay," I said. "What about on this bench?" We were in the middle of my college's lower quad, a gorgeous late Fall day, and it was quiet.

"Nah, I want to talk in your office."

"Okay," I said. "Let's go."

We start walking back until Sullen Sammy is now suddenly Sunny Sammy. "Yo, you go ahead. That's one of my bro's over there." And off he scampers, now at absolute breakneck speed, toward another student.

I watch while he greets the "bro" and starts an animated conversation. Sammy is unrecognizable in this new guise. He's laughing. His voice is full and loud. They are actually jostling each other, and their pleasure is palpable.

I get to my office, sit down in my chair and wait. After 15 minutes I decide I've had enough. As I'm getting to the door, Sullen Sammy arrives again, in his normal manner, with his normal dark cloud around him. I put the lights back on in my office and then go behind my desk, motioning him to one of the chairs.

I say, "Okay, Sammy, what is it you wanted to talk about? Were you wondering about the midterm grades? I'm happy to go over them and I could set you up with one of the department's undergrad tutors."

Before Sammy can force himself to answer, his phone goes off. He looks down at the screen and says, "Oh, man, this is one of my bro's. I have to take this." And then he does.

Again, Sunny Sammy reappears and the one-sided conversation is about a party later that week. It's all "Oh, man!" and "You're KIDDING!" I watch the clock and 5 minutes pass. Sammy is worked up and laughing and his bro's voice is coming through the phone loud enough to hear. The disembodied voice says, "Man, I love just shooting the breeze with you, brother."

And that's when I stood up. I motioned to get Sammy's attention, pointed him to the door, and watched a cloud of misery fall on his face.

"But, what about my grades?" he said.

"Some other time, Sammy. Some other time when you've got the time."

As I left the building, I could hear Sammy's voice from the hallway, ringing out. "Oh, bro. This party is going to be off the chain!"

What The Hell Does "D" Stand For Anymore? When We Were Kids, It Was "Dumshit." (We Weren't Good Spellers Either.)

The "Unsent Letter for a FERPA Father" post raises a side argument. The author notes the student earned a D and then says "no worky, no passy." This raises a VERY important point that gets lost in the grade inflation debate: Since when is a D not a passing grade???

At every school I've attended or taught [allowing for variation in rhetoric], the general schema was:

A - Excellent
B - Above Average
C - Average
D - Passing
F - Failure

Yet, so many of us have to skew our grades up because too many Ds & Fs make us look like bad instructors [when, let's face it, with students like the FERPA Father's kid populating the classroom, how can we keep passing them when they don't even show up or do the work assigned?].

I, personally, am well-known for being a hard grader, yet the median grade in my courses always tends to be C+. My students all pitch hissy-fits because it seems they feel entitled to be gifted with Bs just for gracing me with their presence every 2 out of 3 classes. It seems the only people I fail are the plagiarists...and even then it's only the plagiarists who do it on the final paper [usually they've done it during the entire semester, gotten zeros on individual assignments, and NEVER learned their lesson].

Personally, I think we all need to be failing more students when they don't come to class, do the actual assignments (instead of some picaresque facsimile), or get offensively belligerent. But that simply doesn't happen anymore. If a D is still called "passing," why do most schools require a 1.7 GPA [a C-] and stipulate that students earn a C or better in certain required courses (or else it must be retaken)?

Something's wrong here because it seems more than obvious a D is no longer a passing grade (and instead appears to be the new F). I suggest the following seems to be the attitude:

A - Awesome
B - But it's not an A!
C- Competent
D - Didn't earn a C, dude
F- Failed, Flunked, Fired, Fucked [which of course we can't say to the precious cherubs]

When Tragedy Hits An Instructor. Who's Not Meeting Deadlines Now?

Okay--when our students experience tragedy, we're wise to keep a grain of salt handy, or we refer them to their advisors, or we advise them that this might not be the best time in their lives to take our course or even be in college.

So what do we do when *we* experience tragedy? I'm speaking from a bit of personal experience--last week, a member of my very immediate family, already terminally ill, began to die, and I was impelled by duty to rush across the country to "help out." No, there was no one else. Yes, I had to be there as soon as possible. I arranged coverage, cancelled class when unavoidable and appropriate, moved deadlines accordingly.

But this isn't the kind of job where you can take your sick days or family leave days or whatever and know that someone else will pick up the work. I'm an adjunct, so I'm constantly aware that if I seem too inconvenient or resource-intensive, I might not be rehired in coming semesters.

Should I decide that this isn't the best time for me to be, uh, working? And if I take the time I need, rearranging the class to suit my altered and travel-crippled schedule, how can I tell students that deadlines are deadlines, and you have to learn to be responsible, and maybe you should just drop this semester, when I know that I couldn't, or wouldn't, but at any rate just plain DIDN'T, submit my humble resignation upon learning that I'd have to spend long weekends out of state for the next month or so?

What Does a Student Do When A Professor Loses Interest?

She was an extraordinary instructor. And although I'm tempted to say she still is, I can't.

At my university, they call them Academic Associates - hired to teach. And last semester she was the best of them all: the recipient of a teaching award, an innovator that coupled technology and education, a representative at numerous conferences. She was also the one, that stayed to answer student questions and concerns; the one that came early to lecture rain or shine with a smile across her face. Maybe it was all a little too much, like a marathon runner that pushed himself too hard.

This semester, there is something missing about her. Her voice, has lost it usual vigor. Of course, it's really not about that, it's her words; they seem to have withered, and with that their meaning has slipped away. She looks so exhausted, perhaps even beaten; like she has no fight left (this is only her fifth year teaching). She use to go over time every lecture, just so everything was covered thoroughly; students would object, but she would refuse to give in. Nowadays, she has let this go, stopping in mid-sentence five minutes before class ends, just in case students want to leave. She seems so let down, but she no longer debates the matter, as if she has given up.

What an I supposed to say? I guess others must have noticed too, given the decline in attendance with each coming week. Is this normal in academia? Why haven't any of her colleagues or the Dean noticed? Or did they just pretend not to see? I've thought about writing a card or something, but as a student, will this be an intrusion of privacy? Are there others in her situation?

Calling Out the Professor on the Hubby Sub.

I agree with Keep Your Mouth Shut On the 2-For-1 that it would probably go badly for the student if he told his professor what an asshole her husband was in class.

But I don't agree with the reasons. The main issue here, from a professional and academic point of view, is not that he's her husband; it's that he's the person she chose to step in and teach her class during her absence. If he acted unprofessionally and/or like an asshole - and it seems, from details we were given, that he did - then it's well within the student's right to tell her that, whether he's her husband or not.

The student in question was worried about his professor's home life, and that is, indeed, none of his business. But the husband's behavior in class IS the student's business, particularly if it was below the standards required of a professional educator. While the student should not make general comments about the professor's private life, it would be completely proper to point out to the professor that the replacement teacher she chose to teach the class was not up to standard.

I'm sure the student wouldn't win any popularity contests with the professor for doing this, but it's wrong to discourage the student by arguing that the husband might be "husband of the year" when he's not in the classroom. And the fact that he might have been "having a bad day" or "pissed off about having to fill-in for your class" is no excuse for unprofessional classroom behavior.

Someone Has an Unsent Letter For A FERPA Father.

Recently, I received my first email from a parent who was shocked, absolutely shocked, that his son brought home a D at midterm. Protocol says I get to tell the parent to shove it, because of Snowflake Privacy and all that legal jazz. This parent, however, had attached the signed FERPA form to his email, pretty much obligating me to respond. I sent a very detailed email thanking him for giving a crap, explanations about policy, absences, details on his son's missed work, suggestions for the future, deadlines to drop classes, avenues of help I personally offered--pretty much all the "cover your ass" stuff. What I really wish I could've sent was this:


Dear Dad,

I noticed you said you'd talked to the Advisor. Did you bother talking to your son, or did you just shove the FERPA paper under his nose and demand he sign in? Since you went all "legal" on me, here's the bad news. I'm sure he could've told you why he got a D. He didn't turn in the damned portfolio. No worky, no passy. It's just that simple. He didn't even bother coming to class for half of that work. You probably could've saved yourself the embarrassment of hearing what a slacker your boy is by simply asking him directly; he knows he's in the wrong, because the last two times he has made it to class, he's slunk out of the room the second I took my eye off of him.

I stay after class with students and respond to their emails usually within 3 or 4 hours even though I have a full 48 hours to take my sweet time. Your boy gets the advantage of personal one on one conferences with me at least four times in the semester. None of his other classes offer him that. I also have flexible office hours, in case the ones I keep don't meet his special needs. By only requiring him to put his signature down and letting "Daddy" take care of the rest, I see now why your son is a massive Slacker. You've taught him not to figure out how to use the tools at his disposal, but rather to take advantage of an overly and unduly prolonged adolescence,chalking up his failures to a difficult "transition" period.

Oh, and by the way, I've cc'd this to the Coordinator, just in case you feel like making some bullshit excuses about why your little snowflake deserves tomake up five weeks worth of work. Here's a piece of advice. You can't sign his FERPA form all of his life. But you certainly got what you paid for. Here's your sign. And it's shaped like a D.

In these cases, I love jumping behind the Ivory Tower Wall.

Can We Help Students in Crisis Without Crossing the Line?

At my school, and probably at yours too, they give us a little booklet about dealing with student crisis...who knew we would have to be therapists too!? And seriously, a BOOKLET? All it does is tell you to send the student to the counseling center, which is basically a measure to insure against lawsuits. The fact is, for some of these students, their professor is the only person they can talk to.

Seven years ago, I had a student (X) in my class who was a recovered drug addict. I teach art, so often, students draw on their own life experiences to make the work. I also have lots of one-on-one time with my students, because studio courses tend to be small. X was sober and was making art about addiction and recovery, very personal stuff. X was such a good student that I recommended him to several other faculty for individual study. Well, lo and behold, after two semesters, X has a relapse and reenters the world of drug culture full force. X would come to school on roller-blades with purple hair smelling like an open sewer, eyes dilated, high as a kite one day, tweaking the next. X was doing it ALL. The other professors asked why I had sent them this hot mess of a student, and I had some explaining to do. X made an outright declaration that his work was going to be about drugs, and that being high facilitated his creative energy, and made the work better. The truth of the matter was X's work was HORRIBLE. It was as sloppy and uninteresting as X had become, and I feared that X would soon end up dead.

I had a choice to make, and the semester was coming to a close. Should I just give X his failing grade and be done with it? Should I talk to X? Should I talk only about the art, or should I address the drug issue as well? Mind you, I was PISSED OFF. X has been so promising, one of my favorites. So on the day of our final critique, I took him aside. I explained that the work he was doing was awful, and that frankly, the only people who would be interested in looking at it would be the other crackheads at the crash pad, and that he had better adjust to that idea, because that was the only place where he would be able to exhibit this crap. I then told him that nobody in the professional art world will work with an unreliable drug addict, that he would be blackballed, and that he would probably die alone, young, and unrecognized. I also told him how sad I thought this was, and how talented I thought he had been. I finished by telling him that he had failed my class, and that I sincerely hoped he would get the help he needed, and encouraged him to seek out his AA sponsor, and gave him all of our university counseling service handouts. He never said a word. He sat there, took it all in (probably high), said "OK," and walked out. I didn't hear from him again for an entire semester, he was gone.

I felt awful. Had I crossed the line? I had told a student he was going to DIE!!!! What was I thinking? Was I going to be fired? I became convinced that my approach, while honest, had crossed the line. I had let my disappointment in him eclipse my professional decorum. After a semester goes by, I get an email from X. He tells me that failing my course had resulted in his being kicked out of school (it was the straw that broke the GPA's back). He also tells me that it had served as the wake up call he needed, and that he was emailing me from a halfway house, and apologized for everything. He thanked me for being one of the only professors who had been honest with him. Despite the drug haze he was in, he respected me and my words had gotten through. Via yearly updates, I learned that he graduated from rehab, relocated, went back to school, and three years later, graduated with a BA. I have not heard from him in a while, but I like to hope that he is still sober and still making good work. Did I cross the line? I think I did, but in this instance, I am glad that I stuck my neck out. I have been teaching for a decade, and X is the only student that has compelled me to "cross the line." I hope I am never faced with a life and death situation like this again. As educators we are simply not prepared or qualified to deal with this kind of thing. Regardless, I still keep my counseling booklet at my right elbow.

A Little Saturday Smackdown.

To Your Highness, Great King of Entitlement:

I have decided to respond to each line of the semi-literate and offensive email you sent to your very capable teaching assistant. My comments will demonstrate that I support her actions and decisions in every way.

But before I convey my response, may I remind you of something you already know: Rather generously, ALL students in this class have been given the opportunity to revise their essays so that THIS TIME, they might use proper citation form. Those of you who take advantage of this opportunity will lose only 10 points (out of 100), instead of receiving the Fs you actually earned on your first attempts at writing an academic essay. Given this coddling, you dare to whine?

“I got the email about citations and I totally disagree with the way that this is being handeled.”

Your “disagreement” is your prerogative, but means absolutely nothing to me. In addition, your spelling is atrocious.

“Its not anything against your teaching, but I feel that if so many students messed this up it cannot be a issue of not doing the assignment correctly, but rather a lack of communication and teaching.”

I do not care what you “feel.” Your teaching assistant explained citation rules in your discussion section, displayed these rules on an overhead projector, and posted citation guidelines on the website for this course. She carefully observed what I call the “Three Time Rule For Undergraduates.” I will clarify this rule for you: Tell undergraduates EVERYTHING three times, and hope beyond hope that one of these iterations will be retained. Her meticulous adherence to this rule is, to me, sufficient evidence of her ability to communicate, and her ability to teach. I daresay that the fact that so many students “messed this up” is, rather, evidence of the inability of most of your peers to follow simple, clear, thrice-repeated directions.

