No Baby on Board. Seriously.

I am in my mid 30s, getting married soon, and don't want children. Never have (I realized this when I was 15), never will (no biological clock ticking). I teach anatomy and genetics. I am well versed in the inherent risk of pregnancy itself AND they fact that being in my 30s make genetic abnormalities more common. I won't change my mind; please stop telling me I will and then giving me "that look" as you walk away. This goes for everyone.

I am tired of hearing my colleagues say "When children come along..." and smiling. When I once mentioned that I didn't want children (trying to stop those comments) I got back "Well, you'll change your mind." Thanks for letting me in on your fortune telling skills. I also get "So, you don't like kids?" Yes, I do like kids. I love my nephews and friends' kids. I have decided that with my life and goals that children would get screwed in the deal. I am not willing to risk not being a good parent for the sake of my career and vice versa. I do not believe that all women can have it all. I am one of the people who made a choice about what is important to me (isn't that we tell our students to do - make a choice and follow through?).

Then, I get the students' (often unsolicited) opinions. A new mother says, "If you had kids, you would be more sympathetic to my situation." Thanks for the tip. Sometimes I get "Do you have kids? / Do you plan on having kids?" I understand they are trying to be nice and develop a good relationship with me; they just want to be friendly and be recognized on a personal level. What I don't get is the follow up series of questions after my standard reply of "It's a personal decision I choose not to discuss." I get a speech (particularly for non-traditional older students) on how I am missing out on life if I don't experience the joys of parenthood.

It takes a toll on my patience to hear this from my colleagues and students. It's worse when no one listens to my polite replies that make it obvious that I do not wish to continue the conversation.

So, for all the pregnant professors that are being tortured because they are pregnant know that you are not alone. It seems we'll get grief no matter what our choices are.

I'd like to thank my one colleague who actually said "Good thing you know what you want. Having kids is not easy and not always fun, and you shouldn't do it if you aren't 100% committed to the cause."

Grady Gets His Ass Handed To Him Like It Was His Hat.

• Yes, you're right. I don't like you. You are too pretty. That's exactly why I keep telling you to shut up. Because you're too pretty. I'm jealous of your youth and vigor and ability to stay up all night while not doing any studying for my class. I am a mean bully who uses grades to get students to like me and to punish those that aren't my exact clone. I dislike your "high-spiritedness" because what you call high-spirited, I call gossiping in my class and not paying attention to lecture or to the task at hand. And yes, I mark your tests and papers lower because I hate you and not because your answers are wrong.
  


• Ah, the grade whore....I could swear that I have 5 or 6 of you in my class each semester. Let me fill you in on something, sweetheart. I have enough self-esteem that I don't need to demonstrate my intellectual superiority through a self-righteous power trip. If you think it makes me giddy to slip a "B-" into the box instead of an earned "B" just because I thought someone was too pretty or too smart, then you have self-esteem issues of your own: delusions of grandeur.
  


• Get over yourself. If your professors tell you any grade is possible, they mean that it's up to you to EARN your grade. And it is. You earn your grade; I grade according to what work you've put in. Your personality (or lack thereof) has nothing to do with the number at the top of the page. It does, however, affect my willingness to write letters of recommendation for you. But since you're too pretty, you won't need any of those. Oh, and if you were "a little too smart," you wouldn't need to take my class.
  


• Are you kidding me? I never wait until final papers are due--I assign final grades about a week into the semester and then adjust the marks for each paper to fit that grade--you little twerp.
  


• Your question makes you sound like you are some kind of super keener know-it-all who is not only a grade grubber, but also an attention whore. Maybe you are so busy being "too pretty" and "too smart" to realize that you are not getting the grade you think you deserve because you really didn't deserve it. Oh, and to answer your question, no, I never give grades as punishment. I don't "give" grades at all. Students earn (or don't) them.
  


• If you were a “little too smart” you would realize that the only thing that will get you a bad grade is being pretty stupid or pretty lazy. You seem to be under some misguided belief that I have a bag of grades and I start handing out A’s B’s and C’s at my own discretion. You earn your grade buddy boy, I don’t give it to. If you are too stupid to read the assignment, or to lazy to do it correctly don‘t come crying to me that you didn’t get your “A”. There are plenty of student’s that I don’t like, there are plenty that I do like. There are some I don‘t think belong in college. However since I am a fully formed functioning adult I am able to set personal feelings aside and grade the assignment not the student. If someone I dislike turns in crap work and fails I look at it as karma biting them in their self-entitled ass!
  


• I don't use grades to punish someone because I don't like them, unless I don't like them because they're a plagiarizing, Wikipedia-copying moron. I spend so little actual time thinking about how much I like or dislike individual students, that the idea of punishing a student because I don't like them is absurd. And the suggestion that we do that regularly or even often is downright offensive. I have given bad grades, however, to students who are borderline and act like absolute assholes. That seems fair to me.
  


• Students often claim this, that we grade arbitrarily -- and it's a load of crap. It's an excuse to take responsibility off the idiot who can't put a subject together with a predicate, or memorize ten technical terms for a quiz, or read a book and look up the words you don't know. In other words, if you get a bad grade in my class, or in the class of most of the profs I know, you are an idiot. Nearly a vegetable, actually -- like a rutabaga, the tasteless nasty kind of vegetable no one likes.
  


• I tried to answer this with the best pedagogical tools—get the student to thing, turn the situation around, etc. My goodness was I disappointed. I asked, “Would a student give an instructor a bad evaluation because they didn’t like him? Would they get in the way of his success because he’s too smart, or not pretty enough?” You bet. I’ve received evals trashing me because I don’t iron my shirts, or because I insist that students learn vocabulary—in short, I receive punitive evaluation just about every term and there’s nothing I can do about it. Well, regardless of what my students do in evaluating me, I can assure you that I am always conscious of when I dislike a student, for whatever reason. I always ensure that my personal dislike for the student doesn’t enter into the grading process. In fact, I generally go out of my way to accommodate the asshats in my class, just to keep myself in check and to be sure everyone gets fair treatment.
  


• Sweetie, let me explain it to you as slowly and clearly as I can: ifyou earn low grades, it is because you don't do the work, don't apply yourself, and also don't give a shit. If you're too busy checking your manicure and re-arranging your hemline for the 1000th time in a50 minute class period, that's probably why. If you stopped twirling your hair long enough to take notes, or put down your compact mirror long enough to glance at the text, you might earn higher grades.Honestly. If you stopped using every waking minute of your day to plan out how much cleavage to display in the next week, you might find time to study.
  


• Many assignments have a certain amount of subjectivity to them. For example, there is no objective calculus for determining when an essay is worth a C rather than a C+, worth 66% rather than 67%. I can't speak for others, but when marking such assignments I tend to err on the side of generosity. However, when students are disrespectful or cheeky, this generosity goes out the window: these students go into my "shit list", and their assignments are given the lowest possible mark which is still nonetheless a fair assessment of their performance. Don't kid yourself that you can get put into the "shit list" for being too high spirited, too smart, or too pretty; you get put there because you've been an asshole.

"Uh, So, Can I Rewrite This Or What?"

As I told you all in class, please don't question my grading--I have a graduate degree, you are fucking useless. I use a rubric that a goddamned hamster could make a fucking A on. You have access to said rubric via the course website--provided you knew how to do anything other than play on the Facefuck. Furthermore, I'm grading now just as I did in the Fall. You should be used to this level of rigor--it's really more like rigor mortis of the fucking brain.

If you elect to share your grade with someone, that's your business. If someone elects to share his or her grade with you, that, too, is your business. However, DO NOT call my teaching ethics into question by hinting at, implying, insinuating, or otherwise suggesting that I sway grades to those students that I "like." If by "liking" any particular student, you mean I talk with that individual during, before, or after class, then I "like" a lot of folks--especially your mom. On a personal level, I do "like" a lot of students, especially the ones that work hard, come to class, and don't play on the myface during class. I like the students who understand that "time" doesn't equal "effort," which is to say that just because one spent "all week" on an assignment doesn't mean one has spent quality time working on that essay (by this I mean coming to see me, going to the Writing Center, etc.).

Staring blankly at a computer screen (or surfing the web) does not amount to effort in terms of writing--you need help 25/8/366, bitches. I am particularly intrigued by the fact that those people who met with me outside of class scored, on average, about 15 points higher than those of you who elected to go it alone. Do remember, too, that I took time out of my schedule, away from my family and my own writing, to meet with folks on two different nights at local off-campus venues. I sat alone much of both evenings--but then again, you dumb-fucks are sitting alone right now with a thumb up your asses because you can't fucking string two coherent thoughts together, can you?

Not a single person who scored low on the essay did so because of me--you did so because you're a lazy piece of shit. I have already talked to several of you--and I became dumber in the process--, and each person has indicated that he/she did not spend as much time on the essay as he/she should have--you, lazy fucking prick.

To paraphrase the old office adage: Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part. We might go one step further and say, perhaps, that poor planning on your part does not mean I show favoritism. Are we clear, dipshit?

Grady the Grade Whore Asks This Week's Big Thirsty.

Q: I have all these profs who tell me they won't stand in my way of grades, that they are happy to see me succeed, and that ANY grade is possible. But then they use grades against me as a kind of penalty for behaving too "high spiritedly" or for any number of other things. I know the answer already, but have any of you RYSsers ever "used" grades to get back at a student who was maybe a little too smart, a little too pretty, or who you just didn't like?

A: Send your responses here, and don't beg us for this kid's dorm room number.

At Least Students in a Classroom Can Be Reached With the Mighty Throw of an Eraser, Or Winged By A Wicked Sidelong Glance.

Several years ago, I became one of the first profs at my institution (large community college in the Midwest) to teach a course online. Now I regularly teach 3 sections online and 3 on campus and as a result, contemplate suicide at least twice a semester.

Seriously, though, I'm about to lose my mind. For three consecutive semesters, I've had at least one student in an online class post incredibly disrespectful and disparaging comments about me on our online board, as if I would never read them. This is not only disturbing to me, but other students complain as well. I currently have one who seems to think she can teach the class better than I, and she finds it necessary to make underhanded and snotty comments whenever and wherever she can--of course, never directly to me. Only to other students.

In all cases, this behavior started after I pointed out an inconsistency or a lack of logic on their part in a discussion post. They're lashing out because they can't take being corrected in public, despite being told at our orientation that any corrections to discussion postings are made publicly so that everyone in the class doesn't continue with the same misconception. I tell them that if they are uncomfortable with public correction, then an online course is not for them. And yet they forge ahead, only to become whiny babies when that happens.

And of course, I have to be the professional, never allowing myself to be goaded into a flame war. Usually I just delete their idiotic messages and send them a private email reminding them of the student code of conduct, but I feel that I'm teetering perilously close to the edge and am about lash out and squash one particular student like a bug. And feel good while doing it.

"Dude, This Semester Just Got Longer."

Dear class,

After telling you to focus on a particular essay for class today, imagine my delight that only 2 of the 25 of you were able to answer the two plot-not-concept-based questions I gave as a reading quiz. And here I thought the cause of our halting, stumbling class discussion lay primarily on my shoulders.

I don't know which of you warmed my heart more: the darling who wrote you "didn't get a chance" to read the essay, or the sweetie whose answers were clearly based only on the essay's title. I enjoyed this experience so much, in fact, that I plan on replicating it next class, and the class after that, and the class after that, until your responses change or the semester ends and you all end up failing.

Honestly, I don't know which of the two I'd choose over the other. Lucky for me, I don't have to.

Hugs and kisses.

Vicodin Vic Says, "I Only Use the Booze to Wash It All Down!"

I ask only one thing of you, bring enough for me. The next time you attend class drunk and high on Vicodin, I hope that you will share. Who likes to fly alone, not me, so I say take me along.

Since it is a course on emergency care, maybe we can use this as a practical exam. Maybe I can explain the pharmacodynamics of that nightmare combo. We will share that moment, a true teaching experience. This would be better than taking that same class period to review exam materials and answering students’ questions. It would be a real world experience, information applied. And you thought you wouldn’t get anything useful from this class.

In fact, bring enough for the whole class. Didn’t your grade school teacher tell you that you could only have a treat if you brought enough for everyone? So I say let’s all enjoy the benefits of modern pharmacology and distillation.

Bring enough at least for me, though, so I can kill the pain of dealing with you and your intoxication. It might help me with the headache I have because of your behavior prior to kicking you out of the classroom. It may relieve the suffering I endured as a result of your denials, despite having admitted the details of your “good times” to your fellow students. I know that Vicodin and booze can relieve even the greatest of pain, and I know your suffering (truly).

Next time if you bring enough for me, I will be too stoned to care about your boorish behavior.

Barbie the Bitchy Bear from Boston Is Bellicose.

When did RYS decide to become yet another place where academics can write "essays" that are thinly veiled self-congratulatory missives about defining success for yourself or a being a role model? I hate to be mean (well, no I don't), but these posts read like as the always snore-worthy First Person columns from the Chronicle. Where are you people getting these posts? Rejects from the Chronicle are they? Decided to become a glossy woman's mag or a Lifetime movie, have you, RYS.

First, Successful Sally. I got two words: Who cares? Here's an addendum: Get a real problem. Successful Sally wants us all to know that she's world-class and it's not just that she thinks so--simply everybody tells her so. She's so tired, tired of being desired, she is. When she goes to a conference, apparently, she walks by and the Big Dogs from the Big Unis whisper ruefully to themselves: "There's the one that got away." Some people don't move just because they are happy; some people don't move because they don't have the guts. Wow. I just took 18 words to say what it took Sally ages to say because I left the out part where she plays with her ego in public. Can't we do that shit in private? Wouldn't that be more dignified?

Then today we get a little self-referential memo on Humanizing Ourselves by somebody who likes to think of herself as a Role Model. And she finishes off by saying the Rest of Us Can, Too. Gotcha, chief. Let me be clear: I congratulate anybody who shows leadership. Good on ya. Way to go. Glad you're doing your job. Guess-y what-y? I'm doing my job, too. Honestly?!

Where is the snark, people? Where is the smack? If my students are any indication, they don't need me to "humanize myself." Most think of me less as a God or a Scholar and more like a pizza delivery guy who shows a remarkable disregard for their demands in the light of the fact that "they pay my salary." Humanize, indeed. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know I can inspire and change lives. I've done it. And that is powerful when it happens. But it loses its power and mystery the more you talk about it. Duh. This place isn't called "Rate Yourselves." I already have to sit through endless meetings where my senior faculty compare CVs like junior high boys compare willies.

I'm holding on by my fingernails here. I don't need sincerity from you. I need to laugh now and then. WTF????? When did you people lose your sense of humor and start deciding to become a forum for Improving Missives?

WHERE'S WALTER??????

Humanizing Ourselves.

I work as a program director at a small college with a large African-American population. The population is also largely female and somewhat disadvantaged.

I am an African-American woman. I am also a member of a prominent African-American sorority.

After my first year, I started wearing my sorority lanyard. I don’t often wear paraphernalia, but for some reason, I wanted the lanyard (I had to go out of my way to get one. We don't recognize Greek organizations on campus. Although students can join a city-wide chapter.)

Since I’ve been wearing it, I’ve noticed a difference in the way the students view me. It’s almost as if they do a double-take. It’s like all of the stereotypes of Greeks flash in front of their eyes in that nanosecond. Here is an attractive, professional woman who might have a “past.” She might have actually had a few too many drinks in one night, partied her ass off, HAD SEX PRIOR TO MARRIAGE!!!! And she’s a director now. (Ok - to be honest, that all still happens, but I digress!)

And I hope their next thought is, “I can do that, too, someday.”

I now wear it continuously because I feel it enables me to be a role model. I hope it says to the students “Have all the fun you want - because God knows, I did - but don’t forget the real reason why you’re here.” I think it humanizes me. I think it helps students (regardless of whether or not they’re actually in a sorority) see that we academics aren’t just people who tell you what to do. We’re people, period. We have lives (both past and present!)

Maybe it’s because I deal with an "at-risk population," but I do think that we should try to humanize ourselves more to our students, whether it’s through a humorous "life" story in class (relevant to the material - of course), or wearing Greek gear, or having "personality-revealing" junk in the office. I don’t want them to be my friend (never that!) but I want them to know that they are able to achieve what I have achieved. I want them to know that I am not an academic machine, I once had a life (probably more similar to their present life than they might actually think) and look where I am now. You can do that, too.

Four More Under the Bus.

Napping Nancy:
You offer insightful comments in class. You do the work. You take notes. And then sometimes you put your head on your desk and take a nap. And that makes me want to throw pencils at your head. Cut it out.