“We are all smart students here at [Middling University] if we weren't we wouldn't be going here.”

If you were actually smart, you wouldn’t make such patently false assertions. If you were smart, you’d know where commas belong. If you were smart, you’d surely be going to a much better school. I suggest you take a look at the admissions office’s published statistics regarding admitted students. Your SATs and ACTs are average. Your GPAs are average. The only thing remarkably above-average about you as a group are the incomes of your families. The degree to which you all have swallowed unquestioningly the administration’s compensatory puffery never ceases to bewilder me.

“I feel that not just myself, but everyone should not be punished for a horrible effort at communicating the assignment.”

While I am able to decipher the meaning behind this wretched syntax, again, I still do not care what you “feel.” No one was “punished.” I did not take a cat-o-nine-tails to any of you, despite the occasional temptation to do so. As a matter of fact, you were all offered the opportunity to rewrite and resubmit your essays. And despite your overweening sense of entitlement, everyone in this class shall receive the grade he or she EARNS. This is how it works, at least in my classes.

“I hope you read this and talk to whoever you have to try and help your students out. I am not paying $30,000 dollars a year to be cheated out of a grade.”

Your teaching assistant did “talk to whoever.” I am “whoever.” And while I seriously doubt you are personally paying ANYTHING to attend this school, I am sure your parents are. (By the way, if they’re paying full freight, they’re getting rooked.) And if you dare ask them to contact me in order to amplify your pathetic complaint, I will refer them directly to the Dean, as rules of student privacy require. As to your accusation that we are somehow “cheat[ing you] out of a grade,” your final sentence again betrays unbelievable arrogance, and an astonishingly puerile level of self-involvement. Let me put this as clearly as I can:

Your parents’ money does not entitle you to ANYTHING in the way of grades.

Your teaching assistant and I are not paid to give you grades, nor can we “cheat" you "out of” a grade. You earn your own grades, you arrogant little twerp.

You have been given the undeserved gift of an opportunity to rewrite, and to provide COMPLETE, CORRECT, and CONSISTENT citations, and thus to improve said grade.
Finally, we suggest you temper your infantile petulance and show some gratitude to your professor and to your underpaid and overworked teaching assistant, particularly since in our shared inclination toward kindness and mercy, we are refraining from squashing you like a bug.

Most sincerely,
Professor "Whoever"

Keep Your Mouth Shut On the 2-For-1.

We didn't have a lot of mail about yesterday's "My Professor's Husband is An Asshole," but all of it went like this:

Under NO circumstances should you tell her what you think of her husband! This can only go badly. Have you ever said something less than flattering to a friend about his/her significant other? How did that go? Not too well, right? I imagine it would be no different if you were to bring up such an issue with your Professor. In fact, it would probably be worse, because like you said, you are not her "buddy."

That being the case, while I'm sure she's thrilled to hear all about what you have to say about class and college in general, that is likely to be the full extent of her interest in your opinion. I get that you respect her as a teacher and like her as a person, and it is that respect that should compel you to keep your mouth shut. I can see how you could feel that it may be your place to speak up here - she did bring her husband into the classroom and identify him as such, after all, so in a way he's kind of fair game. But really, he's not, because the only thing you know about the guy is the hour or so that you spent with him on one particular day. He could be the husband of the year for all you know. Maybe he was having a bad day, maybe he was pissed off about having to fill-in for your class, maybe he was worried about something, or maybe he just is an asshole...but it's up to your Prof. to decide and deal with those things, not you.

If her husband is as much of an asshole at home as he seemed to be in the classroom, then rest assured that she has friends and family who have pointed it out to her - she doesn't need to hear it from a student.

Good Intentions and Student Tragedy.

A former colleague was approached in 1998 by a teary-eyed student in his seminar. The student had missed a couple of weeks of work, and he explained that he had been in a car accident with his twin brother. The brother had died in the accident. He pleaded with my colleague to allow him back in the seminar. My colleague let him return to class and helped him make up the work he had missed. The student did well in the class.

The following year the student asked my colleague for a letter of recommendation for medical school. My colleague agreed and in his letter he devoted a long paragraph to how this student had dealt with this horrible tragedy. Then my colleague got a note from the dean. During an admissions interview an interviewer had asked the student to say a few words about his brother. "Oh, he's doing great" the student exclaimed."He's starting at Goldman-Sachs in September." Busted.

The university decided to expel the student a month shy of graduation, and of course medical school was out of the question. The parents sued the university and my colleague had to give a deposition because he was named in the suit. The next day the student stepped in front of a passing Amtrak train. The suit was dismissed, but it very easily could have ruined my colleague's entire career. It certainly contributed to ending the kid's life.

So now whenever a student approaches me with a tragedy my stock response is: "I am very sorry to hear that. I am not a mental health professional so I am not equipped to help you. Here is a list of mental health resources available to students through the health center. Please have someone from the health center contact me so that we can make arrangements to help you finish your work."

I'm not being cynical, just rational. The moral of the story is that the best of intentions can lead to unintended consequences that really are tragic. I don't assume that the kid is lying. I just acknowledge that I am not trained to deal with the situation.

For the more cynically inclined, another colleague of mine always pulls the student's home address from the registrar and sends a condolence card to the family. Only once has she received a thank you note. In every other instance she has received either an apology or an angry phone call from the putatively dead parent. But the student always drops the class immediately, which solves the real problem.

---

More info on this story.

Compound Carl Says Goodbye.

I've toiled in the RYS compound for more than a year, and today is my last day.

When I started, I admit that I wanted to be a part of any enterprise that tweaked the boorish and entitled students I found in front of me each day.

But an odd thing happened. I found that I was not alone, not crazy, not the only professor out there struggling with my career and its challenges. Those of you who read the page see a tiny percentage of the mail that comes in. When I read scores of emails each night, each story reinforces that there is a community of caring profs that wants to understand this modern student.

I read about people on the verge of quitting the only career they ever wanted - just like me at one point. Then I read notes from those same people a week later that say, "I'm so grateful you posted my story. It made me feel so much better to say what I couldn't say to my colleagues or my chair."

The dirty secret that I thought was my own is shared by countless professors all over the world. We love our jobs / we hate our jobs. Great students make the job the greatest treasure. Careless students - who turn their back on everything we love and believe in - make us crazy.

I no longer think about quitting. I think about doing the job better. I know what's in the hearts of my colleagues now - even if they won't admit it - and I'm no longer afraid to say to them, "Man, these students are killing me. What can we do to reach them?"

RYS has done that and more for me.

To the thousands of writers who have shared their stories with me, thank you for the wisdom and humor. (Thanks, too, for the smackdown.) I will miss seeing the big picture, but trust that the page will continue to bring the truth down like a hammer each day.

To my colleagues, in whose hands the page remains, thanks for everything. I left the hookah behind the tree where the hammock used to be.

What Does a Student Do When the Professor Situation is Two For One, And the Two Is an Asshole?

It seemed that the fates were smiling on me this semester. With the exception of the girl in my Spanish class who boasted on day one that she was just fired from Hooters, my classmates are all pretty respectful and clever. My professors this semester are really great. My favorite is the professor who teaches my astronomy class. She is intelligent, kind, clear-cut in her expectations of us, and gives very engaging lectures. This last week she told us that she had a conference to attend, but her husband was going to be teaching us that day…

I like strict teachers. I'm not like the kids on The Site That Will Not Be Named who complain about a professor or a class because it's too hard (oh boo!) or because they assign too much homework. If I'm sitting in a class where a teacher handles me with kid gloves and puts foiled star stickers on my homework, I don't know what I'm paying for.

The problem is my professor's husband/our substitute teacher appears to hate the world. He punctuated every sentence with a disappointed sigh, he went off on a student for being five minutes late (after said student apologized), shook his head after every query or response, told a few people that he lost respect for them for no apparent reason and he stared at everything like he wanted to kill it. He made people so uncomfortable that several students left class in the middle of the lecture & several others skipped out during the break. His behavior was so erratic that I started worrying about my professor's home life. He was so scary that I decided to write this in hopes of getting advice.

How do you tell a professor - without embarrassing her or making her angry - that her husband is an ass and if she announces another class taught by the mister, nobody is likely to show up? I'm a bit old fashioned for my age when it comes to student-professor relationships: I don't try to be buddies with them, I thank them after receiving any comment, handout, or answer to a question. I think that there is a level of respect that all teachers should be treated with, (even the seemingly evil ones) so this situation is really difficult for me to navigate. I don't want to feign sickness next time my professor has something else she needs to do, and I don't want to approach the topic with no tact.

Queries, Quarrels, and Several Nutjobs.

• Why don't you pick one template and leave it as it is? It seems to work for CNN and the Drudge Report.


• Do you know how much Ratemyprofessor moderators get paid?


• If I'm a student who wants to be a professor, would one of you help me get my graduate school application together?


• Why don't you quit teaching if you hate students so much?


• Do you want to have longer, stronger erections?


• Why do you stand behind anonymity if you're so proud of being mean to students?


• I sent you several post last night, how come you haven't pust them online yet? If you don't, I'm going to post them on the Chronicle Froums page where people really talk abot education.


• Can you repost some funny ratings from before?


• RBC Financial Group always looks forward for the high security of our clients. Some customers have been receiving an email claiming to be from RBC Financial Group advising them to follow a link to what appears to be an RBC Financial Group website, where they are prompted to entert heir personal Online Banking details. RBC Financial Group is in no way involved with this email and the web site does not belong to us. Have you received one of these emails?


• Who does those pictures for you on the blog? Most of them are so fuzzy you can't even make them out. You should get Photoshop or something, or get one of your students to help you.


• Can you tell me if the writer of "XXXXXXXXXXXXX" is a professor at XXXXXXX State? I think it's one of my professors, and I think he's writing about me.


• Do you guys think you're funny?


• My son is going to college at XXXXXXXX University next year, and I'm horrified by the kinds of things professors think of students. Could you send me a list of things my son should avoid doing next year?


• How much do you pay for articles? I've written a scathingly funny piece about how my students always ask idiotic questions and I can't decide if I should send it to you or to InsideHigherEd.com.

One Faculty Member Suggests A New Kind of Rush Week, Where We Rush The Dipshits Out Into the Parking Lot.

I had a towering genius last fall who slouched in the front row, hung over, unwashed, and unshaven, all semester. Early on, during a class discussion, a female student asked him a question. He did not answer. I indicated that he should respond to her direct question. He told me, "Tell her (blah blah blah)."

"Why don't you tell her yourself?!" I asked incredulously.

"I'm not allowed to talk to females."

"Why not?!"

"It's rush week."

I informed him that I was, indeed, a female.

"You're a teacher. You don't count."

And that pretty well sums up where we find ourselves now, doesn't it? I propose a new kind of rush week. Let's paddle every dipshit who can't write a coherent, grammatically-correct paragraph of substance in five minutes or less. At the end of the week, let's blackball every plagiarizing, cheating, whining, consumerist, self-righteous adultolescent, kick 'em out, and work with however many (or few) actual students are left.

Now THAT'S a brotherhood/sisterhood I'd be proud to claim. Oh snap! Friends for life!

POW! Our Post of the Week. Where We Recommend the 'Teechur' Get an Immediate 24 Hours of Bed Rest.

Notice how the manufacturers of inferior products will screw around with the spelling of a legitimate product to produce a sort of brand name or product cognate? (Lookee here, Flo. These here burgers are 100 percent pure Blak Agnes beaff! Yummy!) Well, henceforth I shall refer to my “studn’ts®,” as in the contraction of “student—NOT!”

Dear studn’ts®:

Today’s lesson is How Not to Look Like an Imbecile: If You Can’t Be Smart, At Least Look the Part!

First, write everything in paragraphs. I don’t give a shit what it is; just know that one solid page of print makes you look like an imbecile. And if you can’t figure out what constitutes a paragraph, just indent every third or fourth sentence for God’s sake.

Take out a friggin’ piece of paper and a pen during class and pretend to take notes. Or, when text is being discussed, open your book. I no longer even care if it’s the right page—or even the right book! Just do something less imbecilic than sitting there with your arms crossed and listening to your drool splash on the desk.

Plagiarize! Please plagiarize. Your own writing makes you look like an imbecile, so give me something to read. Plagiarize something good. Don’t plagiarize from my handouts, my textbooks, or National Geographic articles that take place in Papua New Guinea and are written in the first person. Doing so, as has been done, makes you look like an imbecile.

Lie, damn it, lie. When I ask you why the gender of the main character in your short story changed gender from male to female in the middle of page two, don’t say, “He did?” Doing so makes you look like an imbecile. Make up some bullshit.

So, studn’ts®, while you may never acquire anything akin to knowledge, or even nollidge®, these lessons may start you on a lifetime of, for Christ’s sake, not looking like such an imbecile.

Sincerely, Your Teechur®

Can the 'Law of Thirds' Help Us Get Through Another Semester?

My dad always told me that any group of people divides naturally into thirds. The top third will be excellent and will really care about what’s going on; the bottom third will be incompetent and apathetic; the middle third will be, well, in the middle.

I can’t say if Dad’s rule of thirds has been empirically verified or if it is universal or even if he was the first one to think of it, but it is a great help to me when I am feeling discouraged in my teaching. I think about it when I am discouraged by how many bad students there are, by the students who are never prepared, by those who don’t care how unprepared they are, by those who, by all measures, should be somewhere else. Because no matter how many of those there are there are always a minority of good students and those are the ones I focus on. The first-year student who was so impressed with the Alice Munro story we read that he came to my office to ask, with delightful innocence, whether she had written anything else. I think of the senior student who is tirelessly searching for material for her thesis on 19th century detective fiction. I think of the girl who smiles and nods through the whole class because she gets it and wants to get it and loves getting it.

These are the students of the top third and they are the ones I care about. Most of the middle third will muddle through; that’s what middlers do.

The bottom third were never really in it, and frankly, it doesn’t bother me when they fail. I don’t feel guilty, and I’m not ashamed.

My dad said it was okay.

Uh, Please Get Us Off Any Site That Would Allow People To 'Superpoke' Us. A Facebook Miscellany.

We had a big mail night concerning Facebok. Our rough estimate is that about 75% of the folks who wrote in are on Facebook, and generally okay with it. Here's some flava:

• You had a post from a real nutjob last year that I was reminded of when you posted the note about Facebook. I bet that "ice cream guy" is a big Facebook user. And that's all you need to know about that.
  
• As for the professor in question, it seems like much of the problem isn't specific to Facebook, but more an expression of a general desire to be liked by or identify with his students. If you're proud of your extensive friends list of undergraduates and post pictures of yourself shirtless and wasted where the people you teach can see you, that seems like something much deeper and sadder than the mere use of a social networking site.
  
• Yes, I'm on Facebook; I joined up several years ago in grad school, but for some reason, my students didn't realize (or care?) until this semester. Now I'm linked on Facebook to several current and former students. My profile features very few pictures (mostly of my dogs), lists of my favorite (nerdy) books, and connects to my friends from grad and undergrad years--rather boring, I suspect. My policy on current students is this: if they find me, they can "friend" me--but I won't "friend" a student until after grades are in. This keeps a fair and respectful distance, I think. It seems to be working so far--I don't have any weird wall posts calling me "proffy," that's for sure.
  
• Stop making a jackass of yourself on Facebook. There are many, many privacy settings and controls, including "limited profile." Use these tools. Yes, there is a lot of fun to be had with your grown-up friends on Facebook in the way of superpoke, pillow fights, naughty gifts, etc. But keep in mind this is part of your professional identity.


• I'm always looking for ways to engage students "where they live," which is increasingly online, and (as a casual glance at laptop screens in the library reveals) increasingly on Facebook. I've transformed my course web pages into blogs where the students can comment -- surprisingly, the positives have hugely outweighed the obvious negatives; in one course, a couple of students even started up their own associated course blogs. I'm also experimenting with Wiki, with mixed results so far. As for Facebook, I suspect the students in an average class of whatever size would know 8-10 of their fellow students in the class. To address this, one of my ideas for next semester is to create a Facebook "group" for my class, which would preserve the air of formality while letting the students connect to each other a little better.


• The creeped-out poster has good reason, I think, to be concerned about the Facebook-obsessed colleague. Think of Facebook like any place in the real world: would this colleague spend time with his students the way he portrays himself on Facebook--boozy and shirtless, wishing he were back in college? I suspect not, and THAT is the line that shouldn't be crossed. It's little to do with the website itself--Facebook shouldn't be off-limits for faculty. Whether we're talking about email, the cafeteria, a local bar, or a social-networking site: if we know our students frequent it, we know that there are boundaries, and the boundaries should be approached carefully and professionally. (Duh.)

Someone Offers To Draw A Line For The Facebook Dilemma.

I have a Facebook page. I don't think that Facebook in itself is a line the faculty shouldn't cross. Thanks to college and graduate school, most of my friends are scattered around the country, and we use Facebook to keep in touch. I post very little personal information (as seems more common among people my age who are older than our students but younger than our colleagues) and what I do post is limited to favorite books, music, etc. that might be edifying for students to look up, should they stumble upon my profile. That said, I think it IS inappropriate for professors (or other professionals) to post pictures of their drunken parties, both because it may undermine one's authority in the classroom and because it doesn't model an appropriate, professional use of social networking tools. If we're going to tell students not to post pictures or information they wouldn't want future employers (or their teachers) to see, then those of us using Facebook should set the bar high.

I think the professor described in the post is crossing a line. As in real life, I would never be "friends" with my students on Facebook -- perhaps with alum, but not with students. I think that kind of relationship, even if the professor can keep it straight, is potentially confusing to students. They may end up not sure how to interact with the professor in class, and certainly future students -- who have heard how "cool" the professor is on Facebook -- may be confused if the classroom version doesn't add up to what's online.

To choose an image of oneself that seems clearly aimed at making students think you're "hip" and "fun" -- anything involving alcohol or parties, any mention of hot dates, in short, anything you used to brag about when YOU were in college, and to so clearly put that image out to your students by being their "friend"... we get it. You want your students to think you're cool. You're hoping Facebook will give you some street cred. But your students are not your friends. After this semester, when the grades are in and you gave them the D they earned (or didn't, because they were your "friend" on Facebook), that student will probably not be your "friend" anymore. Heck, they might even dissolve your Facebook friendship. And they would be right to, because most of them -- whether they know it or not -- are just using you, allowing the boundaries to get blurred so that you DO feel badly about failing them or generally being a hard ass.

The other, more pedagogical, problem with heavy use of Facebook between students and faculty, is that it can allow professors to be far too available to students. I've heard of people using Facebook as an extension of IM, so that students can quickly ask questions and get a response. But honestly, I don't WANT my students to post questions about MLA citation on my wall two hours before the paper is due -- not because it crosses a boundary, but because I want them to be learning to find the answer on their own. I don't want my students to know that I'm updating my profile right this very second and therefore could be poked so they can ask what they missed in class today, simply because I don't want them to get the idea that I will always drop everything to deal with their problems. I won't, and when that day comes, I don't want my student to have thought I would always be accessible.

A professor like the one described in the email risks a lot. Do you really want students (or your dean) to know that you have a glass of wine while you grade their papers? (Evaluation: I got an F because he graded my paper while he was drunk). Do you really want them to know you're planning class twenty minutes before it happens? (Evaluation: Teacher isn't prepared). Do you want them to know where you are and what you're doing when you're ignoring their inane emails? (Evaluation: Teacher is difficult to get in touch with and doesn't answer email promptly). Do you really want them to see it if the prof across the hall from your office, or your real life friend, writes something snarky on your wall about your most precious little snowflake, about whom you have been complaining a great deal?

But in the end, it's just kind of sad. I think it's totally ok to have professors on Facebook, just as professors may go to the same bars, coffee shops, etc. that their students frequent. It's a social gathering place, of sorts. People will be there. But to INVITE your students to the bar or coffee shop is something else... it's confusing the social/professional boundary, but it's also a little pathetic. I think of Facebook like my local bar. I go there with my friends, and if I run into an undergrad student I quickly make necessary small talk and then try to avoid that student for the rest of the night. If I were to buy that student a drink and ask him to dance, I might be cool for awhile, but it's cool with a big side of creepy. After all (this is the part that professor seems to be missing) if you were really that cool, you wouldn't HAVE to be friends with your students on Facebook. You'd have your own friends. Cooler, more intellectually stimulating friends. Your own age.

Here's One of Many Cynics Who Wants To Call "Bullshit" on Student Tragedy.

I want to call bullshit on the Tragic Student.

There's the very, very slightest chance that this student is not making up her mother's terminal illness, but I seriously doubt it. When I have a student present me with a Dying Parent (many steps up from the Dying Grandparent in sympathy points and course allowances to be sure), I tell them that I'm very sorry, but that I'm not equipped to help them deal with this issue and that they need to see their advisor immediately to find out the best course of action. Period. And I tell them not to come back to class until they have the advisor contact me so that we can discuss things - or preferably to set up a meeting between the three of us.

99% of the time, I never see the student again. Once - exactly one time in over a decade, I actually had a student's advisor contact me to let me know that the student did in fact have a terminally ill parent and we worked out a plan to get her caught up; she took an incomplete and completed the work for the course over the winter break and the beginning of the spring term.

The rest of the students apparently have no sense of Karma. Lying about your parent dying? That's some fucked up shit.

Who's Facebook For?

Is anyone else creeped out by profs who spend as much time on Facebook as our students?

My colleague across the hall is always talking about events he reads about on Facebook, knows the nicknames of most of his students, and posts a ton of personal info about himself on his own page - which he made me look at one day! (He had posted one picture in which he was wearing no shirt, psychedelic jams, holding a beer, and looking glassy into the camera.)

He showed me a long list of his "friends," all students, and on his Facebook "wall," dozens of students had left him messages like: "Prof. Dude, how's it hanging?" and "Yo, Proffy, wot that smile on yo face?!?!?"

I've never heard a single untoward thing about him - and this is a very gossipy place - but it still seems odd to me.

Is Facebook one of those lines that faculty shouldn't be crossing?

Sometimes Students in Crisis Just Need the Normalcy Of Class.

Some semesters are not the time to go to school. That said, your recent post about students wrestling with tragedy made me think of a very difficult time for one of my students. She was several months pregnant. Hubby and family were making plans fora happy future until the ultrasound showed an anencephalic baby.

Their world, understandably, crashed and they were faced with decisions no one should have to make. I was the first person she told; not even her mom knew. I wept with her. She insisted she could continue in school. I repeated that some semesters are not the time to go to school. I offered a medical withdrawal which means amongst other benefits, she would get a refund.

I went to the Dean of Students and quietly arranged it so she wouldn't have to do more than just file the paper. But, she continued to come to class, numb, expressionless and in deep grief. I continued to privately offer the withdrawal option. But she wanted something normal in her life so she continued to come to class. She failed never taking the offered withdrawal. She really needed something normal, routine. She was not capable of making good decision then.

Perhaps that is what your student is saying. No, she doesn't understand the educational side of it, but perhaps she needs something to appear normal, everyday, manageable. Her mom's death is none of those. Yes, she probably will fail.

About two years later, I heard from my student. She petitioned to get the F changed to a medical withdrawal as she realized she didn't make good decisions at that most difficult time. It was quickly granted.

Helping Our Students Wrestle With Tragedy and Depression.

I've faced the same question as "Wrestling" a few times in my teaching career. My response in each case depends on the attitude of the student, the particular course structure, how far into the semester the issue comes up, whether I've had enough coffee, etc.

While I completely agree with the assessment of what the student needs to be doing, I would also play Devil's advocate a bit: maybe, even if the student is ultimately going to fail the class--or, as likely, come for a couple weeks and then drift away again--maybe she needs someplace to be for a few hours a day that's not at her mother's bedside.

In my (large) classes it wouldn't be particularly disruptive for a student to show up mid-semester. The grading policies preclude makeup exams, but this is one of the situations for which we could justify dropping the grade on a missed exam, or even two. Realistically, a student walking into my course at this point in the semester is going to stand almost no chance of earning a passing grade, because of the cumulative nature of the material, and yadda yadda; I would make sure to say that to the student up front, and I would encourage her to consider withdrawing for the semester, even talking to her advisor and seeing if there's some way she can get some money back, and re-enrolling for a later term; but I would also say, if she wants to try, she can. This student may have been putting off going to classes one day at a time, and may have just figured out that she's running out of days--things can catch up with you that way when you're in the midst of a personal crisis, especially if you're also dealing with depression--and she may need a couple of days or weeks to adjust to the idea that it's too late for this term. It's hard for a person to just suddenly turn her self-image around 180 degrees; to her it will feel like "Yesterday I was a college student, today I'm not," even though anyone looking from outside could see that really she hasn't been a college student for weeks.

While it's frustrating on my side to spend a lot of mental energy and time on a student who is very likely not going to complete my course, it may pay off in the future, in having her feel it's worthwhile coming back later, when she no longer has the obligation that is currently consuming her life. I wouldn't want her to shut the door on her future education because I turned her away when she was vulnerable.

Wrestling with Student Tragedy.

Sometimes, tragic events in students' lives can't be overcome, and the best advice--indeed only advice--we can give is to drop the class, withdraw from the university, and find some activity more suitable to the situation.

I know this sounds cold and unforgiving, but consider the email I received last week from a student who has attended only a single class session this semester. Her reason for missing the first five weeks of the semester? She had to attend to her dying mother. Now, five weeks into the semester, she wants to leave her mother (still terminal and not yet dead) and return to school. In her email she promises to "make up" all the work that she has missed. She seems unbothered by the fact that my lectures and in-class discussions cannot be reclaimed. And she seems quite confident in her ability to keep up with the new material in the class even as she is working to complete the readings and assignments from the last five weeks.

She also seems to believe that education is not cumulative and that the material we covered in the first third of the semester won't be critically important to understanding the material we cover in the remaining weeks of the semester. Finally, she seems to think that she can do the missing work and keep up with the new work while she is grappling with the impending death of her mother.

Forget the fact that this student is treating me like a well-paid grading machine, my only real purpose to stamp evaluative letters and comments on the work my students hand in. Surely my role as a teacher is irrelevant. She doesn't need my instruction, only my judgement on the work she hands in for a grade. This of course speaks to her woeful misunderstanding of how education works, but this isn't what bothers me most about her email. What bothers me is that this student doesn't realize that trying to complete a course while her mother is in the process of dying is fundamentally a bad decision.

Her proper place is with her mother and family, spending as much time with her mother as she can in these final days. It's doubtful that she is in the emotional and psychological state to really engage with her courses and reap the full benefits of her education. She might manage a C in this class, but what will she really gain in the process? Isn't she better advised to withdraw from the course (and the university) and attend to this personal crisis?