Secret Agent Stewie:
I don't know you. You don't know me. This is not a good sign. Every so often your work appears in my mailbox. Are you in the Witness Protection Program? Are you in training with the CIA? Are you invisible, faceless, or vampiric, only daring to tread out under the dark cloak of night? These are all intriguing possibilities. Also intriguing? The fact that if you miss one more class you won't have to deliver your secret missives to my mailbox anymore; you'll fail.

Jabbering Janie:
What a talker you are. You love the jibber-jabber. You love it in class, you love it via email(s), you even love to fill my lonely office hours with the thrilling sound of your voice (what else would I do, work?). Had I but world enough and time, dear, I would just love to listen to your every spare syllable. But the thing is, I have neither. So, why don't you just let me know if you ever hit on something important.

Shiny Steve:
So you're not the brightest bulb in the box. Who cares? You've determined that if you're not the brightest, you may as well be the shiniest, haven't you? Making lemonade, and all that good stuff. While I appreciate that you're planning on your charm, boyish good looks, and silly smile to get you through the rough patches in life, I would also appreciate your turning down the dial while you're in class. Yes, you can turn almost any group you're in into the Place to Be. Fun times! But while you reap the rewards of your shine, everyone else around you gets just a little dimmer. Stop bringing everyone down to your level.

"Success? Well, it's Me."

• I'm with Successful Sally. I did my BA at a top-25 R1, my JD at a top-10 law school (on a Gates Foundation scholarship, no less), and people constantly ask me (and my similarly-educated lawyer husband) why we're in such a podunk place at a community college and a small law firm respectively. Oh, I don't know -- 40 hour work weeks? 10-minute commutes? Plenty of responsibility and work freedom right off the bat? A house with a yard for under $120,000? "My kid has a T-ball game" as a legitimate excuse for leaving work early? Routine media appearances in local outlets? Sitting on the boards of directors of local organizations a mere three years after we arrived? Drinking with CEOs and state politicians? Being wooed by our U.S. Senators for our "opinion-making" votes? BIG FISH, SMALL POND, PEOPLE! Success is what makes YOU happy, not what others define it as, and Sally is smart and way self-actualized for realizing that. I'm much happier in my little town at my little school with my little house and child-friendly community than I would be somewhere bigger and "more exciting" with a fancy name and a grueling schedule featuring years of trained-monkey work before I got to do anything fun.
  


• Pass along my support to the writer of "Success" from yesterday. I'm in the same situation, Ivy League but slumming (relatively) in a state school in a backwards part of the country. But I don't let anyone's perception of me define me. I'm a dynamite teacher and researcher, but I prefer the classroom and all my Ivy League education taught me was that it meant putting students second and research first. Well, that may be success for the a-holes who (barely) taught me, but I have different goals. So I came to this job in a far-off land (the languages, the foods!), and don't regret it. Sure, I have a number of schools that would snatch me up in a minute, but my success is not tied to my pedigree. Instead, I like the pace of my life where I am. I set the terms of my success, not the freaking academy.

We Envision Lots of Locked Doors In Front of This Student.

Today after studying for a little bit I went to go take the trig final with a couple friends and when we got there a little after 6P.M. we found out that the labs were closed. Since this is our first test due on a Friday none of us knew the labs closed early.

How were we suppose to take it when the labs closed at 6pm? If there is any way possible for us to be able to take the final so our grades aren't hurt to bad we would greatly appreciate it! Well thanks for your time and I will be looking forward to hearing from you. Sorry for any incontinences.

Who Decides What Our Success Should Be?

I earned my Ph.D. two years ago and took a tenure-track job at a teaching college a year before that, while I was still ABD. I have a strong and interesting research agenda, and my teaching college has been very good about supporting my conference travel.

Every time I have a prominent role in an academic conference, however, it's only a matter of time before the questions begin.

"Why are *you* at a teaching college?"

"You're still watching the research university job listings, right?"

"How long do you really plan to stay there?"

My answers involve stating that I am happy where I am, and that I enjoy a nice quality of life through my current arrangements. But in response to these answers, the judgments (couched as compliments) begin.

"But you're such a good scholar. You deserve better than the job you have."

"You received such fine training at [Reasonably Good University]. You were prepared for an R1 job. You're wasting it where you are!"

"We have a great position open at My Prestigious University, and we only want the best. You should apply. I'll advocate for you."

When I demure and say no thanks, not now; but I'm keeping up with my research, so maybe someday; the threats begin.

"You better watch out. Every year you stay at a teaching college, it'll become that much harder for you to make a move."

"You should have no loyalty to your current institution--or any institution, for that matter. They'd drop you in a second, you know."

"You think now that you're going to stay productive, but just wait--in that kind of environment, you won't keep up with your research. You won't be publishing anymore before long."

Over lunch at a recent conference, I had this very conversation with yet another well-meaning senior scholar. These conversations always throw me off center. On a day to day basis, I am very happy at my current job. I try to resist dominant definitions of what makes a "good" academic job, because the "prestige" that comes with the "good" jobs, which meet the formula for "success," isn't necessarily a motivator for me. But these people--these senior faculty members--boy. They are like high-pressure salesmen. I see through their strategies, but they are all motivated by good intentions, so it's hard to be mad at them. But they really do mess with my mind. It's stressful.

I shared this complaint with an empathetic musician friend. He commented that in music, too, there are very rigid rules for what constitutes "success"--and he lamented that too many musicians he knows have done everything right, and still wind up waiting tables. "At least," he said, "there are more secure jobs for academics than there are for professional musicians."

But I pointed out that just as musicians can do everything right and wind up waiting tables, so too can academics. The problem is that landing the good job is only part of the equation, since tenure is never guaranteed. Academics at the R1 gigs can follow every single rule, excel in every category, and STILL be denied tenure for vague and non-contestable reasons. And so in only six years, the life you've been slaving away for is no longer yours to keep.

So who are these senior scholars to tell me that there is only one path to "success" in the academy? Can we not define success for ourselves? After so many years of education, I certainly hope we all have the critical thinking and analytical skills to judge what is right for ourselves.

Besides, why should I put all my eggs in the same basket that they've been using, when the risks seem higher and the struggle for job security substantially harder? I don't trust their basket! It's been around for at least 20 years now, and the game has changed since they were granted tenure all those years ago. Hasn't it?

Listen. It Sounds Like You Might Have Been A Little Pregnant When You Wrote This!

I am just so pissed off by this attitude about being pregnant while teaching classes because it's symptomatic of a bigger problem -- students don't think instructors are, or are entitled to be, normal human beings. How selfish of us to have the lives of any other normal working adult!

To start, I have two youngsters of my own and continued teaching while I was pregnant with them. In fact, I planned my pregnancies around the academic year (they were both born in June) so that my classes wouldn't be impacted by such an inconvenient thing as birth and I could spend all summer home with them. How selfish of me! How fricking, selfish of me! What was I thinking? How dare I want to eat and pay rent while pregnant? What was I thinking? God forbid I save some cash to live on over the summer while I'm tending to newborn babies. How utterly self-absorbed that was!

I don't recall having been "erratical," moody, or crazy while I was pregnant. One of my faculty is currently pregnant and she seems just the same to me, too. But let's just say, for the sake of argument, that a woman is a little distracted or out of sorts during part, or all, of the 9 months that she is pregnant. According to some students, and apparently their proffie-mommies, anyone with a distracting condition should just take a leave of absence while they work things out. How compassionate it would be for us to lay-off people who just found out they have cancer, had a loved one die, are going through a divorce... no, no, no, not compassionate for these people, but for the students who would not be getting the best from these distracted professors. How utterly selfish of us to support our colleagues and treat our professors like human-fucking-beings with the normal life events that everyone goes through.

This whole discussion just reinforces my feeling that many students just don't understand that college instructors are normal human beings with normal human lives and normal human feelings and normal human situations, problems and distractions. We are not automatons or robots who cease to function when you don't need us, nor are we at your beck and call 24 hours a day -- I know my students have this image of me monitoring my email account with religious fervor awaiting their messages at 2 am.

We do not exist to serve you. And even if most students don't actually believe this, I strongly get the feeling that many of them think that we should, or at least should have taken some kind of vow of abstinence of a normal life, like joining the academy is like joining some kind of monastery.

Someone Needs a Hug. But Compound Rules Forbid It: "No Hugging, No Learning, No Running By the Pool."

• When you emailed me after final grades were posted, I thought maybe you were writing to thank me for bumping you up to a C when you really deserved a D. Instead, you were asking me to meet you at the Waffle House at 7 am to pick up your late paper--you know, the one I told you I wouldn’t accept after the last day of classes? I know now that I was wrong. I should not only have met you, but bought you breakfast as well.
  


• When you first informed me that you made A’s in your high school English classes, I thought you were merely offering unnecessary information--just like you always do in your essays. Six paragraphs of unnecessary information. And whoo, how hard it was not to laugh when you informed me that English courses are only required so that students can up their GPAs because English was a “bird course!” Now I realize that I should have just given you an A in my class, since, of course, your high school grades should always be transferred over to every single class you take thereafter, and every other English teacher on campus was easy.
  


• You made me want to sing Cake’s “Never There.” You turned in three essays and claimed the fourth was Lost in Cyberspace (insert dramatic theme music). You swore that the last one was stolen by a drunken roommate, and you couldn‘t find your other copies because your jump drive melted when you “accidentally” left it on the stove. When you told me that I was required to give you an A because you had to keep your scholarship, I laughed at you, but inside my head I was screaming, “How the hell did you get a scholarship to begin with?!” I now realize that I should have commiserated with you about how hard it is to keep funding, then given you your A.
  


• So you plagiarized. As you so tearfully informed me, who hasn’t? Statistics say 115% of people do it, and if everyone does it, it’s ok. And after all, your mom said it was ok too. Honestly. I really do feel bad about what I did to you. You see, I didn’t recognize the skill and intelligence it takes to cut, copy, and paste from the first website that comes up on Google when you input “William Shakespeare -- My Mistress’ Eyes Are Nothing Like The Sun.” I should have appreciated your explanation that you were providing career training by testing my ability to catch you (Thanks!). I also didn’t realize that reporting you for plagiarism was unfair because you seriously didn’t know you weren’t supposed to do that, I mean, you are only a college sophomore, and, like, it really hurt your self esteem and stuff. I now realize that you having a high self esteem is much more important than you having ethics, and from here on out I’ll never turn students in for "cheating" again.
  


• You pitched a bitch at least once a week in my class. You informed me that your brother, who teaches AP English, looked over your paper and said it was “cool,” including that three paragraph conglomeration of definitions from the Webster’s dictionary and your opening statement that “Everybody hates feminists.” You rolled your eyes at every statement I made, and when I was saying nonsense like “This is how you cite a journal article in MLA format,” who can blame you? You told me--in front of everybody--that all of the assignments were just busy work that I made up so I could feel more like a “real” teacher, and that my lectures were “boring” and “wrong.” And you know, in retrospect, I think I agree. Asking you to write a research paper in a composition class? Telling you about the argumentative fallacies and asking you to learn complicated terms like “comma splice”? What was I thinking? (See, I did learn something from your habit of stringing 25 rhetorical questions together in the intro!) I now realize that, when you wanted to segue masterfully from the rhetorical strategies of an essay on the Milgram experiment to your love for The Notebook and that hottie, whosit, "Ryan Gossett Jr.," I should have remembered that students already know how they will learn best, and that you were simply trying to provide quality educational discussion to your classmates. As you informed me nearly every day, you and the state were paying my salary, so I was a public servant. That meant that I should have been more in tune with your needs. I now know that my standards mean nothing, and that proper procedure is to tune my expectations to your desires for an easy course.
  


• And to all of you who, last semester, decided to shout over me for the entire class period that Tuesday, no matter how many times and ways I tried to professionally get you back on track? I’m sorry for my assumption that anything I had to say might possibly be important to you. Next time, I’ll just calmly sit there and smile while you discuss your weekends and your asinine (I mean, totally awesome) frat party. As long as you ignore the Thorazine and Valium I’ll be eating like M & Ms, we’ll be cool.

How to Stop the Belly Rub.

Since I have had six kids while doing all sorts of things (newspaper editor, rocket scientist, and playwright and guitar teacher), it is with some experience that I say this: get over it, lady.

People are trying to be NICE to you most of the time. Unfortunately, the OPEN communications touchy-feely tap was opened in the 60s, so the belly rub earth mothers will be belly rub earth mothers, won't they?

However, if your work ethic is professional and your attitude is one of low key, yet JOYFUL expectation--glowing and cheerful--you might find your paranoia unnecessary. Nothing succeeds like a good attitude.

Pregnancy is not a disease, but a condition that could (and in most cases) probably should be prevented!! As they say, timing is everything. Not to mention: Location, location, location.

As far as the other pregnant teacher whose students were so rude--they would probably be rude to you if you WEREN'T pregnant because you don't seem to have good control of your classroom (the village idiots, in particular)--so read RYS for some tips on smackdown - -only please open the box of "Comebacks" marked "Industrial Strength." Use freely.

A Super-Keener Math Lesson!

Classroom of students = boring
Classroom of students + 1 keener = annoying
Classroom of students + 2 keeners = really annoying
Classroom of students + 2 keeners who hate each other = weeks of entertainment

This semester, I have the dubious pleasure of being graced by two of my department's most well-known keeners in one class (a class of only seven students, by the way). Both are your typical "suck up brown-nose" variety of keeners: they read the book with a magnifying glass and can recite each chapter verbatim, they agree wholeheartedly on anything with anyone who has a PhD, and they give dirty looks to students who "dare" to have a interpretation of the data that's different than mine (read: the students I actually like). Anyway, at first, I was dreading the prospect of being crushed under their combined keening prowess.

That fear went away after the second or third class. Now I don't know what it says about me as a person, but I've just found so much enjoyment watching these two bicker back and forth and undercut each other's every attempt to make themselves shine. I don't even mind the fact that each of them has been in my office more than once this semester with the exact same complaint that I should "probably put a stop to [the other keener]'s disruptions."

The irony of these complaints has just been comedy gold to me. I don't like to throw around hyperbole, but I think this may have been the best semester I've had in my teaching career. The only real concern is making sure I balance my time pouring gasoline onto their fire with making sure I actually teach the material to the rest of the class. Such is life.

A Poopy Potpourri for Neil.

• Since you’re already braced for “smackdowns, sarcasm, and irony,” you’re saving me the time I would have spent constructing a thoughtful, polite, and serious response to your self-pitying blather. With that in mind.....GROW UP!! You ARE expecting too much. Other people have lives too, and they might just be too busy and too self involved to structure them around what’s best for you. If you want your dissertation teacher to make introductions, show a little backbone and ASK HIM to do that. Schedule a meeting with him to discuss your career prospects, think of things you’d like for him to do on your behalf and discuss them with him. Be proactive! Nobody else gives a crap about your career but you, so take charge of your own destiny.
  
  
• Repeat after me, everybody: "Maybe, it's me." Maybe the sun doesn't happen to shine out of each and every one of our assholes. I'm not playing favorites here, profs and students can all join in. Have we really hit the point where every setback and disappointment in life is somebody else's fault? Guess what, life involves dealing with people who either don't like us or don't give a flying fuck about us. Sometimes, it just might be our fault. Even if it's not, what's the point in sitting around and waiting for other folks to change? Neil, if your advisor is really such a famous and cool guy, it seems to me that your ticket ought to be written already. Make it work for you. I'm guessing here, but if the attitude you show in this post is typical, there's a chance he's grown tired of your unwillingness to pull your mouth off his teat and go forge your own way in this world.
  


• Oh dear, you poor thing. Women like that--the "Now, now," approach. Men want an action plan. So which are you? What advice would you give a student with such a complaint? My prof isn't doing enough to help me. Well, to paraphrase a dead pope: Pray like everything depends on someone else; work like everything depends on you.
  


• One of the things you should have checked is whether or not your advisor makes the effort to place his grad students. Take me, for instance; I pretty much suck at being a researcher, but my advisor knows everyone and greases whatever palms are necessary so I'm pretty much assured of a plum post-doc like the rest of his grad students. It makes picking up his dog's poop a little more tolerable.

One of Our Chief Correspondents Replies to Neil on the Culture of Neglect.

Dear Neglected Neil,

You might have to face the possibility that your advisor just doesn't think very highly of you. If that's the case, I'm sorry. There are also limits on what even Nobel laureates can do for their students: rarely or never can they "get" you a job working for anyone but themselves, because the job market is so tight.