We Didn't Get Into The Gamma Slug Frostys, Either.

A few days ago on RYS, you were talking about weakness. I'm thinking about weakness in another context: college Greek life.

I'm considering this context because such a frighteningly large amount of my students have reminded me that this week on our campus is rush week. Late to class? It's rush week. Paper not turned in? It's rush week. Falling asleep in class? It's rush week. Forgetting to come to a required writing conference? It's rush week. Being an absolute lazy turd? It's rush week.

So I write to RYS with two requests: First, I request that we generate some postings about rush week and all of its glory. Second, I'm wondering if anyone else is feeling vulnerable and weak in the face of rush week?

I, for one, didn't get into a fraternity when I was in college, so, alas, I never was one of the "cool" kids (though my wife was/is a sorority girl). Now it seems that the same situation has presented itself again: a whole new crop of college kids don't give a shit about me, or my class. The frat or sorority house, though, that's where the party's at--all day, every day, apparently.

Crotch Lessons.

Dear student athlete who sits in the front row with his legs apart:

We do not put our hand on our crotch at school. We do not rest it there casually for the entire class period; nor do we reach down and have a vigorous scratch when the urge moves us. We keep our hand entirely out of our crotch for the entire fifty minutes of class.

If that is impossible for some reason, we go to the little boys' room and attend to whatever needs attending in our nether regions. (We are being spoken to as though we were in kindergarten because we should have learned this important lesson when we were, in fact, in kindergarten.)

Sincerely,

Your Professor

Another Academic Poet Wants To Be Heard on The Helga Situation.

oh lord, spare me from people who think

"giving each student the best experience possible"

is within the realm of possibility

setting unattainable goals for educators

and then being shocked, shocked!

when they fall short is disingenuous at best

and evil at worst

i have my own teaching style

a style that suits my temperament

students have their own learning styles

with 120 students every semester

there are always mismatches

and often

substantial mismatches

i've never

"given each student the best experience possible"

i've never tried

it's impossible

and yet

my students and colleagues view me

as an effective teacher

and yes,

if i did no research and only taught

(keep in mind:

teaching is a job)

i could teach eleven

courses

effectively

lots of people work

effectively

for 40 hours a week

lord knows i wouldn't want to teach 11 courses;

the 4 i've got is plenty

While the Mail Has Turned "All Helga, All the Time," We Don't Want To Miss These Smackdowns on Last Week's Whistling Asshole.

• Hey, sneaky little shit—I’ve got a news flash for you! I’m a sneaky little shit, too, and, while you get to disrupt my class and your fellow students’ learning, I get to decide your grade for the class. Sure, you can whistle under your breath and generally behave like an ass, irritating both me and your fellow students, but when I hear your sad, sad, sob story as to why you didn’t get the work done for class today, or why you need to take a make-up exam, I get to tell you where to shove it and gleefully enter your hard-earned “F” in my grade book. When the end of the semester comes and you’re on that borderline between a “D” and an “F,” I get to be a hard-ass and stick you with the “F” you so richly deserve. So, go ahead—whistle. Be an ass. And have a great time when you get to take this class all over again next fall.


• Hello, asshole. I had a student just like you last year. Whistling, the odd snarky comment to himself, the things designed for no purpose other than disruption: the whole lot. I'm sure it worked pretty well before; like you, he was carrying on in the blissful oblivion of one who thought he would get away with it forever. Thing is, that's a productive strategy only if you can rely upon instructors to be passive-aggressive. Me, I prefer the aggressive-aggressive approach. There's nothing so "sneaky" that I can't bust you for it. I bust people for breathing, pretty much. I'm all about the direct confrontation, too. I'd be perfectly happy to pause my class to rip on you. Now, I'm sure you could bluster out some hackneyed old garbage about how my turning my attention to you meant that you were the one who was *really* in control of my class. But let's face it: when I've just put you in your place, the rest of the class is laughing and applauding -- yes, that actually happened -- and your face has turned beet red... well. Who do you think is actually in control at that moment? Oh, and here's the best bit: My evaluations are always excellent. My students fucking love me. And my job is secure. Meanwhile, I can fail you and condemn your ass to flunking out. Have a nice day!

So, There are NOT Too Many PhDs? Someone Picks "Cash In The Pocket" Over Finishing The Doctorate.

Here we go, another "I got my Ph.D. at some fancy ass school so I can dump on others" style of letter.

Bite me asshole.

The problem is not that there are too many with the degree, it is that there are too many like you who still don't know what it means. Having a Ph.D. does not mean you are any more qualified than someone who does not have one. It does not mean you are a better teacher, or researcher, or even a better person. It just means you have an expensive piece of paper with your name on it. It doesn't stop there, as you now want to put people down depending on where they got that paper.

Just an idea, but perhaps your alma mater should be investigated for grade creep. It had to be a diploma mill if they let an idiot like you through. I'm in another category.

I have to take a break from my Ph.D. this term because of all the work that came my way. You see, I specialize in the crap courses that the "I'm better than you" types don't want to teach. That, when combined with the fact that there is a shortage of instructors where I live, means cash in the pocket. When, and if, I finish that Ph.D., you will find me teaching the same classes the way I have for years.

What I won't be doing is putting down people like Highway Helga who, after all, is working for a living.

"Too Goddamn Many Ph.D.s"

It seems like everyone’s ignoring the main issue driving experiences like Helga’s: there are just too goddamn many Ph.Ds (and masters) degrees out there. People like Helga take pay that would be insulting to the guys who work at the gas station because she knows damn well that there’s a line of other adjuncts who would gladly take the assignment if she refused. Supply and demand, baby. If there are too many fourth-tier universities are pumping out people who have no job skills besides teaching Philosophy courses, the pay for Philosophy adjuncts will go down.

What’s the solution? Maybe it’s reducing the number of graduate programs out there. I suspect that many bottom tier Ph.D. and masters programs exist not to turn out capable scholars and teachers, but because they allow the university to take advantage of the only kind of labor that is even cheaper than adjuncts: graduate teaching assistants. Graduate students at these programs start out as exploited graduate TAs and graduate a half-step up the food chain to become exploited adjunct professors. I’m sure that such programs have produced the occasional excellent scholar and teacher who beats the odds and gets tenure. But it’s dishonest and immoral for these programs to tell potential students that they will be trained to be scholars. They are recruited to have the life wrung out of them as graduate students and then passed on to other institutions to have the life wrung out of them as adjuncts.

At the very least, undergrad advisors owe any student who wants to apply to such a program a good hard dose of reality. If a student asks you for a letter of recommendation for the History Ph.D. program at North-North-Eastern Dinky State School, sit them down. Tell them about people like Helga. Ask them to think really hard about their commitment to the discipline. At the very least ask them to look at the program’s placement record (and if the school isn’t forthcoming with that information, ask them to take this as a sign). I have no doubt that a lot of people make a good life out of adjuncting, because they love teaching or because they love the subject so much that they can’t imagine a career that doesn’t involve it or because they love pretending they are Jeff Gordon racing around from job to job. But I suspect that a lot of other people wake up at the age of 30 with a degree that over- or under- qualifies them for everything except adjuncting. That stinks, both for them and for the other adjuncts whose wages are lowered to subsistence level by the flooded market.

Adjunct Agitation.

Highway Helga's post from yesterday has proven to be one of the biggest response generators we've ever had. (Wicked Walter from Waxahachie might still be the leader.) But despite the fact that Highway Helga is now officially the 235th poster who hates the made-up name we've given her - seriously, everyone, we're just some pudknockers having fun - we're very grateful for the thought-provoking post, one that has really brought light to a situation many of our tenured and tenure-track folks are frankly a little astonished by.

We've got such a vast pool of things to pull from, we thought we might give you a sampling of the mail that has been coming in since yesterday morning, in addition to a couple of longer posts we'll post later.

• I used to be a freeway flyer adjunct before I got on the tenure-track gravy train & all I can say is that Helga must have a good crystal meth dealer because that is the only thing that could animate the corpse that is madly dashing around teaching 11 courses. I once taught six and it nearly killed me. To answer your questions: No, it’s not fair to the students & it’s not fair to – or good for – Helga. Helga’s situation, though, is the reductio ad absurdum of the system that has developed over the last thirty years in which college administrators cut one corner after another and patch the mess that’s left with adjunct hires. But self-exploiters like Helga don’t help. Helga, Just Say No!


• I’m also an adjunct in a large metro area, and I understand how Helga could end up teaching 11 classes. There’s always a university or two begging on my college’s doorstep for additional adjuncts to pick up a class or two. It’s hard to resist that extra money just waving itself in my face. That said, my first reaction was to think, “My GOD, that woman’s INSANE!!!!” My second, more reasoned, reaction was, “Gosh, I hope she’s teaching something with an easier grading load, like math, rather than grading tons of English papers!” My third thought, having actually given it some thought, is “Well, yeah, that’s totally doable.” Although I have no idea how she’s getting from campus to campus that quickly or keeping up with the lesson plans, as long as it’s not too many different classes and they use the same book/books, it sounds reasonable and workable to me.


• We’ve found that the adjuncts that do this normally have so many shortcuts to make it doable for them that the students are “breezed” through—i.e. Large Group Labs, lab experiments done as a demonstration and the students work up the data as a group, no homework, few if any quizzes, minimal exams (that aren’t tough enough to distinguish A’s from B’s). The students get exactly what they want (large grade, small effort), the tenured faculty get what they want (a body in the classroom that is not them), and the administration gets what it wants (large volumes of students pushed through with minimum pay-scale instructor). Everyone wins… except education.


• Adjuncts are essential economically for colleges today. If it weren't for us, enrollment would have to stagnate and drop, or tuition would increase beyond ridiculous. Even working as hard as I do, I barely make half the salary of an untenured full time instructor at any of the colleges where I teach, with no benefits. I have an office at one of the universities, not that I have time to sit in it often and mull over my fate! I'm not complaining, whining or even bitter. I'm actually happy - just tired.


• I think “Helga” is probably pretty delusional to think that she is able to teach 11 classes and give her all for each of her special snowflakes. I also had course load of 11, and I wanted to rip my own eyes out! I was constantly reading and grading papers, the only “me” time I had was on the toilet. I even dreamed about ways to better grade papers and had student comments, questions, and lame-ass answers/excuses plaguing my dreams. I know I was breezing through my grading just to get it done and be able to sleep a few hours a night. I also know my in-class students weren’t getting my best because I was so freaking tired all the time! I got stellar evaluations also. I don’t know if it’s because I was not as picky with my grading or I am just that fabulous of a person, but I have a sneaking suspicion of what the answer is. On top of that, speaking as a professional in the field of psychology, it doesn’t look like she is devoting enough time to herself to be a balanced individual. We cannot live through our students and work every waking minute. Life is short and if you only half-ass your way through an insane schedule, not only are you cheating your students, but also yourself.


• Here we go again with the exploited adjunct issue. I AM an adjunct, by the way, but after years of whining and crying "exploitation," I have come to realize that adjuncts have created their own sorry state of affairs by becoming academic whores, willing to turn academic tricks every semester for peanuts. Adjuncts will finally pull their heads out of a very dark (and dank) spot when we demand certain rights and perks afforded to our tenured "peers": 1) Organize into STRONG unions; 2) Demand fair pay for the excellent job most of us do; 3) Demand pro-rated benefits, such as health care, retirement, professional travel, and education; 4) Insist on two-year contracts; if enough adjuncts do this, then colleges will be forced to negotiate fair contracts for their part time instructors; 5) Insist on reasonable office space. Broom closets and cars are unacceptable; 6) Refuse to be marginalized; we have the numbers to back us up. Speak up and out--and often.
• Oh, lord. I thought I had it bad at five. The reaction I get from most people when I tell them "five" is one of horror - how can I do that much? And I've only got them spread around three colleges. I don't know how Helga manages it. How does she keep the classes straight? How does she manage to be at the right place at the right time? I've had two horrible days where I realized I had the wrong books, on the wrong campus, at the wrong time. More classes would only compound the error. Also, surely her numerous departments would disapprove. I spend a ridiculous amount of time "covering my tracks." All three of my schools frown on those who teach at more than one place. (Of course, obeying their rules would leave me homeless and hungry and at the mercy of collection agencies.) I don't think my students are getting my best teaching effort. I often leave class with the feeling of regret that I can't linger to talk to the one or two fresh-eyed students who really have things to contribute. I can't put the time in to preparing for the classes that I would like to. I won't change textbooks because there is no time for me to review new ones. But given the way adjuncts are paid...and treated...is there any way our students can get "our best effort"?


• Bless Highway Helga's long-suffering little heart. By accepting such conditions, she is a huge part of the problem, and if she expects sympathy, it won't be forthcoming from THIS quarter. This adjunct, by the way, tried to organize her part time peers; however, no one wanted to "rock the boat." The hell with you all; I hope you LOVE wallowing in your self-misery.

"Eleven." At Any Point In Any Day, Highway Helga Is Either Driving or Grading.

In our recent poll that asked how many classes people taught each semester, our highest option was "5+." That wasn't nearly high enough for some regular readers, and certainly not high enough for one of our favorites, "Highway Helga," who is currently teaching 11 classes this semester.

She reports to us, we assume, between classes - or instead of sleeping.

---

Last year I put 17,000 miles on my car. One of my colleges has several campuses--and pays the least. When gas went up so much this year, I said I would only teach at the campus nearest me--and that's a big help. While I go to the highest bidder, I also look at distances and close is a good thing, to paraphrase Martha Stewart.