Nevertheless, the culture of grad school is often a culture of neglect. Consider the time many people go to grad school, from when they're 22 to when they're 28 or older. These are often referred to as "the best years of one's life," the time when relatives are most loudly telling one to get married, start a family, and "get a real job."

Consider the crowded job market for so many fields in academia. Consider the shift from permanent, tenured positions to temporary, freeway-flying adjuncts, without benefits or even offices. Consider how grad school can narrow one's prospects: having a Ph.D. can make one "overqualified" for many jobs that pay well.

Consider how few incentives there are for one's grad school mentors to stop taking so many students. Ten or twenty years ago, they might have been able to feign ignorance about the job market, but they can't credibly do so now. It's not good to filch away someone's youth and leave them with nothing but a handshake. Other professionals, such as physicians, dentists, and lawyers, are more assured of a good job because their professional societies set high standards that enforce population control. Why don't we do that?

Consider how inadequately many grad schools prepare their students for even the tenure-track jobs they want us to get. Several RYS posts have mentioned how often grad schools make no attempt to train grad students to become teachers, or even give them much practice with basic public speaking.

Consider how we have to meet so much higher standards than our professors did, who came up when academia was rapidly expanding, in the '50s and '60s. Consider also how the idea of holding so many of our students to even our old professors' standards seems comical.

This is From One Of Our Favorite Readers. So, We're Posting It, Even Though We Don't Have Any Idea What It Means.

There may be several explanations for why Neil's advisor isn't networking for him. He didn't give us a lot of information, but here is a possible model:

---

Dependent variable: Advisor's failure to introduce Neil to people Neil wants to know.

0=Introduction, 1=Failure to introduce.

X1: Assholery.
Expected sign: +
Conceptual relationship with dependent variable: Advisor could be an asshole who thinks only of himself. This variable may be highly significant and may interact with the other possible explanatory variables.

X2: FailedSuckUppery.
Expected Sign: +
Conceptual relationship with dependent: From the way Neil's message begins, it suggest he, like his advisor, is a bit an entitled ass--only unlike his advisor, Neil is without the research chops and/or power to back up the ego. The first paragraph, disdaining us on cliches, further suggests Neil has a problem with authority projected onto the body of professors for having what he doesn't have--a job. As unfair as it is, there is only room for ONE ego, easily bruised or otherwise, in the advisor-advisee relationship, and that ego is the advisor's--especially if your advisor is the type of person that Neglected Neil's appears to be. You see, the academic hierarchy, though many of us deplore it and comment on it endlessly, hasn't gone away, and an inability to navigate it can hurt you. Badly. As it may have done here. In academia (as elsewhere), sucking up is a job skill. Especially with a self-centered boss--oh how rare are they--that you'd like to go out of his way to attend to your needs.

X3: GoodStudentNeglectSyndrome
Expected sign: +
Conceptual relationship: Advisor doesn't think you need the help introducing yourself around. My advisor would take his other PhD students under his wing and introduce them to people, but I was never included. I finally asked him about it and he looked at me like I was crazy. He said: "You used to be a consultant. Nobody works a room like you do. I'm not going to baby you through something you can do better than me when I have other students who need my help more."

X4: DiminishingReturnsofConferenceIntroductions
Expected sign: +
Conceptual relationship: Advisor realizes that luminaries have hopeful PhD students shoved at them all the time, and it's really quite useless to introduce your students to them most of the time--unless you can take them to dinner or really do something to make them stand out. I'm not a luminary by any stretch of the imagination, and even I have trouble remembering all the PhD students shoved at me at conferences, and I sincerely try to do so.

X5: PriorCommitmentHurriedness
Expected sign: +
Conceptual relationship: Advisor is actually a nice fellow who made a prior commitment in that other room that he was already late for. Advisor failed to realize that Neil is the most important thing in advisor's life right now, and went to honor that other commitment. This variable may be interacted with X4 and X3.

X6:LuminaryMutualHatred
Expected sign: +
Conceptual Relationship: Advisor may hate the other luminaries; the other luminaries may hate Advisor; or they may all hate each other in a mutual concatenation of loathing. Advisor may have the sense to know that young Neil will not benefit from his association with advisor vis-a-vis the other luminaries in ego-laden dance of despisng; Neil may, in fact, be better off forging his own relationships with luminaries who may come to appreciate him despite his youthful association with That Jerk/Hack who advised him.

---

So, Neil there you go. I hope "ass" is somewhat fresher than "snowflake" as you've made it clear to us all you are the genyooine real deal in thought leadership. Go out there and start hustling the room for yourself. Set your ego aside; quit making your problems with authority obvious to one and all; start the grand project of sucking up for five more years (ah, the road to tenure); and get those publications sent out if you haven't. Having your luminary prof on your first publications will boost your Google Scholar hits, and you'll appreciate that at tenure time.

And before you accuse me of being "part of the problem" and "reinforcing the power structure," let me suggest that this is not about being "fair" or "right." This is about getting you what you say you want--a job. I didn't invent the power structure: I only interpret it and tell the truth as I see it.

Neglected Neil Is Not Getting Enough. (How About a T-Shirt: "My Mentor is a Rock Star, And All I Got Was This Lousy Ph.D.")

I'm ready for the smackdowns, the sarcasm, the irony. I'm ready to be called a brat, or naive, or a snowflake, or whatever other clichéd term is floating on RYS these days.

However, I have to ask this question because not knowing the answer is killing me: Is the culture of graduate school a culture of neglect?

I'm a recently minted PhD, and I can't get a job. I know that is not uncommon, but what bothers me is that my dissertation director is extremely glamorous. Everywhere I go, I hear about how wonderful he is, how great his latest book is, how if only he were running for President the world would be a better place.

The problem for me is that, from what I can tell, he hasn’t done jack for me. On two separate occasions, he had the opportunity to introduce me to other glamorous professors who could potentially become professional contacts for me. Did he do so? No. Instead, he left those rooms to fly off to some random conference somewhere beyond the reach of the sun, where I'm not even a blip on his radar.

I feel neglected, disillusioned, and just plain angry. Shouldn't our advisors be doing more for us? Am I expecting too much?

We'd Have Gone with "Big Fat Liar...Boogity Boogity BAM!" Where a Future Doc Gets Caught Up in the Web.

I had a student who failed to hand in a medical exemption note for missing a December exam, and who also missed a makeup exam in January, despite:

1. Posting the details of the makeup on a 'class announcements' thread in WebCT in Dec


2. Personally emailing every student who missed the exam at their contact email account about the makeup details. The original makeup date being cancelled due to security failing to unlock the doors the morning of the midterm, such that:


3. I re-advertised the makeup makeup date in class, on WebCT, and again via email to each affected student.


4. Big ass text in glowing red font on the course webpage, my personal research webpage, and the course WebCT page, detailing all the procedures involved in submitting a medical exemption note.

I received the following email from the wayward student: "As it is my first year, I was unaware of such procedures as my sickness came unexpected. However, I did email the instructor at that time which was __, who did not reply back. I also went to the office to make an appointment with the adviser, but he was not in. Furthermore, I went to the office and I was provided with a medical form but I couldn’t get a hold of any professor to fill it out for me. I didn’t understand how to read the discussion forum in WebCT to understand how this process worked. During the holidays, I went away on vacation so I could not contact you."

I was impressed that the student managed to squeeze in so many excuses in such a concise manner. The first line had a phrase that was copy-and-paste from the standard petition response written by the academic petitions committee, which, in its infinite wisdom to avoid being bogged down by whiners, gives a blanket amnesty to every first-year student submitting a petition because, "being a first-year student, you may have been unaware of procedures and responsibilities blah blah blah". So, I knew this guy was actually an upper-year student and familiar with "the system," and was hoping to squeeze in through the cracks.

From the litany of excuses, I realized I'd have a heck of a time addressing them all, because in this day and age one has to bend over backwards to satisfactorily rebut every single ludicrous statement uttered by a student who's trying to evade responsibility for being a moron, otherwise the petition committee will rule in favor of the student.

Luckily for me, and unbeknownst to the student, WebCT has 'student usage statistics', from which I gleaned the fact that the student had accessed the WebCT discussion forums several dozen times, contrary to his assertion that he didn't know how WebCT worked. I hit the 'Print Screen' button, emailed the student the image showing what a big fat liar he was, and then stated that he'd get a zero for the midterm because he was a big fat liar (actually, the wording I used was "your statement was less than truthful" ... being factually correct yet blunt and direct with students apparently can result in a successful academic petition), and it this went to petition I'd be sure to highlight the discrepancy between his statements and what WebCT had to say about things.

I then added this student's name to the list I keep for doctors/dentists/lawyers etc. to avoid in the future.

The Wisdom and Whining of Snotty McSnotleigh. More Pregnancy Insight Out of the Mouths of Babes.

Your recent post regarding the pregnant professor couldn't have been more timely for me. I was recently sitting in an on-campus cafe doing a bit of reading before class when an undergraduate student approached me and asked if she could share my table. I said yes, and she plopped down in the seat across from me and started flipping idly through her coursepacket.

Thank God a friend from her next class showed up though, so that she didn't have to actually, you know, read anything. I tried to tune them out while they whinnied about how hard the class was, and how neither had yet to do any of the assigned readings for it. Now is that correlation, or causation? Hmmm. But I digress.

The topic turned to their professor, and how 'ridiculous' she was for expecting them to have read 'everything' for each class, and how ludicrous it was that she wanted to discuss the readings during each seminar. "She's just crazy," my little snowflake shared with her friend. "Because she is pregnant. I will NEVER take another class with a pregnant professor. Its selfish of her, really, because I had heard this class was sooooo good with her, but her being pregnant and going crazy ruined this class, because now she acts all erratical."

You know how women get - all erratical! What a selfish prof, to get pregnant like that, and ruin a good class for her students.

But it gets worse. Normally, I would have just smirked to myself and forgotten about it. Karma is a bitch, and I figure that in about 10 years, my tablemate, Snotty McSnotleigh, is going to get a nice dose of the reality of being a working woman and a pregnant woman at the same time. However, it was the final sentence in her explanation that broke me a little inside.

You see, Snotty told her friend that she had already discussed the problem with her own mother. And it turns out Mama McSnotleigh agrees that a woman can't teach during pregnancy, because pregnancy makes it hard to think straight and makes women crazy, and it isn't fair to her students. And, as Snotty pointed out, her mom should know - after all, her mother is also a college professor.

A Sprinkling of Links.

• Spring Break, Raising a Roof. From the St. Tammany News.


• Freshmen and Writing. From the Tufts Daily.


• Fewer Guns on Campus. From the Rapid City Journal.


• More Guns on Campus. From TheBatt.Com.


• Campus Paper Plagiarism With a Twist. From alt.true-crime.


• Nearly All Proffies Can Afford to Go to Stanford Now. From the LA Times.


• Cheating Culture. From the Santa Clara.

At the Compound We Have Spring Break Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Some Replies to Big Thirsty.

• On my spring break I'm going to: freebase crack cocaine while listening to my Garden State soundtrack, skinny dip in your parents’ pool when they're asleep, and input your email address into gay porn websites. You know, the usual.


• As a response to this week's Big Thirsty, I would like to share my typical Spring Beak. A few colleagues and I go to a conference in Ireland (we go to a bar named O'Hanrahan's). Sometimes, we arrange funding for a grad student or two to attend (we buy the first round). The keynote speaker at this convention is Professor Jack Daniels of Old No. 7 University in Tennessee. I'm especially excited this year because Dr. Johnny Walker of the University of Kilmarnock is going to discuss the visible color spectrum (focusing mostly on the difference between red and black, but also the blue and green labels... err, spectrums). Also, I should have time to get reacquainted with my old college chum Pierre Smirnoff. We spent many a cold night together in our dorm room trying to get that 15-page paper done. Good times....It's tough to work (drink) so hard but, hey, I love what I do (if the mild euphoria of drunkenness counts as "love"), so I'm will to put in the extra effort. If you'll excuse me, the next session is about to begin and I really need to use the bathroom before hearing Dr. Beam's presentation.


• I wake up bereft of joy and happiness, because I know no student will be coming around unannounced to my office that day, requesting a grade bump from a B to an A+ in order to get into dental school - a request to which my standard reply is "NEVER! I crush you like bug! Bwha-ha-ha-HA! Now, get out!" God, I get a huge rush from doing that.


• I take this opportunity to drive fast on the highway, snort PowerAde through a straw, get my crazzies out while not having to spend a moment thinking about you. Oh, and I eat Klondike bars as if it were my last meal, and I reveal the whiteness of my belly to the sun for the first time since September. Oh, and I take your essays to my local bar and show them to people. We all need a laugh, after all.


• I, for one, schedule my papers to be due after spring break because I don’t want to spend spring break reading papers. I want to spend spring break drinking margaritas and partying with las senoritas in Cancun. Unfortunately, I’m old and lame and therefore I will probably spend spring break doing research for and writing my next astonishingly boring article to submit to academic journals so that I can keep my job. That’s sort of more important to me than your hedonism.


• I sit around on my fat ass eating truffles (of both the mushroom and chocolate varieties), pounding single-malt whiskey, and catching up on episodes of "House" and "Grey's Anatomy!" I mean, don't we all?


• Since most of our students have spend the term drinking too much and sleeping it off the next morning (during class time), we take this as our opportunity to do the same.
  Some of us will get together to discuss you, our delightful students. Mostly we share stories of the battle this term, such as the student who said "I'm too smart to get an A in this class," or "I failed this class last time because I was really bored."


• Spring break? Oh, do you refer to that week I spend buried under piles of administrative bullshit, grading, managing the affairs of my out-of-state aged mother, and trying to figure out how the hell my family can get through the summer without paychecks?


• Some of us drink copious amounts of alcohol. Not the Busch Light swill you’re used to drinking but real beer and hard liquor. We need it. A week away from some of you snowflakes is a like a week WITH sunshine. Oh yeah. We’re also writing those exams you won’t be studying for while you’re on break. Some of us even give exams just before the break so you don’t leave 3 or 4 days early to extend your break. Anything we can do to inconvenience you is fine by us.


• We catch up on school work, research, doctor's appointments, home maintenance, car repairs, and errands; every now and then, we may even get to work in that golf and a beer. Or television and chocolate. Or whatever. But, rest assured, we're not thinking about you.


• I catch up on my task of writing horrible reviews of my colleagues on ratemyprofessor.com, and giving myself glowing reviews.


• Like, you know, we ‘proffies’ do like other, you know, required stuff, like writing articles and like submitting grants and stuff you know, so that we can keep our jobs, you know. Maybe spend, you know, some quality time with the kids, who like are also on spring break. Or maybe we like spend some time, you know, plotting to make students’ life a living hell, you know, because that is what we do, just think about students all the time, you know. And uh, that’s like why like I made sure the university scheduled my final exam for like 7 am, just to piss you off. Or that is why I made sure that like the department made this women’s class like required, just to, you know piss you off so you can sit in class, like glaring at me the whole time and like making hostile remarks. So that is pretty much like what I do over break, yea, that and my weed whacker…cool.


• Most of us junior folks spend summer, winter and spring "breaks" working on what we don't have time to do during the semester--our writing and research. You know, the stuff we need to do to get tenure (and which some of us enjoy more than doing the daily song-and-dance for the zombies who populate our classrooms)? But, hey, thanks for asking! Think of me, will you, when you're sucking tequila off some dude's/dudette's rock-hard abs!


• I have the time to finish making my voodoo-doll of you and go to a sewing supply shop to buy those big-ass sewing needles to repeatedly skewer up your voodoo-doll rectum.
  

"Yes, Please Step Right Up and Rub My Belly. And Make Sure You Leave Me Some Names You'd Like Me To Consider." Some Replies to the Pregnancy Post.

Yesterday's pregnancy post was astonishing all around. I had none of these comments. My students were supportive and helpful through both my pregnancies, and put up with my habit of eating ice cream bars in class throughout. I assured them it was for the calcium.

I'd like to offer a few answers to the appalling student comments on pregnancy:

"that means she got laid X months ago you know!"
Answer: "What are you, twelve?"

"When were you going to tell us?"
Answer: "Why, were you planning to help with the delivery?"

"We have a right to know, you know!"
Answer: "Why?"

"Nothing against you, but if I'd known I would have dropped the class."
Answer: "Get help. Seriously."

"you want to watch how much weight you gain!"
Answer: "You know, vanity is the least of my concerns right now."

---

I'm pregnant as well, so I feel your pain. I've actually had less of a problem with students than I have with other people in the office. I did tell my students at the beginning of the semester, even though I was not really showing yet. Surprisingly enough, they have not really seemed fazed by my pregnancy. Sure, I've had a couple of comments. I coughed a couple of times one day (choked on some water) and one of my students asked if I had "that pregnant lady disease." We never could quite come to an understanding about what that meant exactly.