The accelerated programs that colleges are starting all over the place are wonderful because of the pay, the time, the mix of students (young and old). For the same time period (a semester), one can teach two courses--almost double the money that "regular" college pays.

Okay--now here's one more thing--I love teaching. My evaluations are good, and my standards are high.

Here's my schedule:

Day:

MW 8

MW 10

MWF noon

MWF 1

MWF 2

TTh 8:15

TTh 10

TTh 11:30

Night and Weekend:

M 6-9

W 5:30-8:30

Sat 9-3 (every other week)

How on earth? Well, I work every hour God sends. I teach in a large metro area, and no one has ever told me I couldn't teach this many classes. I do a heavy load in the fall to make up for summer and spring when there are not so many courses offered for adjuncts. It feels good when it is spring, and I only have 8 courses. Rather like a batter warming up with half a dozen bats who then drops them to pick up one.

---

We know a good number of our regular readers are adjuncts, and we're wondering what their take is on this kind of schedule. What about your regular faculty folk, do you think Helga is giving each student the best experience possible? Could you teach 11 courses in the same way you teach your 2, 3, or 4 now? Is this dangerous to Helga? Dangerous to the quality of education? How much are adjuncts teaching at your college, and how much is too much? Share your ideas here.

Reasonable. We're Always Knocked Out When Someone Just Walks In And Is Reasonable. The "Screw 'Em" Post.

I think it's normal to care if your students like and respect you. Personally, I prefer respect. But, I know that you can't please everyone all the time - especially the spoiled brats who seem to be the most vociferous. Negative comments do hurt. Students do not understand the time and effort we put into our courses. They think we just show up at class time, yammer at them for an hour, and then disappear back into the professor mist from whence we sprang. Because most of them spend so little time preparing for class themselves, they think we go in with no preparation also. They are egocentric and lack empathy. But, that is the nature of the late adolescent beast. For that reason I consider student comments in context.

What do you know about the student who's making the comment? If it's a D to C student who achieved that distinction by giving you lazy work (or no work at all), disregard whatever they say completely. They blame you for not gifting them with grades they haven't earned. They will not be happy with you even if you show up at their dorm and do all their laundry for them.

You should also disregard any student comments on evaluations that complain that the class is "too hard." That comment is meaningless, unless no other students the class were able to earn Bs and As. The way I see it, if some students were able to make higher grades, then higher grades were possible and the class was not "too hard." It's the students who did not make As and Bs who were doing something wrong then; not me.

Comments that you are "boring" should also be taken with a grain of salt. You are there to teach, not entertain. Are you boring, or is the subject boring? Let's face it: some of the stuff we teach is boring. I have taught research methods several times, and short of tap dancing through the lessons, I can think of no way to make that more interesting. Sometimes, the material is what it is. And quite often, the stuff we find fascinating, many students will find duller than watching paint dry. There is nothing you can do about that. Don't concentrate on the snoozer in the back row. Concentrate on the student in the front row who is awake and attentive. He obviously finds what you have to say less boring.

Finally, face the fact that your class may indeed be "a waste of time" for some students. How many classes did you take as a student that have proved to be little more than filler in your schedule? I took that Music Appreciation class because I had to take something in that area to fulfill my requirements, and that seemed the least painful. But, I barely remember it now and it has brought no enrichment to my life. However, it was not the professor's fault that I did not find it useful to my life or my major. Those were the University requirements. I think most students recognize that it is not our fault that they have to take classes unrelated to their majors. I'm sure few hold it against us personally. And the ones that do? Screw 'em.

Academic Haiku Friday!

What needs to be cited?

Explain more on

punctuation.

How should the body paragraphs be set up?

How many should we have?

What are we doing?

This Guy Is Just Dying For Us to Call Him an Asshole. So, Okay. You're an Asshole.

Hi. It’s me. That guy who sits in the front row and does things that are completely disruptive, but which are sneaky enough that you can’t really bust me for them.

I know what you’re thinking. “Did he really just whistle the first measure of ‘Pop Goes the Weasel' while I was having an enriching and animated discussion with a student in the back row?” Why yes, I did. And for the record, I really do sing songs under my breath when you aren’t looking, giggle for no apparent reason, and on my best days, stare at your wardrobe in a way that is bound to make you uncomfortable.

Why do you let me get away with it? I rely on your integrity as a teacher. I know that you’d rather spend quality time with the rest of the class while I clown around and make you feel flustered, helpless and angry than confront me directly and openly. In a way, it’s like vandalism or road rage. Your inability to think like me renders me invisible in your class.

You have trouble considering me even to be of the same species as you because I do things that violate every rule of politeness and decorum that you know of. You plan, and plot, and render yourself apoplectic thinking about what you’ll do to me during class tomorrow—the “pre-class one-on-one” (ah, but I’ll be late that day) the “stop what you’re doing and shout me down” (but once you get up the nerve, I will have stopped and you’d look like an idiot) the “couched reference within a lecture to immature students who act in a certain way without direct confrontation” (which only validates my control over the class)—each of these will fail.

Why? I’m a sneaky little shit, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it. I just thought I’d rub it in a bit more.

We Finish Up Our Series on Weakness With These Quick Blasts of Negative Energy.

• I talk too much when I'm nervous. I'm always nervous. I ramble. I get really excited about things my students don't care about, like, or understand. I'm a nerd, a dork, a geek. I care too much about what these kids think of me. I know I shouldn't. I suspect I grade more kindly the students I like, and make no exceptions for the students I don't. And I might favor the girls over the boys. I'm self-conscious, needy, insecure, talky, naive, and judgmental. In other words: the weaknesses I have as a prof are the same weaknesses I have as a person.


• I've stopped spending enough time on grading. I just give rather general grades to anything that comes in, basing it - a little bit - on whether the student is a pain in the ass or not.


• I've been teaching for ten years now, and have a stock set of assignments and lesson plans that work beautifully. That's caused me to be incredibly lazy. I don't prepare for class anymore, except for photocopying old stuff. It never occurs to me to try something new, or order a new book. This term a book I like to use (and that I have a series of assignments for) went out of print. The book store couldn't find it anywhere, and so I used a personal relationship I have with my department chair to buy 60 copies of the thing off of eBay and Half.com. I lend the books to my students and at semester end I'm going to take them back in and give them to my class in the Spring, too.


• I'm always late to class. It ranges from 5-7 minutes. I know that adds up to a couple of hours a semester, but I really give my all for the time I am there, and the students don't seem to mind.


• I have no ability to tell if a student is feeding me a line of B.S. or not. And when I guess, I often find out later I was wrong. I denied one kid a chance at a re-take because of his "lame" excuse about a terrible car accident on the highway to the college. Two days later I read about a 25 car wreck on the same highway, at the time and on the day as the student claimed. That student never looked at me the same, and I'm sure I lost any chance of helping him.


• I didn't want it to happen, but since I got tenure, I spend more time on my own projects than I do on classroom stuff. I say, let the junior faculty carry the load.


• I have become increasingly sensitive to the opinions of my students over the years. If I have 90 "best class I ever took! greatest professor I ever had!" comments and one "unbelievably dull, could be a great subject if someone else taught it," I will obsess over that one comment all summer long and feel miserable well into the next year.


• I'm a happily married female professor, and I find I favor the young girls in my class over their loutish and ill-mannered male counterparts. I don't want this to happen, and I constantly try to find a way around it, but the "boys" in my classes behave horribly, arrive in soiled and smelly clothing, and either treat me like their mother, or stare at my tits as if they were reading the fine print on the back of a Red Bull.


• I resent how poorly my chair and Dean treat me on a personal level, and I've begun to take it out on my students. They're no great prizes, but they deserve better than they're getting.


• My greatest weaknesses – I have more than one – as a teacher are that I’m pretty disorganized and I improvise too much. I also, in my enthusiasm – or is it to cover the silences? – talk too much. Even after twenty-five years, I have not learned to let the silences fester long enough to make the silent students squirm. When I go on & on, I’m covering for them, protecting them from confronting their own ignorance. Do I do it because I want them to like me, or because I love them? That changes from day to day, I think.

We Don't Disagree on Anything, Except that In Our Classes, We Fear That The 80% is Actually 99%.

I'd guess that most of us are all too painfully aware of our weaknesses; given that we stand in front of a group of people day after day who are more than happy to let us know precisely what those weaknesses are. However, it may be difficult to distill from the venom, apathy, and adulation constantly poured into student evaluations what you need to attend to. Frankly, I don't really need student evaluations to know what I need to work on. They tend to confirm rather than inform.

First of all, I'm not the most riveting or articulate of lecturers. Some of my colleagues are stand-up comedians who have the students waiting with bated breath for the next witticism or humorous observation. I secretly envy them but publicly declare myself to be straightforward in my presentation of lecture material. (That's code for "dull").

Second, I don't lead discussions very well. From time to time (yes, it does happen) students will ask a question that leads into some interesting areas of discussion. I'm not a good guide. I never know when to interject myself or when to pull back and let the discussion go. This is probably due to the fact that I'm not a sparkling conversationalist on a personal level.

Third, I hate group work. I hated it as an undergraduate. I hated it as a graduate student. And I hate myself when I do it to my students. (Call me "hypocrite!") While sometimes it yields good results. Many times, it doesn't. I assume that's due to one of two things. Dunderheaded students who don't know how to talk about an issue (a real possibility) OR my own lack of ability in constructing meaningful group tasks (another real possibility).

I hope it doesn't sound like I'm TOO down on myself. I have my good days, bad days, and in-between days. Thankfully, the good and in-between outnumber the bad (at least so far.) After a less than stellar classroom experience, I console myself with this statement: "10% of students will hate your class no matter what you do, 10% will love your class no matter what you do and 80% will forget your class no matter what you do." I've absolutely no empirical support for this but I find it oddly comforting all the same.

Gotcha!

Another day dealing with whining, sniveling, self-important brats who have no idea whatsoever of what hard work is, what introspection is, what it means to approach learning from the perspective of self-improvement instead of “what’s in it for me.”

I try to motivate, to model, to place myself in their shoes, and in the end it gets me nothing but frustration and heartache. Why don’t they listen? Why won’t they try to learn how to do things differently? Are they really that dense, or is it simple stubbornness that makes them continue to refuse any new idea, concept or method that comes their way?

In the end, all I’m asking for is a simple commitment—something they knew they would have to do when they chose their current walk of life, yet which seems to be so far removed from what they want to do right now that they can’t be troubled with what they ought to be doing.

I’m left with a simple question: Why won’t my colleagues fill out their annual assessment reports?

What's Wrong With Being Cool For the Cool Kids?

I'm actually rather glad that the first few posts about "weakness" addressed the two things I've been thinking a lot about lately: what my students think of me (or rather, what I think about what my students think of me) and the way we have of calling each other out on weakness.

First, a confession: I am the author of the Cowboy Up Post. I called another professor a potential wuss for wanting to quit in the face of a department that doesn't validate teaching as much as she wishes it would. And I'm ready to admit that I got sharp instead of snuggly because she's on tenure-track, and I'm not. Whatever.

Point is, I wish I'd written an encouraging post instead of a condemnatory one. But let's face it--something about our profession, or our society, or the roiling combination of the two, encourages us to present a face to the world, and each other, of self-assured perfection so perfect that one of the ways we score points is off of each other's insecure heads.

Pick the field--business, politics, professional football, literary criticism--and you're likely to find an accepted way of making yourself look good by making others look bad. One big opportunity to look weak, it occurs to me, is in front of our students. When a lesson plan, reading assignment, or concept doesn't enthrall them the way it was supposed to--the way our much-vaunted educations (frequently from institutions "superior" to the ones where we teach, right?) and years/decades/quarter-centuries of experience led us to believe it would enthrall and enlighten them, we risk looking like idiots, or tyrants, or both. And standing in front of 24-400 undergraduates two-to-fifteen times a week, knowing that we're at least slightly out of touch, knowing that those students came to us fully expecting absolutely useful, 100% comprehensible, knowing that at least five or six of them are asleep or doing the crossword puzzle or thinking about breaking up with their girlfriends, knowing that no matter how good you do today, your tenure review will have more to do with the publications you don't have time to achieve because you're writing lectures that might not enthrall, etc... it's natural to start feeling used, or stupid, or like a chump.

And then you realize that being funny and charismatic just feels *good.*

Let's ask ourselves the following in these situations: are our students learning something accurate and valuable from our classes? Do they leave freshman composition even somewhat better writers? Do they leave History 101 knowing at least a little about history? Can everyone who passes Calc 2 do... whatever it is people who pass Calc 2 have to be able to do, so that bridges don't fall down? If you can answer yes, you're doing a good job.

In more advanced classes, I felt okay expecting the students to bring their A game at least twice a week, and by and large it happened. Being a dork at my thing was both funny to them and educationally productive. It's in the introductory, required shit that I found myself compromising my useful dorkitude to make them laugh so that we could all get through the 75 minutes. But at the end of the day, I tried hard to be able to say, "yes, maybe I was a little cloying about the baseball team with the baseball player, but I also made a good point about semi-colons."

We get to enjoy our jobs. We don't have to do this job EXCLUSIVELY because we feel like we "owe" the People of Pennsyl-tenne-sconsin the education of a Land Grant University... as long as you do, in fact, keep the learning process at the center of your teaching, you're allowed to enjoy the fact that you seem cool to the cool kids for the first time in your life. Don't sleep with them, okay? But if the pretty girls or boys (or girls AND boys, for that matter) flirt with you and you like the feeling, and it keeps you from tossing yourself off the building or yelling at your own children or quitting to take some job where you will likely NEVER get to write...so what?

No More the Academic Romantic.

I will confess that when I started teaching I was still romantic about education.

But it ended fairly early in my second year when I realized that most of my students did not want to be there, and did not - certainly - want anything more than a grade and a degree.

And so my weakness is that I simply punch the clock. And before anyone gets too excited, I believe I still do a good job. I like my field, know it well, and have certain facilities to get it in front of the vacuous student body.

I know others like me who are tormented by these feelings. They worry that their passion is gone, that they're charlatans. The others, the believers, would never understand my view, and therefore I don't share it with them.

You may ask why I don't get out, make a difference, do something else. Well there are a number of reasons, I guess. I don't have any other marketable skills. The hours are terrific. I work 5 days a week, but it's never all day. My pay is substantially less than my brothers - who are a plumber, a banker, and the assistant manager of a grocery store - but it pays for my cable, mortgage, groceries, and a modest amount of fun.

It is not the life I dreamed of, but most of my waking hours are NOT spent on worrying about the pajama-panted snowflakes. I have a great life away from the campus, and I wouldn't trade it.

POW! The Fear of Being a Chicken. [Post of the Week.]

When I was growing up, I lived on a farm. My parents weren’t farmers, but they had a farm house and land, and they populated that land with some farm animals, including chickens. I loved the chickens, and I still love birds, but I don’t idealize them. One of the things I learned about birds while growing up is that a flock member who shows weakness is likely to be pecked and plucked by the other chickens, certainly to baldness, most likely to bleeding, and possibly to death.

I’m afraid something like that will happen to me if I write to you about my teaching weaknesses and insecurities. What cranky colleague will respond telling me to shape up or ship out? How many people will write to you about what an incompetent loser I am?

I guess you can see my insecurity already. I love teaching, but I often wonder if I’m in the wrong profession because I am obsessed with what other people think of me. I crave validation from others—mostly from my colleagues, but even (to some degree) from my students. And that leads to an even deeper insecurity, the fear that I’m not confident enough to do and keep this job.

When I go up for my third year review next year, will I be accepted into the flock (at least for two more years)? Or will the tenure committee look at me with beady chicken eyes and, seeing my weakness and insecurity, metaphorically peck me to death?

How Do You Put Yourself In Your Work Without Letting Yourself Be Trampled On?

My greatest weakness is this secret that I tell no one: I care what my students think of me. I can't help it. I have low self-esteem, and every semester I go in wanting to teach my students something and make them better people. But I also want them to like me.

I do a fairly good job moderating this. I don't, for example, let my desire for their approval get mixed up with my grading. I'm one of the toughest graders in my department, and many of my students are now aware of this reputation before they take the class. I try to keep every class focused and with a clear goal (I don't let "but this is boring" influence me to change my lesson plans into "sessions o' fun"). I don't cut many breaks, and I don't go in for sob stories. I am, in many ways, a hard-ass.

But I also make the occasional joke (and they're growing more frequent). I like it when my students think I'm funny. I try to make what we're learning relevant to their lives, and I try hard to make things interesting. I want to prove to them that I have chosen a worthy field--that what I do is important.

When students make flippant comments or suggest that the class is worthless, I take it personally. It bothers me far more than the comments of an 18-year-old at 8 AM should. And at the end of each semester, I read my evaluations with an inappropriate amount of awe. I relish every positive comment as a personal affirmation, and I allow the negative responses to cut far too deeply.

I know that this compromises my classroom conduct. I know that it may allow students to take advantage of me. I also know that it may be unfair to the students, as I allow the comments of one vocal malcontent to change the standards for the entire class.

But my problem (other than the self-esteem thing) is drawing the line between being passionate about my subject and my teaching and becoming too "emotionally" or personally involved. How do you "put yourself into your work" without letting yourself be trampled on every now and again?

"How Many Classes" Poll Results Are In.

How many classes do RYS readers teach each semester?

• 19% of those who answered the poll teach 1 or 2 as a TA.
• 27% teach only 1 or 2 each semester.
• 20% teach 3 classes per semester.
• 18% teach 4 classes per semester.
• And 15% teach 5 or more classes per semester.

A Call For Posts! "Who You Calling Weak?!"

We recently received a couple of interesting notes from profs about weakness, weakness as a colleague, weakness as a professor. These were pretty dark missives, and not entirely on point enough to appear on the page.

But it got us thinking a little about how aware we are or aren't about our abilities in the profession.

Please send us a note about your weaknesses as a college instructor and what you want to do to address them.

Student Sins of the Past

I would bet I'm not alone, but my greatest weakness is this overriding feeling that all future students will suffer from the various diseases of past students.

Over a ten year teaching career I've seen students exhibit more and more of the most vexing characteristics: laziness and entitlement.

I want to walk into each new semester cutting everyone a break, but it gets harder and harder as the students keep pouring in. "I don't want to take this course." "I don't want to declare a major." "I just want the degree."

I think of college as the greatest experience I ever had, and I'd love to share that experience with my students now. I've even started talking a bit about what amazing things can happen to someone in college, but the eyerolls I get suggest that they've heard an old guy tell them this shit before.

So, I put my head down, do my job, and scarcely notice if anyone of them give a shit. Occasionally a student will let him or herself be heard, and I find I work my ass for that person. They want more help, fine. They want extra assignments (yes, it happens), great.

But I feel too young to be jaded and cynical and pessimistic, but I fear I already am, and the fact that I can't rejuvenate for a new class - on the off chance they might be ready to really learn - is my great weakness.

Where We Drop In On a Seventh Grade Sex Ed Class, and Learn A Bit About A Wandering Instructor Who's Seen More than Most.

I've often been a backwards sort of a fellow. I started out skiing, moved to snowboarding, and then moved back to skiing. I grew up with a Nintendo, shifted to a Sega Genesis for a few days, and then ran back to Mario et al.

But I can't imagine that too many have gone from substitute teaching high school to grad school and then back to substitute teaching while still enrolled in graduate studies. (I'm not saying that I'm a distinct snowflake, just a rare bit of weather.)

I've not had much chance to teach upper-level students, but I've been busy enough. I've taught grade seven. I've taught dance. I've even taught ESL. I've had to press play for several films which offered some sort of teachable moment.

No matter where I teach, though, I'm always hoping that I'll have a couple of interested students bring something to the classroom setting. I've been spoiled by three years of not having boisterous disruptions in class. I've rarely had to deal with juvenile humor. And I've gained extra notions about the importance of citizenship and critical thinking from all the work that I've done. Hey, I knew that I'd have to scale it back a bit - 15 year olds aren't supposed to be ready for abstract thought, right? - but I had not expected that I'd be dealing with a mentality barely removed from kindergarten (rather than three years removed from adulthood).

But part of the fun's in the stories, right? Well, the best one's from my observation of a family life session (yes, basically just a euphemism for sex ed) with a grade seven class. After several overheads of the differences between the changes which the male and female endure during puberty, the list of similarities was posted. The loud-mouthed malcontent noticed that "erections" were listed in common for each, and asked why. After an impressively factual yet discrete description of the function of the clitoris, the student asked what the point of it was. After hearing that its role was simply pleasurable stimulation, the student loudly exclaimed, "Well, that's pointless! And gross!" I was relieved that I was not responsible for leading that class.

Would I recommend substitute teaching for other grad students, grade seven or otherwise? Well, there's less marking and prep than with a TAship - but there's less community, less intellectual stimulation, and much less maturity.

I may just be scaring a few off of post-secondary education, though - and maybe that's not a bad thing. I can't wait to get back into a real academic setting.

Scenes From a Midterm.

1. Student e-mail: “I forgot to get a blue book for the test tomorrow morning. I just wanted to let you know that I might be a few minutes for the test, if the bookstore doesn't open early. Thanks.”


2. Faceless high schooler: “I forgot to get that blue book. Do you have any extras?”


3. Three sorority sisters, in unison: “Whaddaya do if we don’t have a blue book?”


4. Compulsively smiling coed: “I completely forgot my blue book!”


5. Former valedictorian: “Where do we get the blue books?”


6. Muddled half-dressed coed: “Umm…I don’t have that blue sheet thing…”


7. Stoned young male voter: “What if I don’t have a blue book?”


8. Total stranger: “Are we having an exam today?”


9. Future Jesuit priest: “Exactly what do you mean by ‘blue book’?”


10. Future lawyer: “I don’t have my blue book WITH me, but…”

Sunday Pope-Puree. (As Was Used In A Paper This Week One of Us Had To Grade.)

• To the jock in the front row (Who apparently sits there because his coach told him he had to. Thanks a lot, Coach.): I see you. I see you rolling your eyes continuously at everything I say. I get the message that you find this class to be an unbearably dull waste of your time. I hear you. I hear your constant complaining to your teammate next to you about how boring this whole experience is. I hear your sighs of frustration. I hear your constant requests to "hold class outside." (Who ever does that, really?) I get it. You hate this class. You have made your contempt for it and me perfectly clear. I don't know why you bothered to take it in the first place. It's not a requirement for your major. So why are you here, bothering the hell out of me? Just knock it off or drop already. We'd both be a lot happier if you weren't taking up space here.


• What I wouldn't give for an ejector seat.


• What is it with the fluid replacement? Why are you all sucking on water, vitamin water, Kool-Aid, and Powerade? And what about these containers? You, dickwad, with the Spongebob Squarepants "biggie-size" tub. How long do you think class is? Do you think you'll shrivel up over the 50 minutes of class without 96 ounces of whatever it is you're drinking? And you, the Sharper Image guy, that water-backpack thingy with the protruding rubber straw is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Do you see how hard it is for you to sit still with that sloshing going on behind you. And when you suck out of the straw, do you see the drops that fall on your shirt, the desk, your notes? What memo do you people get that tells you that you must carry as much water as a typical dromedary?


• When a certain phrase or passage just doesn't fit with the rest of your paper, I usually type it into Google, find a plagiarized passage or even the entire paper, and then weep. In fact, cutting and pasting from the web sometimes results in highlighted search terms, different fonts, and mismatched font sizes that all flash like flares in the night.


• There is no law that says you have to spend four or more years of your life studying. You can make a lot of money as a tradesperson. Also, a college degree guarantees you exactly $0 per year. It is not a job license. AND, as someone from the "real world," I wouldn't hire you to wipe my cat's ass, much less to make coffee for me.


• You are not my surrogate daughter, or my friend, or my confidante. Our relationship is professional, not personal. I don't come here to "have fun" or to "hang out." I'm working here, and as soon as you get that mindset, our "relationship" is going to improve.


• I was a college freshman once, and can assure you that it's possible to take 18 hours, work full-time, get drunk and fuck every night, and make my mid-term.

A New Poster Wants To Take Something Up With Our "Go-To Student."

Teachers like the "Fuddy-Duddy" professor are my favorites and as for students like the "go-to student," well I usually want to kick their asses. Honestly.

I do have a lot of passionate professors that definitely come-off as hardasses. And with good reason! These guys know their stuff! They have years and years (and years and years) of experience to pour into our little immature minds. These are my favorite teachers and it seems always the ones my peers hate the most. Why? Well, because they don't hold their hands through assignments and course work. Because the teachers expect them to act like adults and be mature enough to manage their own time. God forbid!

Students like the "go-to" student infuriate me. Who are you to demand professors of anything beyond them standing in front of however many students for several hours (in my classes, anyways) and *still* being available for office hours several times a week just in case you have a few questions? Guess what? You are not (definitely not) God's gift to professors everywhere. You think you're not those students you talk about? The "never-shuts-up-even-though-he-has-nothing-to-say student"? I bet you are, you just don't know it. You're probably shunned by your peers because you are.

So what if professors come here to vent? Everyone needs such a place. It has nothing to do with them hating their jobs. Maybe there's a few that truly hate going into work everyday, but I think it takes a certain amount of passion and dedication to do what my professors do.

Basically what I'm saying is to lay off these guys. They come here to vent and most of the time it's pretty entertaining. I get pretty frustrated by the same students I come here to read about, but I get to walk away from them and never think about them again. These profs get bombarded by stupid emails and comments by these students all day. Walk a week in their shoes and come back to me. Maybe you'll learn a little respect for these people trying to make you a better person. And believe me, based on your post Mr. Go-To Student, you have a long way to go

What Else Can This Be Called: "The Spitter."

To the Precious Little Snowflake in the Parking Lot,

You should be thanking God or the Spaghetti Monster or whatever deity you prefer that you are not actually one of my students. When you came barreling through the middle of the parking lot this morning on your bike with no care for drivers or other students on foot, rocking out on your iPod, I'm sure it never crossed your mind that someone would actually be driving through that very same parking lot. I especially enjoyed the way you cussed me out after you almost ran into the front bumper of my vehicle. (Please note, Cupcake, that YOU almost hit me. I was obeying the rules of the road, perhaps you've heard of those before? Or maybe you were absent that day of first grade.)

While I could not hear your words, the emphatic look on your face and the frantic movement of your lips indicated you were probably inventing new and colorful descriptions for where I could shove it. But you did something that impressed me even more than your creative language. Something that made me fairly quiver in the shadow of your immense gonads. You actually slowed down until you were even with me (cursing at me all the while) and spit on the hood of my car. At first, I could not believe that you actually did this! Were you raised by wolves? No wait, that's an insult to wolves, allow me to rephrase. Were you raised by Jerry Springer guests? Do you actually kiss your mother with that mouth? Although I'm sure you (mistakenly) believe that you know all there is to know about everything, and I'm sure you are still basking in the glow of your self righteous glory (How dare I be in that parking lot while you were trying to speed through the middle of it!), let me pass along a little piece of advice to you.