However, the situation in my department is a little bit different. Perhaps I should preface this by stating that I am a Ph.D. candidate, not a regular faculty member. I was terrified about telling my adviser or about anybody finding out because our department is not particularly child-friendly. Luckily, when I did "come out," it did not go quite as badly as I had expected. I have a feeling (and I've heard) that there are those who are certainly not pleased and who feel that I'm probably throwing away my career (you know, that I won't finish my degree now or that nobody will want to hire someone on the "mommy track"). Having that pressure hanging over my head has been difficult.

Additionally, everyone in the office feels the need to comment on my pregnancy now. Recently, one of my colleagues gave me my very first unsolicited belly rub in the middle of the office. I suppose I should at least be grateful that she asked first, even if she didn't wait for an answer before rushing up and groping me. Regular office greetings now consist of, "Well look at you." People seem to be unsure about whether I'm actually showing or not. Half the time I get, "Wow, you're really getting big!" The other half of the time I hear "You barely look pregnant," in a tone that implies I'm somehow not doing it right because I don't "look like a pregnant woman."

Apparently, lots of people were absent when they explained reproduction and pregnancy in school and thus they aren't aware that you don't sprout a basketball belly immediately upon becoming pregnant. They also seem to have gotten the idea that it's okay to make suggestions about everything under the sun. The naming discussion is the worst. Everybody's got an opinion about what I should call my child, even the people who don't know me very well.

Not everyone is like this; there are several people in my department who have been very supportive. However, it's certainly not easy, but then I've heard that it's often not easy for pregnant women in any part of the workforce. I know people are talking behind my back and most of that discussion is not particularly nice. It's not fun to hear that you're now expected to fail. It's also not nice to have everyone feel free to comment on your "unfortunate" state. I've tried to make sure that this wouldn't interfere with my work.

My baby is due during the summer so that I won't have problems with my teaching schedule. I'll be ready to come back to school full-time once the fall semester starts. I'm in good health and have not had to cancel a class yet due to my "condition."

---

I am a cranky and misunderstood older professor and I am uncomfortable whenever our private lives lap over into the public pool. I have a full life, a wife, children, a home in the country, friends, hobbies, etc., but none of it is fodder for my students or the colleagues of mine who are not my friends.

I feel terrible for the sorts of things our pregnant peers have to put up with. The examples in yesterday's post have gone on in similar forms at my own institution, and I always felt terrible for the expectant mother. I don't want someone rubbing my enormous belly, so I can't even imagine how my past colleagues have put up with this so gallantly.

How about this for the future? If we want students or colleagues to know about our private lives, we'll tell them, all right? If my hair is receding, I'm not interested in your "bald cure." If you see me smoking a cigarette between classes, I'm not interested in how your Uncle Harry had a horrible end from lung cancer. And if you see a female colleague starting to show, mind your own fucking business unless she wants to tell you the good news.

Is this really so hard to understand?

The Big Thirsty: "Well, First We Get Together as a Group, Do Our Nails, And Talk About You."

Q: What is that you "proffies" do during Spring Break? I know you almost always arrange for papers and tests to be due right AFTER Spring Break. So, do you just take time off like we do, or do have conferences or something to do? My roommate's dad used to be a teacher, and he used to always brag about golfing, using the weed whacker, and drinking beer.


A: Send responses here.

Pregnancy in the Academy. "Why, Yes I Am Expecting. Now How About Joining Me and Baby In a Beer?"

Pregnancy, I am now discovering, is the time in a woman’s life when her insides bulge outward on display for the whole world to see. Unfortunately, this means my students feel at liberty to make even more personal and hurtful comments than they did previously. Some examples:

• About a month ago, one of my students noticed my just-starting-to-show belly and whispered to his group “You know, that means she got laid about X months ago.”
  


• A week ago, in the computer lab, I realized my expanding belly was right at the students’ eye levels as they sat and I walked around the room to assist them. As I approached one student, he kicked back in his rolling chair and said too loudly, “Whoa, you’re pregnant!” Knowing him to be a bit of a misogynist, I ignored him and pointed out something on his computer screen. He ignored me right back and demanded, “When were you going to tell us that you were pregnant? Don’t you think we have a right to know?” I was stunned. He added, “Nothing against you, but if I would have known, I would have dropped the class.”
  


• Yesterday, one of my oh-so-perceptive students noticed that I am gaining weight (I’m pregnant, remember?) and she commented, "you're blowing up in the arms and the legs, but not much in your belly yet." She then warned me that I had better watch how much weight I gain because, "the baby won’t come out 30 pounds, you know?"

I should have taken maternity leave.

The End of Elmer.

• Sorry, dude, it's NOT your responsibility to handle problem students directly. You're a member of the class, you've got a stake in what happens in it, but you still haven't been handed a badge and named a Disciplinary Deputy in ways that give you the authority to try and keep superkeeners in check. As for your latest rant, all you're proving is that you're actually just another superkeener yourself. You somehow think it's your special job to keep the class on task. You complain about Sherry's self-centered whining, but that's pretty much all you're doing when you try to defend the righteousness of a juvenile tactic (anonymous notes are SOOO junior high, dude) that you admit was a failure. You seem to think that we should all be thankful that there are vigilante students like you around to help us do our jobs.
  
  


• I've been following the Elmer saga, and I find the responses to his story more disturbing than anything he had to say, more twisted than anything he did. None of the featured responses acknowledge that Sherry's version of the events—unwanted criticism equals rape—reflects a distorted version of reality. None recognize the dissonance between claiming rape, and then turning that claim into just more grist for the same old super-keening mill. (And someone thinks Elmer needs meds?)What's worse—and at the same time amusing—is where the respondents focus. "[S]ending . . . a weird, anonymous letter advising . . . [a person] that you've been watching them and noticing what they do and that they should stop it is REALLY FUCKING SCARY"? Is it? Where I teach, students direct such missives toward instructors at the end of every course, every term. We call them student evaluations. Another writer advises Elmer, "[I]t is not your job to manage the class," a perspective which would apparently be news to the meddlesome chairs and deans we read about so regularly at RYS. We could have used some Elmers when I was in school. And in the classes I teach, I'll take an Elmer over a Sherry (figuratively!) any day.
  
  


• All right, Elmer. Settle down. Of course no one was suggesting you embarrass this super-keener in front of the class. Of course no one was suggesting you tell the prof how to do his job. The good folks who read your post were suggesting--get this--a MIDDLE GROUND. Specifically, they were suggesting that you TALK to her. The only advantage your anonymous note had over a face-to-face conversation is that it kept you from feeling awkward. That's it. No benefit for the super-keener, the prof, or the class--only for you. Imagine what might have happened if you had spoken to this young woman in person, say, after class one day. You engage her in a complex but purposeful conversation in which you tell her that you hope you're not offending her, but you've noticed her in-class tirades are getting a bit much, and it might be to her benefit if she stop them. That strategy may not work, but it's no less likely to work than your little note.

Elmer on Elmer.

I now realize that I should have called that self-centered twit on the carpet right there in the class, to her face, and really rubbed her nose in what she was doing. I should have mimicked her voice characteristics to really let her know what she sounded like. Full on, Sally Struthers whine, blabbering on and on about fluffy nonsense. That would have been the kinder and gentler approach, no? And it would have also humiliated my professor (who was not doing his job) and lowered my grade. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself. If I ever find myself in that situation again, believe me, that’s what I’d do.

What the hell is wrong with people today? I looked up a fucking address in a fucking phone book. That’s not rape. I wrote a letter. That’s not “making someone less safe.” Please check your paranoia people. I didn’t cut the individual letters out of a magazine and paste them to the page with my own spit. I didn’t toss in a pubic hair. I typed it on a typewriter. There are far worse things than typing an anonymous letter. One of them is publicly humiliating a person—something that Sherry did to herself when she vomited up her snowflake pain for the rest of the class, both before and after the letter was written. She showed no empathy for the rest of the class, and yet she expected empathy from her fellow students. In short, she was a problem student who diminished the quality of learning for every other student in the class. Somebody needs to deal with problem students. What do you do when the prof doesn’t take on that responsibility?

Listen—most of you hate the super keeners, but you suffer through their self-indulgent nonsense, you whine about them behind their backs, and you wind up hating the classes they dominate, which is bullshit. Some of you have a bit more balls, and you humiliate them in the classroom, which is also bullshit. I intended to get past both of these unacceptable options, to make it about the issue and not the personality, to fix a broken class. Did it work? No. Would I do it again? No. Is that creepy? Only if you see every other student as a potential rapist instead of a colleague. Was it a personal assault? Not a chance. It was a privately divulged, non-personal comment on someone’s public behavior. I would hope that if I were in a similar situation, someone would have the decency to do the same for me.

We Don't Think This Guy is Really Pavel's Comrade. And If He Is, Then We'd Put Them At Opposite Ends of the Table on Borscht Night.

I know some people like Pavel at my large state school, complaining about the great injustice of having to pay union dues mixed with a condescending attitude of not being treated as the great, all-knowing, powerful individual he is. Not to put a too fine point on it, these people are self-absorbed, oblivious morons.

Since Pavel doesn't seem to understand the reality of our labor as adjuncts/grad TAs/readers/non-tenure track lectures and the modern university, let me break it down for you: no one cares about us! Between the administrators, the tenured professors, the politicians, even the students, we are the very bottom in terms of resource allocations and consideration. We are fundamental to the day to day operation of the university and are often the only recognizable face for the school for students, but we have the least power and ability to change anything. The only way for us to get any kind of rights or benefits for our work is to organize together and negotiate with the school as a group.

But forget higher education for a second, that is how it works in every industry in this country (and on the planet)! Underrepresented and exploited? Form a union and negotiate! The powers that be, EVEN IN HIGHER ED, aren't just going to give us more money or benefits because we're nice, or smart, or can point out their poor grammar. My union has gotten us fee reimbursements, health care, time restraints, and higher pay per higher experience. I don't know about Pavel, but I don't consider health care and not having to pay the school in order to teach there some amazing gift. But the university wanted (and wants) to cut all those things, and would have without a strong union representing our interests in negotiations.

This gets at why Pavel's post is so annoying. What is so horrible and insulting about having to join a union and pay fees to get organized representation for a position that everyone would shit on if no one was watching? Again, I don't know what his fees are, but mine are literarily 1.2% of my paycheck. It seriously is something like one evening movie ticket, two beers, or one half of a trade paperback PER MONTH. Sounds like a fair price to guarantee HEALTH CARE and raises, don't you think?

From the sarcasm of his post, it sounds like Pavel's big problem is he is not being recognized as a special snowflake. The fascistic union is treating him as one in many and doesn't take the time to explain that to do its job it actually needs MONEY. Pixie dust and best wishes surprisingly don't work that well. Actually they did explain it, but in a letter Pavel deems not worthy of his standards. So fuck you union and you low 2-figure robbery! Way to stand up for something meaningful!

You know what Pavel, comrade? Fuck you.

Some Folks Think Elmer Is a Little Creepy. And Those Are From the Really Favorable Notes.

There's no telling what to do about Elmer. Many many many writers seemed to miss the point in Elmer's post that he was simply a peer of Sherry the Super-Keener. Most folks who wrote to us imagined a leering, 50ish stalker preying on a pretty 18 year old in a yellow sundress with painted toenails, smelling of jasmine. (We may have added part of that.) But regardless, most folks wanted Elmer to give up the letter writing campaign:

• It might not be "rape," intellectual or otherwise, but looking up someone's address and sending them a weird, anonymous letter advising them that you've been watching them and noticing what they do and that they should stop it is REALLY FUCKING SCARY. Someone should send you a letter telling you why the hand you use to pick up your fork is the wrong one. It's also, by no coincidence at all, really, really cowardly. You did what you did the way you did because you didn't want to have to deal with the consequences of your unasked-for commentary. Well, now you do. I'd say there was justice in the results, but there isn't, because the Super Keener probably still gets to feel less safe than she did before.
  


• I am here to tell you that it is not your job to manage the class -- it's your proffie's job, and s/he's letting you all down. I understand and can sympathize with your desire to educate the superkeener on her really annoying behavior. However, the proffie's the one who really needs instruction -- but of course I would not recommend that you send your prof an anonymous letter either. There is such a thing as "facilitating a class discussion," and your proffie does not know how to do this. Facilitating class discussion means keeping the superkeeners in line, even to the point of cutting them off gently if need be; insisting on hearing from class members who do not usually speak up; encouraging students to indicate that they wish to respond by a show of hands, etc. The list goes on. Most of your proffies will know how to do this, so just ride this course out and hope for better luck next time around.
  


• Elmer, dude. You are really creepy. I feel you. I understand you. But when you get impulses like that, take an extra tablet of the Lithium and just chill way way back. The white pages should not be your first stop on the crazzy express. You keep your crazzies inside your pants, and out of the envelopes, okay?

In Defense of the Super-Keener, Because God Knows They Need Every Drop of Affirmation They Can Get.

Okay, I have to weigh in here. Yes, there are students that are annoying (duh), and many of the Keeners fall in to this category. But not all of them. Sometimes, the Keener is someone who just wants to get the most from their education. Someone who is an aggressive student, and not afraid to make the class all about them in the GOOD way (where they do all the learning and hard working).

I tell my students that they should do that. I say that the they are paying for their education (or at least someone is), and they deserve to learn what they want to learn. If there is a part of the subject they are particularly interested in, they should try to bring it up, and they should be aggressive with getting the conversation on that track (provided they're talking about something related to the material. I don't care how much you like quantum theory; Don't bring it up when we're talking about Shakespeare). If the other students don't like it, they can fight back and try to bring the class discussion somewhere else and take control of their education. The result? Good conversation.

Are there limits? Absolutely. Every student who is trying to take an active role in their education needs to understand that there are times when the prof simply MUST move on. Professors should have the right to say "Okay Suzy, thanks for you input. Now shut up and let someone else talk." and Suzy shouldn't be upset when that happens; she should be flattered. Because when a professor tells you to shut up, what he/she is really saying is "Please god, shut up," but what you should HEAR is "You're doing a great job participating, and I noticed it. You've earned your points for the day. You can sit back and relax for a while."

Was I a Keener? You better believe it. I sat in my desk like it was a machine gun turret, ready to fire at anyone who disagreed with me. If they could convince me of their points, then great; I learned something. If not, then we kept going the way I wanted to go. I played 'stump the philosophy professor' (to no avail) and learned a lot doing it. I got dirty looks from students, but professors always loved me being in their class. Was it because I shut up when they asked me to? Probably. But I like to think that it was also because I was someone who was REALLY interested, someone who WANTED to be taught. When I did shut up, sometimes I wrote things down, so I could ask about them later. And I did have the courtesy to know when it wasn't a fair fight (not fair for a senior to dominate the conversation in a freshman class; if the class can't follow the conversation, then you're just being an asshole).

I know that now that I'm the teacher, I live for aggressive Keener student. I love it when I have to tell a student to shut up and let someone else participate. And I do notice. And it does affect their grade.

Elmer the Epistolatory Rapist Confesses His Sins Upon Sherry Super-Keener.

Confession time. I’m a horrible person. I let a super-keener peer know that she was being a pain in the ass.

OK, I tried to do it in a nice way. After six weeks of hearing nothing out of Sherry but random associations which could not possibly have been followed, even by a person who had just consumed a pound of hash brownies—things like “The stuff you’re saying about Robert Frost? It’s exactly like what we were just discussing in my typing class, which I’ll describe in ten minutes of excruciating and pointless detail” or “That Langston Hughes poem reminds me of a little doggy I had when I was six years old, living in a small house with a pear tree in the back yard. . .” I had reached my limit.

What did I do? I didn’t want a personal confrontation, and I had no desire to humiliate her in front of the class. Instead, I took what I thought to be the safest route. I looked up Sherry's address in the telephone book, and I wrote her an anonymous, non-threatening, exceptionally polite letter which explained that which the professor lacked the balls to have ever explained to her. That the class is about everyone in the class, and it’s best if people control their own participation so that other people can also feel like they belong.

You know what? It modified her behavior. There was a noticeable change the day after the letter arrived. Sherry sat quietly in class for ten minutes while those who had previously been silenced spoke their piece about the poems, then she politely raised her hand, and as I held my breath in anticipation, she said the following: “I FEEL LIKE I'VE BEEN RAPED!!!”