It is probably NOT wise to spit on cars pulling through an employee parking lot. Professors and instructors (those who teach the classes that I'm sure you rarely attend) park in those lots. While I'm sure it will come as a shock, those are the people who often drive through and park in employee lots. Perhaps you looked through my windshield and decided that I did not resemble any of the people who teach those classes you sleep through. If that's the case, I salute your powers of perception (and stupidity). However, I will submit to you that you are awfully lucky that you are not in any of my classes. Had you been, we would have a serious problem and the remainder of the semester would not be looking good for you.

In closing, I wish you well in all of your future pursuits. I'm sure that you'll enjoy relating this story to some co-ed at an upcoming party as you try to feel her up while plying her with strong drink and distracting her with tales of your bravery against evil (but law abiding) instructors like myself. For her sake, I hope that she is not fooled by your pretty words. Clearly, your mama did not teach you anything about respecting others, so I'm sure that co-ed is better off in the long run without your inebriated gropings and the inevitable attempts at a "real relationship" that are sure to follow. If you want to have good relationships with anybody, I'd suggest you take a moment and consider common courtesy. It will serve you far better in the long run than anything of the things that you have likely avoided learning so far.

Sincerely,

An Instructor in Need of a Car Wash

The Risk of Being Real.

In response to Professor Fuddy-Duddy's question about why some of us are so concerned about what our students think and about their evaluations of us, I would like to offer an explanation.

Speaking for myself, I can tell you that I don't care what my students think of me. Not one iota. Why should I? They don't even know me. All they ever see is the professional, ever-cheerful, friendly-but-not-too-friendly professor persona I put on every day I have to go to class. However, I don't morph into Professor Nice so that the kids will like me. It's just because I believe that a hostile classroom does not make for a good learning environment, and that my own personal bullshit is, well, personal. So I really don't care if they like me.

However, the problem is I have to care about what they write on their evaluations. As I am what has been referred to as a "unmarketable, lowly, worthless slaves (i.e. Adjuncts)," good evaluations actually matter to those people who decide whether to rehire me the next year. I've heard rumors that there are places that will rehire a lowly Adjunct despite poor evaluations, but I'm not entirely certain that makes me safe from the ax.

One time that I was invited back to teach a few classes at the same college, the Chair said, "We would love to have you teach for us again; your students love you." When both of those things were said in the same breath, I was somewhat suspicious that they were related. Then when a different Chair at a different college said the exact same thing to me, I went from suspicious to paranoid.

So until I reach a point where I actually have some fucking job security (which, with the way things are going, may be never), I have to care what the eighteen-year-olds think. Even the ones who don't think.

The Fuddy-Duddy Post + a Quick Response!

I will admit to being and old fuddy-duddy in the academic wars. I taught my first college-level course in 1962.

I have read with some interest the endless caterwauling on this site about students and their entitlement. What students are entitled to is my best, my best as a professor, my best as a writer, and my best as a mentor. They aren't entitled to the kind of treatment they apparently get from their parents, friends, maids, and handservants, however.

In the 25 years I've been at my current post, I've watched the administration turn over and over in attempts to keep students happy. Not once in those years can I imagine a similar maneuver to please those of us who teach.

Long tenured and soon to retire, I don't give a tinker's dam what students think they need or want. I'm going to trust a lifetime in this discipline to guide me.

Those of who you are all tied up in knots about student evaluations and your own likability, might find comfort in another field. Why it matters so much to so many of you (via the reports I read on this blog) is perplexing. The colleagues of mine who also are of a certain age certainly don't worry about it, not one whit.

I do my job well. I still have a love for the field. I instruct and guide and those in the room who care and who work, learn. If it's old fashioned, then so be it.

---

I'm a third year professor at a large state school in the South, and I want to say that Prof. Fuddy-Duddy is my new hero.

I have struggled with my profession ever since grad school, and his post today has had a freeing effect on me. I'm going to trust myself, my knowledge, my 20 years of college, and my experience in the classroom. I've jumped through the necessary hoops for a PhD in my field from a good school, and - although I've been cowed into not admitting this in the past - I know what I'm doing!

Prof. Fuddy-Duddy's simple and elegant explanation is the fuel that's going to keep me going in a job that I've questioned since the beginning. His note about being tied up by "likability" concerns cut me deep. I've been so worried about my students approving of me, liking me, that I've catered to their concerns, the concerns and needs of 18 year olds who simply don't have the background I have in the study of History.

I have their needs in mind. I want them to succeed. I want them to learn and be better students and citizens, and I've been prepared for this job. I am going to do it the way I think it needs to be done starting today. No fear, that's how I feel. Prof. Fuddy-Duddy has taught me today, just like I'm sure he's taught thousands of students in his long career.

If you could, please send a shout-out to him for me.

Our "Go-To" Student Arrives Just in Time To Save Our Sanity, And To Make a Request To Meet Him Halfway.

Okay, I get it. It sucks hard to lecture every day to a class of largely unmotivated, uninterested students, who probably haven't done their readings at all and almost certainly haven't retained much if they have. I understand that's why you pause for painfully long intervals, waiting for someone to finally chip in and contribute something. And exactly because I understand, I'm usually there to throw you a lifeline. Partly I do it for myself, because I'd rather steer the conversation towards something (I find) interesting. Partly I do it for you, because I'm sure the silence is more painful from up front than it is from my row in the class. Yeah, you sure as hell know me. I'm your go-to student.

Now, let's get something straight. There are students who have a lot to say and very little to contribute. They make your day suck and they don't make mine any better either. But trust me when I say I know the difference between a go-to student and a never-shuts-up-even-though-he-has-nothing-to-say student. I know I'm not the only go-to student around. Once in a rare while there are a couple of us in a class. Then we can share duties, look less like over-eager spaniels, and you can really relax for a change. I'm sure there are many classes with no go-to students. I don't know what those feel like, because I've obviously never been in one, but I imagine they drag like a sack full of hammers.

So now that I've identified myself, let me make my request. Meet me halfway, okay? Enough with the bitching and moaning about how all of your students are uninspired and don't hang on your every word. Did someone once tell you that life is like a box of chocolates? They were lying. All chocolates are good. Just some are better than others. Life isn't like that and in fact you have to eat a lot of shit along with the chocolate. Your great achievements in scholarship, and your PhD, don't insulate you from this basic reality of life. Maybe you hoped they would, but then you learned otherwise. Now you're bitter and you spend your time on Rate Your Students feeling all sorry for yourself. Well, get over it.

Meet me halfway, that's all I ask. I'll do my bit to interject some life into the classroom when you pause hopefully for discussion, and you do your bit by doing your damn job. Come prepared, with a reasonably positive (or failing that, at least professional) demeanor. Don't half-ass your way through things just because you wanted the chocolate orange crème and somehow ended up with a cashew nut instead. The students who aren't paying attention to you anyway may not notice, when you stop trying, but I do. The very people you count on most, to relieve the tedium of your most boring lectures, are the few who notice when you figure it doesn't matter anymore.

And by the way. Yes, I know other students think I'm lame for participating in your class, and for giving a fuck about what you teach. And yet I still do. Unless you live all alone in a hole underground, you surely understand that whether it's fair or unfair, reasonable or otherwise, it sucks for me to know the large majority of my fellow students are going to scorn me for my contributions, sooner than appreciate them. So pony up in return. It's the least you can do.

One of Our Chief Correspondents Offers Some Reasonable Thoughts Concerning Our Ongoing Series of Posts About Student Email.

Do we really "have" to answer e-mail from students? Check your faculty handbooks: I don't, at my university. I usually respond to student e-mail within 24 hours, and almost always within 48, the way I tell my students on the first day of class I'll do. I don't always, though, because sometimes I don't think I should.

I'd like to contest that faculty should "Never ignore a student email, no matter how ridiculous it is." One example of e-mail that faculty clearly should not respond to are anonymous love notes from students. Sexual harassment is grounds for dismissal even if you have tenure: I delete messages like this immediately, they're dangerous to have around.

I've never received a love note from a student with a name on it, but I'd delete it immediately, too. It's difficult to prove you didn't just hit the "d" key accidentally. I certainly wouldn't e-mail the sender back!

Threatening e-mail, of course, should be forwarded immediately to the campus police. They can do any responding necessary better than I can, or should.

E-mail that's merely angry, but non-threatening, I often delete upon receipt. I think that's a good policy for angry e-mail from anyone, not just from students: responding to it can make things worse.

No one has to put up with abusive e-mail, such as "Eat poop." Forward it to the Dean of Students: even my Incompetent Dean of Students agreed that, if one said something like this to staff at a fine restaurant or hotel, they'd refuse to serve you, and university faculty should have the same rights.

I usually answer trivial e-mail as professionally (and as concisely) as I can, if my many other commitments aren't looming (or if RYS isn't funny that day). For example, if a student asked me what kind of notebook to buy, I'd reply with "You'll need to decide for yourself: get whatever works best for you," since it doesn't matter to me.

Illiterate e-mail, including text-ese, I respond to thusly:

Dear Knuckles,

I'm sorry, but I don't understand your e-mail message, because it contains at least 5 typos on the first line. Serious e-mail needs to be formal, like a business letter. Doing otherwise is bad for clear communication, which is the whole point of e-mail, isn't it? This includes e-mail to any boss, customer, client, consultant, or professor.

If you aren't sure how to use standard grammar, punctuation, and usage, see The Elements of Style, by Strunk and White. Always check your spelling with your computer's spelling checker, or a dictionary. If you need more help, I'd be glad to help you during my office hours.

I know that it's common for students to send sloppy e-mail. Make no mistake: sloppy e-mail makes you look bad. It can also be bad for your grade. Please rewrite your message correctly, and send me the new, corrected version. If I understand it, I will do my best to answer any questions you might have.

It Seems Like a Long Story to Tell Just To Get To the Funny Locution of "Pee Mail," But What Else Are You Going To Spend Your Time On?

I knew it was coming when students began to have email access to their professors; and the administration loves this 24-7 office hours way to keep students attached to profs at the hip.

Although I limit my email sessions, it still is annoying as hell to "have" to answer the inane emails I receive. I can say it in class, refer them to the syllabus (what's that?), and even send out informative emails to students, but dear God, I still receive emails asking for more clarification of what I have just said, countless times. Each email appears to me as if they are asking: "professor, how do I pour piss out of a boot?"

What I really wonder is how these students found their way to campus. Or how they enrolled. And these are graduate students at a very competitive big-city university, by golly, Jethrine.

In the early 70s when I was a student in college, it was different. I didn't act this way and neither did my fellow students. Come to think of it, if we had acted this way, our professors would have become blithering idiots or laughed themselves silly while pointing and cursing at us. But today, we are just supposed to accept this lazy, stupid, crop of students and try to make it through the semester without appearing as if it is driving us up a wall. Talk about your cover ups. I think someone needs to investigate why there are so many stupid student sin universities. But bless their little hearts, they do know how to turn on a computer and send pee-mail.

Achy Breaky Yearns For a Real Job.

Newbie, learn from my mistakes: those gut feelings can turn into lingering aches.

I am not an academic. I stopped at a master’s degree because I wanted to avoid academia. I only knew I wanted to write, and ignored the realities of living. So what the hell am I doing here at unionized two-year Microcephalic Tech for a 20th year?

I took their bribe. The top of our pay scale is over 90k (no lie; it’s a matter of public record), with spectacular benefits, and six figures are easily attainable with a couple of summer assignments. I gave myself ten years to try to like it here or try to figure out what’s wrong with me. But I’ve matured enough to accept that, rather than giving a man a fish or teaching him to fish, I’d rather give him a fishing rod and tell him to find a fishin’ hole. Still, I gave myself the previous five years to drink the Kool-Aid until retirement.

What do I want? I don’t know, but I do admire those who WORK. While my colleagues bemoan any curriculum change that might result in a technical student “never having to read a piece of literature!” most of them have never read their cars’ owners’ manuals, let alone done plumbing, machine work, welding, or even computer work—all of which require vast amounts of skill and intelligence. What utter bullshit! What hubris! I’m sick of those who find anything they cannot do unimportant.

Just once I’d like to be sent on a trip paid for by the company, have my meals picked up by an expense account, and maybe even have a business card. I’d like to stop for a beer after work with the guys, talk about football and cars, and maybe have a day when I actually do some creative problem-solving that shows tangible results. I’d like to think that there is a possibility of promotion. I’d like to do some of those things my wife always does.

Now it may be too late to do real work. Other companies wouldn’t touch me when I last tested the market, despite my willingness to take a pay cut to half my current salary. I’m sitting here collecting a fat paycheck and benefits for “teaching” what amounts to seventh-grade English. That makes me a prostitute. I don’t like that feeling. And so, seven years before I can retire (at 55—yeah, I know, another perk), I am once again marketing myself as a copywriter/editor at less than half my salary, hoping that I can have one of those days I long for. Wish me luck.

But, to those who say just quit, why? Out of some vague, altruistic sense of duty to turn my job over to those gasbags who get a charge out of teaching our semi-literate students to sit, beg, and roll over? Are they more deserving of employment because of emotional attachment? Well I wanna catch passes more than Randy Moss. So what? What naïveté! I had it once, but economic reality effectively quashed that.

Where Someone (Finally) Takes Us Seriously. (Oh, Make Sure Nobody Tells Him That We Don't Actually Live On a Compound.)

Why are you freaking out about the template? Who gives a damn? Did you really think that people come to your site for the artistic enlightenment that they may glean from your layout? Really? If so, you are far more delusional than most of the students you complain about.

I'm sorry that you turn students away to spend time on the meaninglessness that is the background of your site - it is both a testament to their misfortune and your stupidity. I get that it isn't easy to moderate a site that can get 100's of responses on any given night...but really, where the hell are your priorities?

A Response To Yesterday's Newbie.

But all I do - it seems - is cajole, beg, and babysit. I don't feel that any of my students want to be here, to learn, to read, to move along. They are insolent and lazy to a degree that stuns me. If I make remarks to colleagues, they say, "Oh, it's always been that way."

- from yesterday's post.

Whenever I hear the term "oh, it's always been that way" I remember how the Bronte sisters went out to become governesses and found the children of the aristocracy to be spoiled, stupid, and generally loathsome. The sisters then raced away from these "real-world" jobs as soon as possible and then submerged themselves into their imaginations and gave the rest of us some very good reads as a result.

When I went out as a young professor, my advisor gave me the best advice ever: "Remember that students will never understand what you are doing for them." The unspoken part of that sentence is: "unless they become teachers themselves someday." Now that I am instructor, every time I meet myself as a student - overeager, grade-grubbing, overparticipating - I shudder to remember what a big fat dork I was at that age. Were you not a dork? Man, if not, that must be tough. Because having been a dork has given me the grace to recognize the weaknesses of youth, like laziness and arrogance, and not take them terribly seriously.

Over time, you'll find a strategy for dealing with the insolence and the laziness if you stick with teaching. How you do so, I think, represents a crossroads in your career as a professor. You can either a) continue to cajole and babysit, focus on how beneath you those behaviors are, and become bitter; b) learn to just treat cajoling as part of the work and just get through it; or c) realize that trying to get everybody to like you or your subject is futile, refuse to either cajole or babysit, lay out your expectations, enforce them, and then ignore the whining, excuses, lies, and tantrums like a British nanny with a spoiled toddler. It sounds like you are at a research institution, so (c) is actually an option for you. I obviously don't recommend (a).

Someone Off the Tenure Track Reaches Out to Yesterday's Newbie. The "Cowboy Up" Post.

The Newbie isn't just naive, he or she is just seeing the post-postgraduate world for the first time. Okay, he or she is also a little ungrateful.

Imagine my situation. I, too, went on to graduate school, not just because I was interested in writing fiction and doing it better, but because I wanted to teach others. I wanted to be part of a community of educators in an intellectually rich environment. I wanted to be a professor.

"Don't worry about publishing," my new grad school mentors told me, "publishing will come." And so it has, a little at a time. But the shit really came spewing out the back of the fan when I graduated with my MFA and obtained, immediately and against all expectations, not just a teaching job but a full-time teaching job. Adjunct, all composition, but hell--a FULL TIME FUCKING JOB, right? Teaching! I got the job over scads of my former classmates (all of whom started hating on me.) And because I'd come out of this idea that I loved teaching, that teaching writing and learning writing and doing writing were all part of the same lovey-dovey symbiotic process of communication and conversation, I didn't care that my course load was a little higher and my pay was a little (okay, considerably) lower than the "real" professors. I was teaching! I was a teacher!

Weeks, then months, went by. Classes were okay. The schedule was okay. Sure, my students shared with other cattle an instinctive unwillingness to do happily something they'd been forced to do, but we worked through it. There were good bars near campus. But when I wrote e-mails to my old professors or stopped by their offices, I found them just a little less excited to see me each time. I started noticing what Newbie noticed--that while I was excited to be allowed to work with students (undergraduates, no less), these people--my models, my heroes--wanted to *avoid* students. Some of them--the best of them, actually--treated their jobs not as a mandate from a Great State to shepherd a new generation into an intellectual or artistic tradition but rather as a subsidy for their market-unfriendly publishing careers.

I suddenly remembered that as a graduate student, my colleagues and I had been charged with teaching the entire undergraduate creative writing curriculum... everything short of the senior seminar. Then things got worse. Conversations about the lack of support for teaching turned into impromptu interrogations about my benefits package and whether or not I was "cheaper than the grad students"-- whose numbers, I learned at a meeting, help justify new tenure lines. "Yes," I said, snippily, "and I'm a better teacher, too."

My former creative writing students wanted to take independent study--not normally offered by faculty, outside the existing, limited curriculum--with me, and I offered to do it for the department for free. No dice. Apparently the system needed protection from rogue, student-centric elements.

The University System is openly hostile to the attitude that it should concern itself much with educating young people. But because you, my Newbile Friend, have at least a tenure line to protect you, you don't have to be afraid that your colleagues will choke your promising career with the tatters of your one-year contract come May if you do any or all of the following:

1. Propose a new undergraduate course that will provide an opportunity that your anti-teaching colleagues aren't offering.



2. Attempt to subtly shape the curriculum from inside meetings at which you, as a tenure track member of the faculty, are invited to participate and vote.



3. Involve undergraduates in your research projects as the sort of awe-inspiring learning opportunity that catapulted people like me (and maybe you) into graduate school.



4. Agree, or volunteer, to teach undergraduate courses that your colleagues would happily leave to fools like you, or else unfortunate dues-paying grad students, or else unmarketable, lowly, worthless slaves (i.e. adjuncts).

Research and publication might still be the only things that will count toward your eventual tenure. but I doubt that the four things I’ve suggested will piss off anyone enough to make them fabricate a case against your scholarship.

As for quitting—before you get carried away with what your family will think, think yourself about the adjuncts who might yet be toiling in your department, teaching because they can, for half your salary. What do you think my family says about my non-home-ownership-caliber job, or my stubborn insistence that I keep it? You can leave, and we won’t begrudge you for finding the anti-teaching atmosphere stifling. But we will also add a notch to the board where we keep track of tenure-track pussies.

Cowboy (or –girl) the fuck up, and make the changes you’re allowed to because your name starts with “Professor.” Are you “innocent” in this war? Maybe. But as of now, you’re one of the good men (or women) who do nothing.

Where Recent RYS Poll Results Make The Moderators Think About Throwing Themselves Off Any High Building on Campus.

If you look above at today's poll, you'll see that most people couldn't care less about our endless template machinations. It's the worst news we've received - well, since we heard Britney was ordered to give the kids to K-Fed today.

We turn students away from our door regularly in order to mess with margins, fonts, colors. We have paint chips we've stolen from a Home Depot that we hold up to the monitor as we try to carefully put together a graphic experience that will thrill and inform. But to what end? You mean you're just here to read the smackdown? You don't marvel - like we do - at the aesthetics?

Next you'll be telling us that you don't care about our lovingly-crafted titles to the posts, or the artsy-fartsy graphics. That really would be the end for us.

We have so little joy. (And you wonder why our new logo is a margarita glass...or several.)

A New Correspondent Shares Some of the Normal Disgust Concerning Her "Special," Most Favoritest Student.

Okay, dude. I totally get it. You don't give a fuck about my class. Not. A. Fuck.

It was hard to decipher. At first I thought you might have some kind of medical condition. But I think I've finally managed to decode all of the eyerolls, the guffaws, the "that's obvious" comments, the chronic tardiness. You're telling me you don't care. But it's more than that, isn't it?

It's not just that you don't care. It's that you don't care because you're so damned special. I have to say, you are certainly joining an elite group of students who have not cared about my class in the past. Two of them quit college altogether (I know because their advisors emailed me). Several more have failed. And, yes, even more have passed and gone on to lead normal lives where they get jobs without an even passable understanding of written communication or analytical thought. Who knows what "special" group you'll fall into?

But here's the thing. Could you either A) just give it up now, or B) keep your specialness to yourself for a while? It's not so much for me. I can take whatever you can throw at me. But you see that girl next to you, the one taking notes and listening while I talk? Or the guy next to her who always has his book and a comment on the reading? See, they're clearly not quite as special as you. They are ignorant enough to still think they can get something out of this class. Crazy, I know.

But do you mind if we humor them for now? Because when you verbally blow off the questions that they are trying hard to answer or laugh at their comments, well, you kind of seem more like an asshole than the special, special person we both know you are.

A Newbie Looks For Answers.

A prof from a small research university in the southwest sends this along:

I have to confess that I've been pretty naive about my career. I am in my second year of my first tenure-track job and I've already lost all hope for the profession. I don't feel comfortable asking my colleagues, since I don't want them to know that I'm struggling. So I thought I'd turn to the professors who read RYS.

• I was under the impression that teaching would be a good job, one that would make me feel good about myself. I wanted to help students learn the material, wrestle with the concepts, and move forward. But all I do - it seems - is cajole, beg, and babysit. I don't feel that any of my students want to be here, to learn, to read, to move along. They are insolent and lazy to a degree that stuns me. If I make remarks to colleagues, they say, "Oh, it's always been that way."


• I know it's not my business in many ways, but many of my colleagues focus all of their energies on their own research, often to the detriment of their students. I know I should hardly complain about this given my revelations in point #1, but it bothers me. What is a university if not a teaching and learning institution? I went to a grad school where the professors did research for the express purpose of being better models and instructors for us. They did research that they could turn around and help us with. What happens here is that profs run to their offices - or never emerge at all - and do it all for tenure, promotion, and minor ducats.

I feel hopelessly innocent in this war. For nearly a dozen years all I thought about was being a college professor, and now I can't imagine going past next May. I read about other careers, browse Monster.com, and think about a new career all the time. But what on earth will my family and friends think? What was this Ph.D. for? Why did I go into debt for it, lose my lover for it, uproot my 3 year old for it?

I just feel that I was wrong about everything.

Template Thanks!

We owe a huge debt to Sara Devil. She's a firecracker from a far-off land who helped us get the newest version of the RYS template up. We love the design, and thank her endlessly for lighting a fire under us.

Of course we'll be messing with it as time goes by, and someday soon we'll scrap it all for another design that nobody but us will like. This is our way.

But for now, we send hosannas to the east - we think - and tell her thanks! We'd buy her a margarita if we could.

Someone New To RYS Helps The Kids With Their "Days of the Week."

To those of you who said “I wasn’t here on Friday” when I handed out a quiz based on Friday’s discussion:

I know you weren’t here on Friday. That’s why I’m giving this quiz. It’s really just for you, to show you I was serious when I said on the first day that “Friday’s aren’t optional” and later when I said, “I’m going to start giving quizzes so the people who come to class on Fridays can get credit.” You should have interpreted that as, “I’m going to start giving quizzes to screw over those of you who can’t be bothered to come to class three days a week.”

Quit looking at me with your mouth hanging open. I know you can’t fathom the possibility that we might have done something in your absence, but we did. We somehow muddled through without you. Now put on your big kid panties and take the damn quiz. You can, if nothing else, fill in the blank that says “Name.” I think.

Template Under Construction

A lovely reader from a far-off land is helping us with a new template. We don't know what we're doing, but this site should be undergoing a major transformation over the next couple of days.

We don't understand it, but it sure is swell to have readers who will help for free.

Kisses,
RYS

Students Don't Just Piss Off Profs, Or, We Always Thought Librarians Were Kindly.

I work in the main library at my college. The students you professors deal with in your classes? They come in and talk to me, too. Usually late at night, when my patience is at a minimum. I have a few words for them that you might appreciate.

Freshman with the homework due in TWO HOURS: No, I do not know what your professor wants you to do for your homework assignment. I realize you're supposed to be learning how to use the library. I think that's an excellent endeavor, and I would like to thank your professor for insisting you learn this. That means YOU must do the assignment. I already know how to use the library.

Senior who has never used the library before: You shouldn't be so proud of yourself for that. I now automatically think less of you.

Angry undergrad who has $257 in fines, a paper due tomorrow, and a bus to catch in 3 minutes: I still can't check that book out to you. You need to pay down your fines. Really. I know you don't have the money, but maybe you should have thought of that before you lost that other book last year. Maybe you should have also considered starting this paper more than 12 hours before it's due. Maybe you should have even considered reading the book more than 12 hours before it's due. I hate to break it to you, but me checking out this book to you is not going to help you that much at this point. It is not my fault you have poor time-management skills.

Surly graduate student who views looking a book up himself to be below him: It is not my job to look call numbers up for you on the digital catalog. You are a graduate student; shouldn't you be smart enough to figure it out yourself? I mean, you drop words like 'semantics' and 'postulating' to show me how much smarter you are than I am, right? Go look it up yourself. I have faith in you.

To everyone else: The bathroom is down the hall, the coffee shop is in the back, and no, you can't use your cell phone here. IT'S A LIBRARY.

One Way They Love to Torture Us.

My current institution has this series of "Excellence in Teaching Seminars." In the most recent one, the winner of some award or other will explain how staid, boring classrooms are a thing of the past, and what we now seek to create are - you guessed it - Active Learning Communities.

That, my friends, is only the beginning of the inanity. The focus, you see, is always - always - "on individual students," demonstrating neatly that the author has never had to teach a 700-strong first-year bio class. Furthermore, in addition to zooming in, sniper-like, on each individual, we are "honoring what they bring to the classroom" (not paper or pens, then) as well as engaging in "techniques for putting them at ease." Incense, maybe?

Of course, not once in the whole manifesto is it mentioned exactly what responsibilities the students have as their part of the deal, or how we are going to actually transmit information to them so that they leave the course with something a little more substantial than having been put at ease for a semester.

I could rant further, but you must excuse me: I think I have to go and honor what I brought for dinner by putting myself at ease as part of an Active Eating Community. I really feel like it could be a positive digesting opportunity for my stomach.