Hmmm. I hadn’t really thought about that response, but the parallels are certainly there. Forcibly inserting my member into another person’s body without their consent is EXACTLY like writing them a letter that criticizes their class participation style. How could I have not known that? I am in fact, an epistolatory rapist. I have to live with that. I also have to live with the fact that from that point forward, the class was toast.

Sherry was now not only a super-keener, but a super-keener who had been a victim of intellectual violence, and was thus free to be ten times the disruption she had previously been, because after all, you have to give a rape victim the time to talk it out. My advice? Don’t interfere with super keeners. They always win.

To My Adult Students.

Enough already! Stop the flood of heartrending emails! I know that in addition to school you all have demanding jobs, mortgages, bills, volunteer work, and kids with lots of activities both legal and otherwise. I guess the only thing for me to do is to meet you at the classroom door with brownies and kisses, cover any work you deign to do with gold stars, and send you home two hours early with an “attaboy – or – girl” and a guaranteed A for your trouble.

Like hell I will. All you have described to me in these emails is a normal adult life. I know this because I have one. Do you think I store myself in a closet all week, emerging only for classes and faculty meetings? I too have a spouse, a day job, bills, one kid at home, and two kids in college (one of the reasons I took this position). Yet I manage to get myself to class every week on time and prepared to teach. And if you think preparing to attend a class is time consuming, try preparing to teach one.

So here’s what we’re all going to do. You are going to stop the whiny emails, start coming to class prepared, turn off the !@#$ cell phones, and set about getting the education you claim to want. I in turn will forget the emails you have already sent and be ready to assist you in any way I can, which will include being reasonable when life really does bite you in the butt.

Sometimes We Edit Posts That Come In For Clarity and Elegance. And Other Times We Just Let It Fly! "Professor Knuckleball And The Take-Home Exam."

Dear RYS,

Longtime viewer here, first time writer...

I've not even finished my dissertation. I've been teaching in a fairly large State University for the past 3 years--mostly in the summers. But, this Winter I decided to teach fulltime, full well knowing that I wasn't going to get smack done on my dissertation (O well...). I've seen a lot of things in my three years here, but something happened the other day to top it all off! And, frankly, I just want to bitch about it. I don't need any advice, just an outlet to bitch; and perhaps someone to say, "You know, it really is okay for you to drink after this one!"

In an attempt to be kind to some of my students, I gave a take home essay exam. (For the record, I will never do this again, for apparently students have more trouble finding the spellchecker at home than they do when using the University's computers. Anyway...). I told my students that each question should have an answer between 3 and 5 doubled-spaced pages. I said "per question" mind you. Now, here's where the fun starts...

The day the exam was due--and we'll come back to this later--I received a flurry of emails asking me, "What do you mean by 3 to 5 pages per question?" Some students couldn't interpret "per question" to mean anything but "3 to 5 pages total!" I actually confronted a student who came to my office with, "What does the phrase 'per question' mean to you?" They looked confused, so I changed the subject and said, "I'll be at Starbucks; office hours are cancelled for today. Better yet, I'm going home to drink!"

Next, my admin. assistant came running down the hall and stormed into my office. I asked her what was wrong. O' faithful RYS readers, are you ready for this one? She said that about ten students were outside the locked, glass doors of the department pounding away and demanding to be let in so they could turn in their exams. Now, by way of some background, I'd told all of my students that the exams were due by Monday no later than 5pm. If they attempted to turn the exams into my office after 5pm or via email, I would not accept the exams and they would receive an "F." I thought it was a fairly empty threat, because I kept telling myself, "Everyone will get the exams in by 5pm. It's college, so how hard can this be?" I also consoled myself with, "Surely, no one will try to sneak around this by emailing the damn exams to me!" How wrong I was...

It was 5:20pm, twenty minutes past closing time for the Department. The doors were locked, and to my amazement my admin. assistant was right: Outside those glass doors stood ten students not only pounding on the doors to get in, but mercilessly attempting to shove their papers under the small space between the bottom of the doors and the floor. (Oddly enough, some of them actually succeeded, but that's another story for another time).

After the students went away, a young man who has attended every single class, including day one, showed up at the glass doors. He politely knocked at the Department's doors and one of the nicer admin's let him inside. (Big mistake!). He came down the hall looking like that guy, Lump Hudson, in the 2004 remake of Ladykillers. And, to make matters worse, he had tears in his eyes. I thought to myself, "O no! I'm just not in the mood to have compassion for a student at 5:30 on a Monday evening." Besides, a huge storm was getting ready to blow through the Midwest, and I really just wanted to get home and snuggle with my wife. To make matters worse, I'd just discovered that five people tried to email me their exams, because their cars magically exploded on one of the superhighways around the University. Somehow they survived the explosion--at least they survived long enough to email me their exams.

Well, after a few moments this "Lump-like" student calmed down and said to me, "I don't have the exam done, I only have an outline to give you." When I asked why, expecting some normal response like, "My printer blew up, or my IPod turned on me in a fit of rage like something out of one of the Terminator movies," I instead got, "Well... I noticed today in class that many of the students have four books for the course whereas I only have one." Dazed and confused I asked, "What do you mean you only have one book for the class?" The student responded with an ever so shaky voice, "I didn't know we were supposed to have more than one book." Before I could say anything else, Lump--and we'll just call him that from here on out--informed me that even though he'd been at every class from day one down to today, he'd never bothered to pick up a syllabus. (Syllabi were handed out five weeks ago). What I said next wasn't so kind, so we'll just skip it, but my mouth dropped open as my brow formed into a Bruce Campbell-esque look of utter confusion reminiscent of Campbell's character Ash in Army of Darkness, or, if you like, Evil Dead III.

Regardless of what I said, the student wanted me to reward him for never having picked up a syllabus starting five weeks ago on the first day of class. He proposed that I give him one whole extra week to work on the damn exam. It was 5:30 so I said, "I'll think about it..."

I've not yet decided what to do, but I did go home and have that drink. Today, I'm thinking of having another... And perhaps I will now that I got all of the bitching I needed to do out of my system.

Sincerely,
Some prof. in the Mid West who's now thinking he should've kept practicing his knuckleball

The Woe of Wallflower Wally.

Wallflower Wally was a mediocre student in need of a major reality check.

He sat in the last row next to a chronic web-surfer with middling grades. He was always the first to raise his hand and say something not-quite-on-target, and always snickered when I went to other students for other responses. His quizzes and papers always demonstrated that he missed the point of most lectures and failed to do any of the required reading. He was a casual plagiarist who seemed to think his constant class participation somehow endeared him to me such that I would let his poor citation style slide.

But, the worst and most troubling moment came after he failed an assignment for plagiarism.

You see, he was mad at me because I wouldn't give him any slack. I mean, how dare I expect him to learn how to quote material properly! In a writing class of all places! His participation in class had scaled back (gratefully), which allowed me more opportunity to call on other students without getting back to his (usually superficial) comments.

On one cold Friday afternoon, more than 50% of the class went missing, including Wally. A paper was due that day, so I anticipated several tardies to wander in late (because we all know printers always break 10 minutes before a paper is due). I collected papers from those present and immediately went into my lecture. A few students trickled in during the first 10 minutes, but it was nearly 15 minutes into a 50 minutes class when I felt someone enter the room and stand about 10 feet away from me.

I glanced over and saw Wallflower Wally leaning by the door. He had a paper in hand, but made no movement toward me or toward his seat. I was mid-lecture, asking and answering questions, so I just left him standing there. It felt like forever! But, I knew he had to learn a lesson.

Eventually, Wallflower Wally started fidgeting, so I decided to release him from his torment. I turned to him and asked if there was a problem. He tried to hand me his paper and I told him to put it on the table next to me because I was in the middle of teaching. Wallflower Wally then started to try to engage me in a conversation...right there in front of the class!

Poor Wally seemed to think that because the weather was so bad, that he could be exempt from attending class. Except, well, here he was...right in front of class. I told him I was not going to discuss a private student matter in front of the class, wished him a good weekend and went back to lecturing. He left in a huff. I rolled my eyes, turned back to class, and all of Wally's little clique of morons (isn't it funny how they form little flocks of ignorance?) looked at me as if I had just stabbed them through their collective hearts. No one else even blinked.

Wally's work was so atrocious that his grades for the rest of the semester skidded into the toilet. He blamed me for every bad grade because he could not grasp that his choice not to do homework, to disengage from class work, and to avoid learning basic writing skills were the criteria for which his grade was based. The poor little snowflake seemed to think his "effort" was enough, and that class participation, no matter how inane or mediocre, warranted passing marks. After he was awarded the D he had richly earned he even e-mailed me to tell me how unhappy he was with his grade! Hah!

But, alas, Wally and his friends [none of whom was a star student, by any means] got their revenge on course evaluations, wherein they accused me of all sorts of crimes, from not calling on the black students because I was a racist, for promoting homosexuality by showing perverted images from popular advertisements, to providing unclear grading criteria designed to make them fail because I so obviously hated them. In the end, I only wished I had tortured them more so they would have dropped early in the semester.

To each of them I shout [and quote an oldie but goodie RYS post], "May your perfidy ramify through your life"!

"The Delicious Varieties In My 9 A.M. Class."

• First row: You’ve taken other classes with me, and now you’re a fan. Good. Nonetheless, attempting to banter with me in class to show others how “in” you are with me is not classy. I will continue to squash you verbally.


• You on the left: You aren’t rated for that vocabulary you’re toting around. You drop some mighty fine words, but you’re like a small rodent on a high fiber diet. You’re too ignorant to know that you're just making a big smelly mess. Go home. Burn your thesaurus. Then go buy a dictionary.


• Halfway back, right: You have no idea how much that Voice Of Authority you assume annoys the rest of the class. You even annoy the only kid who annoys the rest of the class more than you do – that guy on the left.


• Second row, left wall: Some day, good sir, you will realize that you need to cut off that nasty frizzy ponytail. I hope for your sake that this takes place before your bald spot becomes significantly larger.


• Center row, center: I have never seen your face. Do you deliberately position yourself directly behind that other kid’s head? What are you trying to accomplish?


• And a quick thanks to whoever turned in an anonymous midterm. (Possibly you in the middle there?) You have made the work of grading that little bit easier. It is a pity that your only reward should be a zero.

Pavel the Prole Pisses On His Pinko Pals.

Dear Comrades:

Thank you so much for your recent communiqué informing me of my forcible enlistment into your union army. I was scared that I was going to be given the shoe at the end of the semester. I'm grateful that you contacted me before the other boot dropped. Ha, ha, ha! I love American metaphors!

One thing, though. And pardon my ignorance. I am but a lowly laborer, as you point out in your letter. Why am I, a part-time, adjunct teacher of literature forced to pay so much in, how do you say, union dues? My blood runs cold like fine Russian vodka to know that I am being forced to pay you so much money when I never even had the choice to enlist in your army or not. To me, this all sounds very un-American, which is not why I moved to this fine country.

In my simple laborer's mind, it seems that you are much like capitalist administration, seeking to squeeze as much profit out of the people least able to give it to you in the first place--the people you claim to protect. The logic of your letter follows like freshman composition paper. And that is why I am writing to tell you to, how does the expression go, fuck . . . yourselves? Yes, yes, that's it! I remember from an old Bruce Willis movie. Go fuck yourselves, comrades!

Yours in solidarity.

Letter from DeKalb.

I was literally two buildings over as "it" happened. I took charge, rounded up and comforted stray undergraduates. None I knew personally, but they were scared people (young adults, not-quite-children) who needed comfort and a leader and someone to keep them safe. No one, not even the worst cheater you've ever seen, deserves this.

I had just finished checking my email in the computer lab and went back to my office, when K---- came running in saying there was a rumor of a shooting in Cole Hall.

I thought it was just a rumor. K---- said he'd tried calling the campus non-emergency police line, but couldn't get through. I said, "That's because everyone heard the same damn rumor you did!"

So I was hesitant to believe it, but then Prof. D---- came running by and said it was true, to lock our door. We did, and I called someone in the Computer Science department asking if they'd heard anything, and told them what we'd heard (just trading rumor and speculation, but still, comforting) because I had a class over there in fifteen minutes.

Then one of the students who was hiding out in the classroom next door came in to our office to ask what was going on. No one had told them? There was no one there for them? No one had a key to lock the door? So I went over there, knocked gently and cracked the door, saying in a soothing voice, "It's okay, it's alright, I've got news..."

Of course, the news I had was all rumor & speculation, but I did lock the door for them. One of the girls there had been in Cole Hall (outside the auditorium, but heard shots and someone yell to get out) and ran over to Watson/DuSable because it was the first door she saw and ended up in that room next to us. A bunch of the people decided to go home, especially since the current (but false) rumor was that the gunman had been apprehended. Another group weren't too happy with that, so I said they could stay and I let them into our office.

For the next half hour I went out into the hallway with a few other people and kept finding scared strays and bringing them in. I went out to check the computer lab (to see if there was an official "all clear" yet), and poked my nose around the corner. There were a couple of crying girls and one bewildered guy. I told them what I'd heard and offered them a locked room, but they'd been able to reach someone via cell phone to arrange a ride.

I found another girl curled up on a bench in a corner, on the phone and scared to death. I offered her a locked room and she scrambled to take it. I told her what I'd heard and said there were a lot of people in our office, she'd be fine.

A huge gaggle of students came by (too many for our office) after I'd checked online (confirmation of the shooting, but nothing else) so I locked them in the next door room. One girl was freaking out for me to close the door, so K---- and A--- both went in with her and I went back to my office.

I did a lot of hugging of and patting of the back of strangers today.

We kept calling the main office, people at home, etc., and some of us kept going to check online, and eventually someone came by (A---, I think) who said there'd been an all-clear, and that everyone should go home but avoid the MLK commons/Cole Hall area. I offered to drive any of the students home. Ended up walking with a bunch of them to the parking lot and driving them home.

Got home, made phone calls, opened a bottle of wine, and a bar of mango/chili dark chocolate, checked online, watched the news, and am still doing so.

"...To Say Things Otherwise Felt But Left Unsaid."

I understand the sentiment of the Sherman the Shrink and the intent behind his post. But I don't come to this site to release heat that would otherwise erupt in violence and I suspect that most people don't either. Sherman is ambiguous on that point, but suggests that the site is a necessary water cooler. That's a very linear and simplistic perspective on both this site and violence of the kind committed in DeKalb.

Yes, there is a distinction between thinking and doing, writing and acting. But it's not a binary. People sometimes do turn violent when inspired by the Internet (think some cases of terrorism). They also share violent intents online (think Virginia Tech). So writing online is not just a water cooler, the initial "Perspective" poster could argue. And I would argue that writing is one of the most important ways of framing the world and constructing it at the same time.

So, the water cooler analogy doesn't work for me. But neither do I think that people who post here would run amok if they didn't have this site. What has this inspired me to do? To give students names I would never call them in person. (And that's the extent of violence). To write to people who might share the experience. To reflect and recognize. And here I agree with Sherman -- to say things otherwise felt but left unsaid publicly. The public character of the site is what matters. The sharing matters. This place is creative and fun and daring. Let's not reduce it to the psychobabble that Sherman himself warned us against in his previous post.

Sherman the Shrink On Water Cooler Therapy. A Reply to "Perspective."

You people can't have it both ways. I refuse to let you post attacks on young, developing adults, calling them all kinds of vengeful and hateful names, and then post your "tribute" to the dead in DeKalb.

My dear, dear friend:

You raise several good points well known to shrinks like myself. For one thing, when does "venting" one's anger cross over the line into "rehearsing" it? That is to say, are we really doing ourselves a favor when we invite ourselves (and others) to punch the couch? Literally or otherwise?

What's the difference between speech that sheds light instead of just radiates heat? And what's the best temperature?

And how, when, where, do we draw the line between giving voice to the violent, tempestuous forces in our hearts and the need to restrict violent, murderous behavior?

I don't know.

But here's what I suspect: we don't stand a rat's ass of a chance finding out, as a culture, the answers to these questions unless and until we grow a stomach (or bodily appendage of your choice) big enough to tolerate the kinds of discussions that happen in places like these.

You see, I'm of the opinion that it is desperately important — not just as a matter of sound pedagogy or public policy, but public health — that people learn the difference between thinking or feeling something (however defined and/or intense) and acting on it.

So I'm not sure how useful it is to conflate the postings on this website with the violence in DeKalb. Maybe that equation ought to be challenged.

Sure, the discussion gets pretty heated in here, and sometimes students are the targets of the heat. But just as often it falls on administrators, institutions, bureaucracies, and the like. Plus, not all of the heat comes in the forms of attacks. Sometimes, for example, it shows up as moaning, or even whining (yuck).

My friend, you can't have it both ways either. You cannot, in one breath, blame us for DeKalb, and with the other say we are not to blame.

Look, I'll split the difference with you, and suggest that all of us are devastated by what happened in that classroom, and that anger is a perfectly legitimate way to express horror and grief. (So too, by the way, are tears, numbness, and even the occasional bit of humor. Notice I didn't say "always and everywhere appropriate," or "timely," but "legitimate." Your mileage, of course, may vary.)

You're furious, and so am I. But taking your anger out on the water cooler (and its congregants) is a little like taking your anger over disease out on syringes and needles. Sure words can be used to hurt, no question. But I also happen to think they're our only hope for healing and getting beyond this mess.

This is why I'm kind of partial to places like this, where people like you and me can speak freely, unencumbered by the need to have our each and every word dictated by the capacities and tolerances of our audience. Shutting them down, it seems to me, is a bit extreme.

Needless to say, the sensitivities of others are not always prisons, nor do they always deserve to be treated that way. But sometimes they are and they do (hint, hint). That's why people like me flock to places like these where we can unfurl our wings, let down our hair, and say what we really mean, instead of what we think our interlocutor can (or, God forbid wants to) hear.

Look, maybe, just maybe, in the end we share a common goal of living in a safe world, but just disagree over whether and how water coolers like this one help make that happen.

DeKalb

• NIU.
• On the map.
• From MSNBC.
• Witness.
• Gunman.
• Gunman 2.
• Tributes.
• Chicago Trib Editorial.
• Victims.
  

Perspective.

• You people can't have it both ways. I refuse to let you post attacks on young, developing adults, calling them all kinds of vengeful and hateful names, and then post your "tribute" to the dead in DeKalb. While you are not in any way responsible for those horrible acts, you are creating an antagonistic atmosphere that must be felt in some way by our students. I know you won't do it, because it's clear you are cowards, but you should shut this site down for good.
  
  
• It's impossible for me to separate your links to the events at Northern Illinois, and then the series of comments about the cynicism among professors. I have to ask myself, what's the relationship between the things we generally speak to like student apathy and academic misconduct and the more difficult subject of violence on campus? Is this one conversation or two, and is the cynicism of both student and professor really that difficult to explain? How responsible are we for seeing past our immediate jurisdiction of the classroom to the systemic insanity that leads to homicide? I feel responsible for the routine and the extreme. I'm no gatekeeper, and passively assuming this role only adds to the problem. There is no us and them, only I and I.

On Cynicism: Some Responses to Big Thirsty.

• Does it say something about us, you ask, or something about them? Them. Them them them. You’re in your second year of teaching, so the question is, how did you approach such matters in your FIRST year? If you’re anything like me, THAT was the year you gave them all the benefit of the doubt. That was the year you believed that all of your students were reading and thinking hard about the assignments, that grammar mistakes were clearly accidental anomalies and did not belie a lack of knowledge of the basics, and that a modicum of trust precluded you from listing silly consequences for things like plagiarism, cheating, or excessive inexplicable absence in the syllabus. Something changed you from that trusting newbie into this cynical second-year teacher, and it wasn’t because you suddenly got mean.
  


• I recently moved from a small liberal arts college to a large state school. My cynicism, kept quietly at bay before, now rages like an inferno. My SLAC students - for the most part - wanted to be in school, wanted to get better, and seemed to be 100% invested in learning and improving on their own. The students I have now seem to be the opposite in every way. They're a mewling mass of con artists, all of them looking for holes in the system, trying to game every policy on my syllabus to their advantage. I feel like a policeman during testing, and I hate a job I used to love. I know I have good students in these classes somewhere, but I've become jaded and I fear I'm not doing for them what I could.
  


• It's not our problem but theirs. My first semester as a TA, I caught half the class cheating on the third week of school. It was a small assignment, which ended up being worth 2% of their grade, and they were copying directly out of the text! They didn't even have the smarts to plagiarize from other sources but used the assigned book! And several of them were the "better" students who had been doing great work and participating in class. Assuming they're up to no good says something about them if we're usually right, and finding good students is even more frustrating because it reminds us of what we wish they were all like.
  


• Please don't forget that you do get students who are worthwhile teaching, who are more frustrated with their stupid, immature classmates than you are. There are never enough of them, and there are often disturbing gaps in their educations, but they're still out there, and they need your help, not your cynical attitude. Don't fault them for failing to learn what they were taught in school.
  


• I don’t think it’s cynical to be suspicious of essays that are unusually well written or intelligent. Like it or not, a big part of our job involves policing work for plagiarism. It would be impossible to vet every submission, so we need to spot check papers that either demonstrate radical changes in style (the essay that is barely literate for two pages, then suddenly has a section that reads like a PhD wrote it), or of an unexpected quality. Put another way, if some idiot plagiarizes his or her way to a failing paper, it’s a waste of time to for us play detective (since we’re usually forced to simply fail such assignments with little further sanction anyway). We live in a society that increasingly devalues scholarship and literacy. The education offered kids reflects this, and as such it’s a rare occurrence to encounter an undergraduate student who can write an outstanding essay. We’d be foolish not to be skeptical when such papers cross our desks. I teach large sections of first year students, and masochistically have them submit one major essay during the term. To keep myself sane and relatively free of cynicism while grading a few hundred of these, I tightly define the questions or topics they can write about, change the assignment each term, and I always specify certain source material (again, it changes every term) that must be used. The use of on-line material is outright forbidden. This makes it impossible to buy a generic research paper or ‘cut and paste’ stuff from the internet without being very obvious about it. There are always a few morons who try it anyway, but at the same time I can be fairly confident that the good work is original and honest.

Listen. We Just Work Here. If We Were Really Responsible for Weepy Wayne, We'd Be On a Lot More Medication.

Dear Wombat of the Copier,

Here's a stapler. Now go staple your dome to a fact. For 75 minutes, that classroom is my kingdom. End of discussion. That means no jackboot SWAT-Team wannabes harassing my students for ticky-tack parking violations. Bust out a crayon and write a ticket, Kojak. No visits from Dean PastyPuss shepherding some Oscar-toting crybaby into my den. My guess is that it's the first classroom either has seen in a while. And no knock-and-announce visits from some self-important stooge who has no respect for the learning of others.

When the room empties, you are free to enter. Until then, hold up the wall in the hallway. That tuition-burping Nostradamus doesn't need my schedule to figure that out. He left his book behind? Tough. And it's always the book. They never forget cell phones or iPods. Books are an afterthought. So is Johnny Memento.

And how exactly did we make the logical spelunk to textbook theft? Where the fuck did that come from? Hey, Professor Pinball, do all your lectures ricochet in arbitrary directions when you plant a flag in the sandbox? Everyone's a thief! Everyone's a victim! Everyone stand back! I'm making copies! I don't give a rat's pink rim what you think a student is before entering this institution. But I have every concern about what that individual becomes as a result of attending a university where rules of individual responsibility apply. The goal here (in theory, seldom in practice) is to produce adults who are responsible, respectful, and mature individuals who will go out into the world and not reduce themselves to blaming others for their individual problems. That way, their rent gets paid, and my institution isn't reduced to a joke.

Why do you insist on planting excuses on students like a note pinned on their vest from mommy? That's not your role. And one more thing. Before I'm accused of cruelly popping the soap-bubble dreams of doe-eyed freshman, let me say that I'm the one they come back and thank. No one in that classroom loves you while it's going down. But I get more former students stopping by my office to say thanks than thumbsuckers in Abercrombie and Fitch diapers looking to play some prof whose head appears as soft as his heart.

Now step aside, you're hogging all the good toner.

Sure, Sherman the Shrink Is Absolutely Batshit Crazy, But He's the Only One Who Will Make the Long Drive to the Compound, So We're Stuck.

Good gravy, could we please, in the name of whatever you find holy (God, power, drugs, money, whatever), quit using clinical diagnoses to express our displeasure over someone else's behavior?

What ever happened to good old words like "selfish," "arrogant," or "self-centered?" not high-falutin' enough for ya? Or what's wrong with saying "that's really annoying," or, at the very least, making some crude distinction between behavior observed and personality inferred?

You see, without knowing it, you make life infinitely more difficult for people like me. Why? Because in my day job, I have to help people find words to help them understand themselves and others with some modicum of compassion. Why? Simple, really: so that they stop suffering and inflicting their suffering on others.

Put another way, when you take my tools (diagnoses) and turn them into invitations to bleed self-esteem, it's like me taking words like "deconstruction," "promissory estoppel," and "bidentate ligand" (wink, wink, nudge, nudge) and stomping all over them, assigning them meanings you never dreamed of. (Truth in advertising: I used to use one of those terms as a pick-up line as an undergrad. guess which one and guess my target audience and you win a special prize!)

Look, if you really want people to stop people from pissing you off (and who doesn't?), talk about what they're doing that pisses you off, and be as specific as you can with regard to time, place, and manner.

If, instead, you'd rather release steam, feel superior, or otherwise exaggerate the difference between you and everybody else, here's what you do: direct your comments to the person's character instead of their actions. Works like a charm every time; plus, this maneuver has the extra added benefit of giving the offending party no incentive whatsoever to stop pissing you (and countless others) off.

Now if you really want to go for broke in the intellectual honesty department, instead of flinging diagnoses the way my 20-month-old has learned to fling the contents of her diapers, try "she/he/that really annoyed me," instead of the diagnosis of the day.

If you absolutely must drape your own personal preferences with some air of legitimacy, use terms like "unethical" or "inappropriate." Philosophers will groan, and social scientists will wonder what authorized you to speak on behalf of society, but at least I’ll have to spend less time wiping your poop off of my tools.

Thanks!
Your friendly neighborhood shrink

The Saga of Bookless Basil and Nikolai the Narcissistic Professor. This Outrage Goes to Eleven.

While the "narcissism" has been flying here lately, nobody generated quite as much heat as this poster who thinks our classrooms should be something less than our own "sacred shrines." Enjoy some flava of some recent missives that tell her to take a flyer for her defense of the befuddled and blank Bookless Basil:

• I think you'll be pleased to know that, during a class the next day, I found that student's $150 intro to calculus book. I'm considering keeping it, as a trophy of war. You clearly are missing the point here: that kid had no business disrupting a class, whether or not there was an expensive book involved. Don't those 50 other students in the class, many of them pretty good and all of whom paid tuition, have rights too? I do think that the classroom is a shrine, because what we do there still does matter. And I sure AM glad I don't teach where you are!
  
  
• All students need to know that if they leave a book or other item in a classroom they should wait until a break between classes to collect their item. We can be polite about how we tell them this, but tell them we should. It does not make a bit of difference if the cause of students interrupting classes is narcissism, rudeness or ignorance does not matter; nor does it matter if such behavior is more or less common now compared to days or yore. Each generation passes along the basic norms of politeness to the next - hell, after leaving them AIDS and global warming, it is the least we can do.
  


• So Bookless Basil feels like he can stroll into a prof’s ongoing presentation and he doesn’t know or doesn’t care that it would disrupt the class? Does the thought, “Oops, I left my book in the classroom. I’ll have to wait outside until class is over to get it” ever wander through his mind? Another question for you: how would YOU find out when a class ended? Would such a seemingly Herculean effort be beyond the abilities of a student? So, perhaps you are right. He might not be narcissistic. He could just be stupid and/or disrespectful.
  


• Clearly, working with the snots at your university has warped you. Assuming that this lost textbook is the emergency you think it is, why in God's name can't a student slip in quietly, check out where they were sitting, and then ask the students there to pass him/her the book quietly? If it's not there, why can't we wait for the class to take a break or to end and then ask if anybody found a book? Why the need for 50+ people to pay attention to YOUR needs NOW? Why demand the professor's attention? Expecting a student to wait outside the class would require the student to do things entirely outside the young snowflake skill set: a) wait for something he or she wants; b) consider the needs of other people, and c) show the resourcefulness to figure out a problem without mommy/daddy/professor attending to it. Man, that's like asking a toddler to do wind sprints. I see clearly now that the first poster was ENTIRELY inappropriate. He needs to get a grip.

"Your Student Isn't the Narcissist. You Are. Oh, and Me, Too, If You Count that Printer Story Against Me."

A kid coming by looking for a lost book is narcissism? Someone needs a reality check. The true act of narcissism is thinking a room you use to teach a class in is your sacred shrine and that every student on campus, yours or otherwise, should have your schedule memorized. How is he supposed to know what time your class ends if he's not in it? If he was one of my students, he'd sit on his ass all day not doing his homework and a week later when he had no clue what was going on, he'd tell me it wasn't his fault because he left his book somewhere and by the time he went looking for it, it was gone. I had one slime ball coming in daily saying "Look what I found." which means "Look what I stole as soon as the rightful owner was looking away for 2 seconds." Why do you think the books on half.com are so cheap? Because half of them are stolen. You should be ashamed of yourself for being so critical of a kid who wanted to find his book before it changed hands.

If that ruffles your feathers, it's a good thing you don't teach here. You'd be curled up in the fetal position by the end of your second day. Yesterday I printed an exam on the shared printer in the help room and while the last few pages were coming up, a student, not one of mine, informed me "I have to go to my class now so when my lab report comes up, staple it and put it over there so I can find it later." and started to walk away. I told her "When my test is printed, I'm leaving." and she huffed at me and stormed out.

You need to get a grip. Textbook resale crimes are rampant. I'm not saying kids shouldn't be more careful with their books in the first place, but accidents happen. Don't crucify a kid because he's eager to find something he might not be able to afford to replace. We regularly complain about students who don't bring their books, and then some of us turn around and flame one for trying to find one before it was too late. That is really self centered.

Serafina From South Portland Shares Three Days.

Monday

• The interim Chair asks me to change a grade because she “feels” for the student. The student didn’t even sob for real.


• In office hours, I talk to Obnoxious Omar about his disruptive behavior. He explains that he needs All Attention All the Time because he’s an only child. He understands that “all professors are different,” however, and he sees that his “style” might not work too well with me, given...MY...character. Aren’t I grateful for his understanding of my problem?

Tuesday

• Gooey Gabriela from last semester’s class from hell is a research assistant for a colleague. She’s an undergraduate, but the knowledge of some inside gossip makes her believe we are now colleagues too. Right before my class, in front of students, she asks “Are your classes going well? Is the teaching less difficult for you?”


• During break, Spindly Sam chats with me. “The bookstore doesn’t have [today’s] book yet. I went today again. I have the others – see – but they are out of the green one.” I don’t say anything. Later on, we have a blizzard and I’m buying an umbrella at the bookstore. While I stand there, I see a dozen “green” books. Sam, why lie when nobody asks you for an explanation?

Wednesday

• Why is silence so deadly sometimes when silence can be so pleasurable? I love the content silence after a good meal, the quiet silence on a walk with a friend. I find the busy silence of students thinking and writing enjoyable. But such silences are rare and precious. More often, I’m faced with the unsettling classroom silences – the silences of disinterest, protest, fear, or resentment. Today I learn that they stretch into faculty lounges too.
  
  I sit on a committee meeting making a hiring decision and the room is filled with silence so thick you’d need a machete to cut through it. No words, no nods, no eyebrows raised, no tongues clicked.
  
  Committee Chair: What did you think about the candidate?
  
  Silence.
  
  Committee Chair: What kinds of concerns do people have?
  
  Silence.
  
  Committee Chair: How do you suggest we proceed?
  
  Silence.
  
  Stiff stares speak for themselves, but I am brand new to this place and don’t understand a thing. My neck turning left and right is the only audible comment. Finally, the day passes, but I keep wondering what the hell was going on.

The Big Thirsty: How Cynical Are We?

This week's question has been raised by a number of folks, but we like how the note below gets at it:

I got a brilliant paper from a student last week. It was beautifully written, the topic was interesting, the wording showed thought and the grammar and punctuation were beyond reproach. So of course I Googled it. I Googled select phrases, I Googled entire paragraphs. I got a colleague to access TurnItIn for me so they could do the work. And, after several hours of this, I came to the conclusion that a student had actually done an assignment, correctly, and put forth intellectual effort. The possibility had honestly not occurred to me.

I'm in the second year of my career and already I distrust everything. Is this a statement about the poor quality of the current college generation (they wouldn't know an original thought if I stuffed it up their noses), or about the dangerous cynicism of the teaching profession (all students are guilty until proven innocent)?

Q: How cynical are we about our students? Does it say something about us, or does it say something about them?

A: Send here.

Thanks from a New Reader.

I'm a new reader, but the cathartic experience of devouring the entire 2+ years of Rate Your Students in one week has been remarkable.

I am awed at the endeavor, at the incredible honesty that fills these pages.

No post hit me harder than "I've Done It to Myself," a post that made me ache. Had I written it myself? I could have. That writer spoke my own soul so clearly.

A follow-up offered great advice, encouragement, and an empathy I've never seen in any colleague past or present.

I feel hopelessly naive and out of touch in saying this, but bless you for offering this forum. It's a master class in the profession, and the naughty posts - and Wicked Walter - make it the most entertaining read I've ever seen in the blogosphere.

And while I see the occasional post on here that suggests some readers want to change the site to a more aggressive and pointed attack on students, I think you do an amazing job of balancing the "rating" with the rest of it. I have students who make me crazy, and I will tell those tales at some point, but this site's powerful function as a listening post is what will bring me back.

So, who am I? I'm a SLAC prof with nearly 10 years under my belt. I suffer from the same insecurities I see all over this site. I work in a state of fear, fear of my Dean, fear of the students, fear that I'm not doing enough, fear that I'm missing my real life, fear that I'm not publishing, fear that I'm not good enough. To live in fear is a terrible thing.

But in these past days a weight has been lifted for me, just through the shared communion with all of the writers on this page. "Thanks" doesn't even come close to getting it.

"My Major is Me, But I'm Taking a Minor in Narcissism."

Jean Twenge was right; narcissism really is getting out of hand. Yesterday, in the midst of teaching a rather intensely mathematical physics class of about 50 majors who are mostly pretty good, my eye is caught by an unfamiliar young undergraduate who'd wandered through an open classroom door, and is standing there in the classroom, wanting my attention. I pause, more surprised than anything else and unsure of quite what to do, and ask him "May I help you?" He says he's looking for his book that he left behind during a previous class.

I tell him, "Rather than distract 50 people, wait until the class is over, at 6:45!" His sorry reply is "I didn't know the class was over then." I almost wish I hadn't been so intent on getting back to the class, quickly. I wish I'd ripped into him more. WHY did it never occur to him even to TRY to find out when the class would be over? WHY is his FIRST course of action to disrupt a class? WHY does he just not see that there are 50 other people here who paid to be in this class, and so really ought to have rights too?

Even after almost ten years of teaching modern students, I am still astonished by this kid's narcissism, childishness, and sheer selfishness. Good luck on running a society full of these people!

"To My Star Cheater." Someone Takes "Teachable Moment" Seriously.

Used to be that if you pinched out a steaming essay comprised almost or entirely of the corn of better writers, not only would I fail your vapid, arrogant ass, you'd get a free ticket to the Academic Integrity folks, who would pull eye muscles from the force of their rolling when you'd bleat about not understanding citation badly enough that control-C, control-V on StealThisEssay.com "seemed like genuine effort to you." And they'd recommend your expulsion, and the VP would reluctantly agree, and then you'd appeal so you no longer had to talk to professors but could cry on the VPs desk, a veritable wooden palette Rorschach of tear and mucous stains from past supplicants. Hit the right plaintive note, and bang, you're back in with never an explanation to the faculty of the board or the professor who detected the plagiarism in the first place. What a ride! What a VP.

But the previous contestant's successful appeal burned me so badly I decided to stop wasting my long-suffering colleagues' time with the write-up, which inevitably caused them to meet during finals week when they had their own mountains of grading with which to contend. I'd learned that retention, especially of students who helped with recruiting and / or retention, trumped integrity every time. So I just failed you for my course.

And so the university chose you to represent us in the state capitol as a page or some similarly sycophantic position. Never mind the F on your transcript in my class. Never mind your very, very sorry academic performance across the board to date. But then, where better to send a cheating weasel than among politicians?

But don't think for a second that I'm above mentioning to the prof from whom you'll attempt to take the class next time -- and there's not so many of us that I won't know -- about your fine efforts during your first attempt.

Just to be safe, though, perhaps I should warn every instructor in my field that you need special attention to be certain your sources support your writing. But why keep it to just my field? If we're going to help you, really help you, to discover the learning so long denied you with regard to doing your own goddamn work, then oughtn't I reach out to any professor you might have and let them know of your special needs? Isn't this a teachable moment?

More Evidence That We Work in a Profession That Is Not Substantially More Evolved Than a Bag Full of Toads.

My college requires that students who seek exemptions from the ordinary plan of courses must appeal directly to the dean's office for a syllabus waiver. This didn't sound too painful to implement until I received the unwritten instructions to decode "direct."

Direct means "you must write a letter to the dean that is edited by the department's undergraduate advisor/ 2nd year assistant professor who really has nothing better to do with her time."

What could possibly be the reason for having the undergraduate advisor ghost write student's syllabus appeal letters you ask? Well, I was told that "too many illegible letters of appeal end up in the dean's hands,” so I am to "ensure that our student’s appeals are coherent and justified."

May I ask the students to rewrite their letters themselves? "No, the dean strongly prefers well written appeals that he can process quickly."

Yessir, sure thing. You own my future since you sign off on all personnel matters. I'll be happy to do that. Let me get right to that.

So, on this cold Sunday evening, I'm ignoring my own work to edit appeals from Sue B, Wingo, and Fred who all could not bear to be in the new "fills the requirements" class with the new professor in our department "because we herd [sic] he grades really really hard," "because the course time crashes into abnormal psych, which is my favorite class," and "because I can't make it to a 9:30 class, it's just too early."

Incidentally, I'm also thinking of editing my resignation letter. I really hope the dean won't mind a faculty resignation letter penned in the same incomprehensible style as all of the letters I edit for him.

Reality Check For Sissy.

I have a news flash for Sissy and the other superkeeners who have graced these pages as of late: NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU! Have you ever heard of selective perception? Perhaps you were too busy waving your hand in the air and sitting on the edge of your seat, poised to make your latest priceless contribution to an otherwise dull and worthless class to catch it, so I'll break it down for you. You seem to be picking out the things that confirm your view of yourself and the situation and ignoring evidence to the contrary. Every professor you ever had tramples other students and falls all over him/herself to pay you a compliment every time you're in the tri-state area? Really? Along with selective perception, I'd call exaggeration on that one (on your part and mine).

Let's assume that this does occur to some degree. That's cool - professors do appreciate students who prepare and attempt to engage them and the material in class, and it's nice that they acknowledge those who step up to the plate and do so. Some students also appreciate the heat being taken off of them by the know-it-all (and make no mistake, Sissy, that is exactly how your peers see you). However, class discussion, by definition, involves more than the professor and one student. Unless you're the whole class, then I guarantee that your professors, along with most or all of the other students in the class, do not find this whole pattern as great as you do. Also, you're right about how important it is to join the discussion when class participation is a large part of the grade, but when you're talking, no one else can. It's pretty arrogant and presumptive of you to assume that others are quiet because they are "slow," "uncomfortable with the risk of being wrong," or just plain not as smart as you are when it could be the case that they are just waiting to speak until you pause for a second to come up for air! In reality, a little bit of all of those things is probably true.

I'm not trying to discourage enthusiasm for class material and eagerness to discuss it. I am just suggesting that no one - your professors included - think you are as brilliant as you do, with the possible exception of your parents. Therefore, it wouldn't hurt you to have an unexpressed thought in class, and perhaps save it for a written assignment or office hours, when you can demonstrate what you've learned without annoying the piss out of the rest of the class.

Maybe It's The Fumes.

Yesterday I was so irritated at my students that I emailed them and told them what they did wrong on a lab report.

Today, I'm so pissed that I'm writing to RYS instead.

The story begins with me telling them Monday to take measurements in triplicate and to use their statistics toolbox to find the error. Come Wednesday in lab they do not take the measurements in triplicate. It is a simple problem with a simple answer. If you did not do it, you will not have it available for your lab report, and will therefore get marked off for it. I list their replies to me below:

• I'll just make up numbers, is that okay?
• I don't want to do it. How many points will I lose?
• The biology department doesn't make us do this. I hate chemistry.
• What does this have to do with me going to med school?

Why don't they understand that this is the reason I hate them so much?

Hot Links...If You Want Them.

• For the laziest of snowflakes & the site they love. From the Daily Nebraskan.


• 30% of college students save "it" for someone special. From the Daily O'Collegian.


• Don't tell your students, but 44% of all Facebook users are 35+. From the Houston Chronicle.


• A sporty water sack! From the Hindu Times.


• The high cost of smoking, at least near this guy. From APP.com.

Covering One's Ass Is the New Pedagogy!

Professor Project just doesn't get it. These days, teaching snowflakes professionalism is the least of it; Our own "Survival in the Classroom" is our main goal, the little shits be damned. We keep "spreadsheets" and attendance records not to develop "teachable" moments, but to cover our asses.

Document! Document! Document! Or be very afraid...

If you don't keep meticulous records, the little farts will come after you with their own spreadsheets, filled with dead grandmas, cousins, best friends, terminal illness, court dates.

Perhaps Professor Project is tenured untouchable or simply needs an introduction to the "real world" of unethical snowflakes and their helicopter parents.

In my many years of being a forever adjunct, I have had only one grade dispute, which was quickly resolved (in my favor) because of my detailed record keeping. Mr. "D" Student was sent packing to Probationary Hell.

One of Walter's Minions. (And Apparently a Big Burt Reynolds Film Buff, Too.)

Breaker, breaker! Anyone got their ears on?

“I’m going to get in my Trans Am and make a night-time visit . . .”?

Whoa, there, Bandit. I’ll give you it’s a better metaphor than my blue Miata, but be sure to tote Dom Deluise or Paul Prudhomme (I can’t tell who is who) along for laughs.

Now to fulfill the RYS charter:

Narcoleptic Nate—Failing my class last semester does not entitle you to a flyer this semester, nor does showing up way late for the first class and missing the second class in a class that meets only once a week. Schedule an MRI. See if perhaps there’s a small particle of brain lodged in your skull.

10-4 good buddies; keep the shiny side up. We gone.

Sissy the Superkeener Stakes Her Position in the Superkeener Universe. Her Reputation Depends On It!

Originally, I wasn't going to respond to Sarah from Sausalito, but the response from the prof whose super-keener was "pissing all over canonized authors" and "challenging [her] on the finer points of poetics," changed my mind. I would probably admit to being like Simon, but I would NEVER put myself in a category with Sal, so I don't really appreciate the comparison. There is a difference between challenging a prof in a disrespectful way, because one is a wise ass, and actually being interested enough in the topic to engage in discussion. I may not have gotten the right memo, but as far as I know, "workshop style" means "discussion." How do you get discussion? By asking questions, making points, and engaging in the material.

Now, granted, I get carried away sometimes, but only because the prof challenges my comment. If you don't explain a debatable point, when a prof challenges you on it, then they assume you don't actually know what you are talking about and peg you as a wise ass and a nuisance.

But why do I do this, you ask? Because participation is a large percentage of the grade AND because I learn more that way. If you feel left out, you should go read up on the subject matter and join the discussion, that is the objective! I don't jump on every opportunity to show just how much I have learned in the class, because I appreciate the fact that some people are not as comfortable with the risk of being wrong. But after 5 minutes of uncomfortable silence, following a question most of the class doesn't appear to know the answer to, I WILL speak up. Why? Because I don't want the prof to think I am as slow as the rest of you appear to be. I started the class with the same amount of knowledge about the subject, and I want the prof to know that he/she has taught me something.

Besides, even if I wanted to stop, I couldn't. I have a reputation as a superkeener, and my professors hold me to the standard I have set for myself. I get called on without volunteering, because profs assume I know the answer. I know this is selfish, but I'd rather not look like a fool when that happens, so I make sure I either know the answer, or I already talked enough in class to make sure the prof calls on others. The point is that if I scale back my efforts to your level, I would get a lower grade than you, because the prof would know I am not showing the same enthusiasm I put into my previous classes.

Finally, I would like to point out that if more professors feel this way about superkeeners, they should confer with their colleagues and tell them to stop sending mixed signals. Professors who had me in class 3 years ago still flag me down in the hallways to tell me what a joy it was to have me in their classes. With that kind of response, why would I ever want to change? Maybe you should try being Simon for a few classes; you would see how amazing it is to be able to engage in a challenging exchange of knowledge with the professor who gave you the cup.

Some Advice For Professor Pansy. RYS Readers Rally 'Round.

What the fuck? I’d be in my department chair’s office 30 seconds after class ended to tell him the real story. I’d also suggest that such personal matters be handled off line. Unbelievable.

With respect to Cindy, maybe she should spend more time in her seat. If she isn’t going to class, she’ll screw up the exams anyway. If she says she can’t make it to the exam as scheduled, write a makeup.

1. Define the universe.


2. Give at least 3 examples. Be concise.

Something like that level of difficulty should be entertaining.

I did have a dean who was going to change an F that I gave to a withdrawal because of a sob story. I told the dean the student already withdrew from my course the previous year because she wasn’t going to class and (surprise) failed the exams. She took me a year later (why oh why??) and did the same damned thing. The dean immediately told me the F stood. It did. I checked. Several times. We can’t be too sure in this profession, can we?

---

Make it entirely T/F with nothing but trick questions and all the answers being false. I actually did that when only 30% of the class showed up for a review session being held during regular class hours. It rocked watching grade grubbing aspiring nurse go nuts because every answer couldn't be false.

It was amusing watching all-county college athlete-of-the-year confidently check off an equal number of Ts and Fs and then check out early so he could hit the batting cage. And it warmed the cockles of my soul when 30% of the class giggled and turned in perfect exams. And it's easy enough to pass off as honest.

You don't have to literally give the rest of the class all of the answers, you just have to clarify all the common misconceptions and emphasize them during the lecture when Cindy is out. And no, you're right, it's not a good plan. But I'd be lying if I pretended I wouldn't be tempted to do it again if I ever had another section that bad.

Another Word on Portfolios and Grades.

I've tried using portfolios to facilitate the end-of-the-semester show-me-what-you-learned discussion and always receive mixed results. The students tend to congregate into 4 groups:

1. Some students compile everything and do a few revisions to demonstrate improvement. I love them for it.


2. Some students do revisions but fail to provide the originals, thus impeding my ability to see and evaluate any improvement. Very annoying. Especially when I suspect only cursory revisions instead of rewrites demonstrating a better understanding of the original problems.


3. Some students just toss stuff into a folder, usually with no revisions and in no order. In fact, these tend to be the students who ignored instructions and failed to properly label assignments, which makes more work for me. Assignments are always missing for these folks.


4. Some students literally hand in nothing. All I have to go by are the grades on my spreadsheet from previous assignments. One good thing: It's an easy zero on the portfolio grade!

It's almost never the students in the first group who question their grades. I had one student last year from the third group who e-mailed to tell me how unhappy he was with his grade. It took a great deal of restraint for me to not write back telling him I was unhappy with it too, especially considering he didn't hand in a complete portfolio filled with the crap he had submitted all semester.

In the end, though, my favorites have got to be the students who claim they didn't know they had to keep their assignments. My instructions and the policies on the syllabus were just optional I guess.

Bonnie From Britain Offers Up a Mixed Bag of Ratings.

J: You have a sharp, inquisitive mind and a fine aesthetic sensibility. I know you absorb, process, and enjoy the material more than anyone. Yet you drink and play string instruments instead of work -- what a waste.

A: You're so diligent because you feel you're in over your head. You're not! If you relaxed, I bet you'd grasp the literature better and be comfortable enough to produce original, well-substantiated writing. Otherwise, you're quite witty and would make a good mom.

R: You are well attuned to the nuances of the human soul -- mostly your own, though you're compassionate. You would do well to shift the direction of your observation to tangible reality and to ideas unfettered by emotion. Know yourself, but with the perspective of sensing your place in a vast world.

V: You have spent your life being so brilliant and studious that non-academic experience has fallen by the wayside. I know you wish for a different set of laurels, like a girlfriend or stories of your own to tell. Because you're sweet and personable, you'll fill these needs in due time

P: Your ambition is irritating. I had written you off; but lately you have been unduly kind to me, and have thus revealed what a jerk I can be.

One of Our Chief Correspondents Breaks Down the Super-Keener Thing. First, There Are Two Kinds. Second, He Used to Be One.

I have a good deal of sympathy for Sarah from Sausalito. It’s a drag to be in a class where some guy – it is usually a guy – dominates the discussion and winds up discouraging other students from speaking up. As an instructor, I usually try to drop subtle hints to the keener that he needs to let others into the conversation, but when that fails, I’m not above delivering a slap to the keener’s ego: “Keith, thanks for that trenchant observation on Pope’s couplets – you show exceptional insight for someone with your lack of background.”

In my experience, there are two main kinds of super-keener. The first (and perhaps most common) is just a brown-noser pretending to be enthusiastic, but the second kind is genuinely enthusiastic, just socially clueless. The first type is a pain in everyone’s ass, though every once in a while even he can save the day when you have a class full of hung-over Greeks and brain-dead athletes (overlapping categories, I know). There have been rare occasions when I was grateful to have even some fake enthusiasm to break the silence into manageable pieces.

The second type of keener, I want to encourage in his enthusiasm while socializing him to the niceties of classroom behavior. And I have pretty often been very happy to have a type two super-keener in an otherwise dull class. The problem arises when there are other students who are less voluble, or who take more than a microsecond to formulate their thoughts. I’m sure that orchestra conductors must always have some random flute player who wants to come in, not on the beat, but just an eager moment before the beat. The guy may even be a good musician – the problem is how to hold him back a bit and teach him to play well with others.

Full disclosure: As an undergraduate, I was a bit of a super-keener, at least in some classes. I just loved the material so much I couldn’t hold myself back. I sat in the front row and I am dead certain that a whole classroom full of students were rolling their eyes behind me. But I had one instinctive rule: Never be a keener out of class. How I detested the groupies who followed the professor to his office, who formed a sort of honor guard around him in the cafeteria, a posse, with the girls vamping and the boys trying to look sophisticated and deferential at the same time. (Medical fact: this can give you a hernia.) Those are the lowest form of keener, utterly beyond redemption, and however idiotic I was in class, I never joined their parade.

My dears, do not go there! Your professor does not want to be your friend (or if he does, he needs psychiatric counseling) and he especially does not want to hear you tell him that you think the class “went well.” He does not consider you a colleague, even of a very inferior sort, and your opinion of his scholarship will be of less than zero interest to him. If you are that fucking smart, go to grad school and write articles that demolish his most cherished ideas.

Professor Pansy Has a Plan. We're Not Saying It's a Great Plan, But It's Something.

Cindy has many absences and consistently arrives late when she bothers to arrive at all. Needless to say, she is rather behind in the class. Yesterday, in the middle of class my department chair struts in with dear Cindy, brings her to the front of the classroom, and declares: "Cindy here is having some difficulty, we are going to need to give her some extra attention and time to help her get caught up."

I desperately wanted to say "Cindy here needs to bother showing up regularly for classes." But, as the entire class was the audience I played Professor Pansy and agreed.

Revenge will have its day though. We have a test next week and I know that Cindy will not be here every class between then and now. So, I am going to make the test extremely difficult, but on the next day she is absent I will do everything short of giving my attending students the exact answers.

Arrogant Alvin Gets A Little Smackdown. Maybe He Could Put It In His Tortured Memoir!

Dear Alvin,

Your mediocrity is exceeded only by your arrogance. A few clever phrases hardly make you the next incarnation of David Eggers. And given your propensity to plagiarize, I wonder if those witty tongue turners are original works in the first place.

As if that isn't enough to prescribe your eternal damnation, you’ve discovered how easy it is to manipulate some of our colleagues into thinking that you’re the living incarnation of martyrdom, all because you couldn’t impress us with your feigned brilliance. That somehow gives you leave to ask me if we’re “doing anything” in class, or license to leave class 5 minutes early because your “connections” with a few well-placed professors excludes you from such niggling details as respect and courtesy.

The truth is that yes, your fellow students really do hate you, but not, as you seem to think, because of clandestine alliances or out of the jealousy supposedly inspired by your brilliance.

They hate you because you monopolize class time with you self-aggrandizement and condescension, and yes, they see you for the duplicitous, ass-kissing, backstabbing fraud you really are.

Where RYS Readers Play Pinata With the "I Wanna Be a Little Cool" Newbie.

We were stupefied at the amount of mail that came in on this week's Big Thirsty. More than 300 folks wanted to say something to our newbie questioner, and we did our best last night and this morning to give a small sampling of the responses. We've had 300 email nights before - not often - but we've never had so much mail about one post in particular. Listen. That's got to stop. "Lost" was on last night, so at least one of our moderators had to do his work while trying to figure out what the hell was going on with those new people on the island! Anyway, enjoy the flava below:

• Bring a shotgun to class on the first day and fire it into the air when a student comes in late.
  


• After the first few weeks, throw out all the textbooks in fit of rage and instead begin to focus on the life skills these students so badly need. Things like ironing, etiquette and cooking. At the end of the term, they'll hold a party for you and Lulu will sing "To Sir With Love."
  


• There are so many things wrong with your point of view but let us start with the most obvious, the idea that you can get all of your students to show up on time, bring their books, and be prepared? You’ll be lucky if they even buy the books rookie! This imaginary fantasy student that you speak of is much like a cat that you train to use the toilet. Everyone has seen a clip of one on Youtube, or heard of a friend of a friend who had one. However every cat you ever have will just pee on your bed and crap in your plants.
  


• Here's my response: Dumbass.
  
  
• Make it a portion of the student's grade to submit, each class, a question or comment from the readings for class discussion. This will require that they do at least some of the reading. Some students still will not do it. Some will take the lower grade, and some will make up stupid questions 5 minutes before class. But, you will be able to tell who those students are and grade them accordingly. When I tried this, I found that most of the students in the class fell into line and did the assignments.
  


• Look, do your best and know that the ones who care will get it, and the ones who don't aren't worth it. You'll have to get a grip on the realities of teaching if you want to last. Start working on your bitter, crusty side. You're going to need it.
  


• I absolutely know how to get ALL my students to come to my classes on time, every time. They love it so much they want to be there even AFTER class is over! But since I am most likely one of the lousy professors you had, focusing on minutiae (which, you dipshit, is necessary in my field), I am not going to fucking tell you the secret.
  


• Your weakness is that you care what they think about you. They're working that shit. Stop caring, focus on the material, make your lectures indispensable, and....they STILL won't all come on time and prepared. But a few more might. And mainly, you can stop caring about the ones who don't.
  


• I don't know what is superlatively dumb and juvenile about pop quizzes, but students respond to threats to their grades (and, if they don't respond to threats to their grades, they're probably not going to respond to anything else). If you don't like pop quizzes, institute an attendance policy of some kind, though I've always thought that attendance policies are much more juvenile than pop quizzes, which at least promote preparing for class and which test something other than the ability to put one's ass in a seat.
  


• I make my students SING if they are late to class (1 minute late is late... if I can get myself and a three year old out the door at7:15am, then they can certainly drag their booze-soaked asses into their souped-up cars and get here on time). I never really let it interrupt my lecture I have already started, and it only takes a couple students' utter humiliation to get the whole class quaking in their boots about ever being late for the rest of the semester.
  
  
• Just get your shit together, and teach. Given the desperate narcissism of your post, I can see why your students don’t come to class. I probably wouldn’t, either.
  


• Your earnestness is really lovely to see, and it is clear you are dedicated to your students. But after almost 20 years of teaching, I've come to realize that education is a two-way street. The best you can do is present learning opportunities -- you can always work to improve that aspect of your teaching. You can do current research, try to relate it real-world events, be well organized and all that. In other words, you can, and SHOULD, take responsibility for what YOU bring into the classroom. But beyond that -- you have to admit you have no control. Some students don't come to class, or are woefully prepared when they do, because they are lazy, distracted, uninterested, and a host of other labels. Some come because their real lives simply have taken over. There really is never a way to know for sure. But if you continue to put the burden of THEIR LIVES and THEIR choices, on yourself, you're gonna go nuts.
  


• Your students will NEVER think you're cool. Get over it.
  


• I teach a biology laboratory class which requires questions from the end of each section to be turned in. All I want them to do is complete this work. All the answers are in the book so I have no need to check for correctness. I require these homework assignments to be turned into me before class starts. If it is late, even a minute late, I will take off 20%. (They are worth 10 points each so I take off 2 points a day). This keeps my student from working on last weeks homework during laboratory time this week, and it also gets most of them to class on time.
  


• It's so cute to see naiveté bud and blossom. When the students kick cynicism into your veins come on over to my house. I'll save some scotch for you.
  
  
• Movies and literature have created the myth of the perfect teacher, the one who changes lives forever through what seems to be nothing other than force of will--the Platonic Ideal, if you will. The existence of such a person is doubtful as a whole and impossible for a newbie. After years and years of trial and error, you may get close, but as for now, you just want to be acceptable.
  


• Some if not many of your students will feel your class is important. Others won’t. There’s not a hell of a lot you can do about it. Show you care about the material and they’ll come to their own conclusions. Some students are on this earth to recycle air. You won’t reach them. So what? Focus on the majority of them who really are worth a damn and ignore the ones who aren’t.
  


• The class isn't there for you. Get over being special. Every class is going to be "just another class" for most of the students in it. That doesn't mean you can't teach the shit out of it.No one ever, in the whole history of everything, ever seemed even "a little cool" by wanting to. You don't have to be cool to teach your students. You don't have to be cool for them to like you. And trying will just lead to embarrassment and discomfort.

Bridging the Gap Between Subjective and Objective. On Not Throwing Out the Spreadsheets.

I had to respond to Professor Project and her view of most jobs. In her post she says, “At most jobs, when you’re evaluated, you don’t have a spreadsheet - you get an interview, and you have a portfolio.” I simply want to question her definition of “most jobs.” When I returned to academia I was surprised at the portfolio idea; in all my years outside of academia only jobs of a “creative” type (not meant in any derogatory sense) had use of a portfolio. In addition, I also had many occasions to bring up a spreadsheet when evaluating the performance of employees.

I think the real world is halfway between Professor Project and Spreadsheet Steve. When I evaluated employees it was a matter of looking at the objective standards (the spreadsheet stuff: widget productivity, doohickey turnaround, etc.) and talking to them about their performance and growth as an employee. When those objective standards were way out of whack with the norms of the industry it was time to consider the future employment of that individual. I agree Spreadsheet Steve is a little overly cynical and playing “cover your hiney,” but Professor Project is also a little unrealistic about “most jobs.”

The question would then become, what do I do? Even though I teach in a technical field, my first priority with all of my students is making sure they can effectively communicate. After that I evaluate them in a very diverse set of both objective (spreadsheet stuff) and subjective (project based) criteria. Finally, each of my students has an “exit interview” with me and we evaluate the totality of the work (spreadsheets and projects together). I don’t bother with attendance and such, but I do keep a studious track of any assessments so that our conversation can be honest.

Do the students love it, no not all of them; but most see the value in the approach (even if it is a few years down the road).

Another Newbie Asks This Week's Big Thirsty!

Q: I'm very new at this job, but love it. I also am trying very hard NOT to be like many of the lousy professors I had in the past, those who focused on the minutiae and who missed the big picture. I want to be a little cool, but NOT everyone's friend. I want my students to get the real info, the important ideas, and I want them to feel that is not JUST another course they have to take.

SO...how do I get them to show up every day, bring their texts, do the readings, and attend on time? There has to be a better strategy than just giving pop quizzes - which I find are the dumbest and most juvenile response to the problem. Can someone help me get my students to class on time, EVERY time?

A: Oh, we know you will...but send your responses here.

Where "It's Not Rocket Science" Isn't A Good Comeback. Because It IS Rocket Science. Abby Aerospace Fires Up Some Smackdown.

Ms. N:
Cleverness: 4
Is Cool: 5
Coolness Delusion Factor: 2
Suckup: 2
Copy and paste: Name_X.txt. It's just a fucking filename. Just name it right: your name, _, assignment number. Bet you're the one posting on that other site about how everything had to be "perfect" when turning in assignments. I'm teaching people how to build rockets. Sometimes "oops" isn't an option.

Mr. G:
Cleverness: -2
Is Cool: 3
Coolness Delusion Factor: 5
Suckup: 5
I can't quit gut laughing. Replace 'Name' with *your* name. The one that your parole officer uses.

Mr. S:
Cleverness: -5
Is Cool: -5
Coolness Delusion Factor: 5
Suckup: 5
OK, we're both dorks. But I'm professor dork. And you are *student* dork. We will not hang out sometime.

Ms. M:
Cleverness: 3
Is Cool: 2
Coolness Delusion Factor: 3
Suckup: 5
Thanks, yes, the syllabus is as long, small, tedious, and full of legal bullshit as my last mortgage. Gawd, I know that every day is full of hardship for you. Get in line behind the other half of your class that works full time, raises families, and bitches a lot less often. Exceptions = no rules, and I have rules. Thanks to folks like you.

Mr. J, Mr. K, Mr. L:
Cleverness: 3.5-4.5
Is Cool: 1.5 (average)
Coolness Delusion Factor: 3.5
Suckup: 5 falling to 0 by term end.
Yes, I'm younger, smarter, and don't have a dick. You're presumptive and address me by my first name. Not until you know me well enough to survive calling me "hon." Which could be a long time coming, sweetie.

Mr. Z:
Cleverness: 5
Cool: 0
Coolness Delusion Factor: 2
Suckup: 5
What you wrote won't work, and if you can show me that it will you'll have broken rules written by the guy who wrote the goddamn manual and proved that I've been telling big fat lies to the class for several weeks. And who'd a thunk we'd have this exact conversation 3 classes in a row? You're too lazy to try it yourself and too willfully ignorant to believe what I say. Can't you still drop this class?

Mr. C:
Cleverness: -5
Cool: 0
Coolness Delusion Factor: 2
Suckup: 5
Can't find my late work policy? What, 'due date' means nothing to you?

Mr. & Ms. Anon:
Cleverness: -
Cool: -
Coolness Delusion Factor: 5
Suckup: -
Thanks to my across-the-board late semester grade inflation you probably passed my class. Since I don't remember any pet haters this semester, I probably smiled at you and gave you the breaks you didn't deserve. So you call me out by name on that other site, misspelling your malapropisms in the rant. I don't give a rat's ass about you? Your mother might, and your shrink is paid to - but if I care, it's a bonus. I'm paid to facilitate your learning. Period. As for suggesting that others find another teacher or prepare to burn? Burn, baby, burn. I'm lighting the fire, you craven little whiner.

Just One More Head Smacking Moment in the Academy.

So I found out last week from one of the secretaries that my department chair has been getting a bunch of calls recently from students who were in my course last semester.

I've changed the way grades are calculated this semester, increasing the proportion of the grade that comes from the team exercises (with a commensurate adjustment to the difficulty of the team and individual quizzes, such that the overall grade distribution at the end of the semester will still be the same as before.)

Now, it seems, a rumor is going around that either (a) I Can't Do That, or (b) last semester's students can get their grades recalculated according to this semester's standards. So they're calling my department chair to complain.

I ask you all, where would a student get the idea that the grading policies--all outlined in detail in the syllabus, and consistent with University policy--can't change from one semester to the next? And what would possibly make a student think that she was entitled to have her scores recalculated according to a different semester's percentages?

Thank goodness for my department chair, whose response to a student's question of "She can't do that, can she?" was, "You're kidding, right?"

Professor Project Offers a Reply to Spreadsheet Steve.

I bet most professors could guess their students’ grades without looking at the grade sheet, and be right about 95% of the time. At most jobs, when you’re evaluated, you don’t have a spreadsheet - you get an interview, and you have a portfolio. Your tenure committee examines your portfolio, throws in the political and personal issues, and makes a decision. The elaborate spreadsheet method of student evaluation seems both artificial and inaccurate, a shield to hide behind when defending grades.

What does this have to do with learning? Very little I think. I would prefer not to grade at all, but since I must, I evaluate two things: Did they do the work? Is it done well?

All of my classes are project based. Some are very specific, and some are more open-ended. I make the goal of each project very clear, and give a due date. But I don’t take attendance, and I don’t have a spreadsheet. Students must complete the projects whether they were in class or not. Lazy students who miss class needn’t be penalized for poor attendance, as the work will be crap anyway (or not even finished). Brilliant students who get done early get a day off. At midterms, the students hand in their portfolios. If all the work is there, and excellent quality, they get an “A.” All there and good quality, they get a “B.” I go over the strengths and weaknesses of the portfolio, tell them what I think needs redone, and tell them their grade. Then at finals, I do the same thing, with the final portfolio grade representing 100% of the final grade for the course. It’s easy, simple and the students don’t have to lie to me about their dying grandmother.

I used to rely on elaborate point systems for projects, and lots of spreadsheets, and I found it to be a waste of time. Not only was I spending a lot of hours entering numbers, but the students wanted to micro-argue their grades, or they found ways to fulfill the stated criteria without really engaging in learning or solving problems.

Additionally, I want to make my students behave like the professionals they hope to be after graduation. The spreadsheets seemed like a barrier to this - it turned me into their Dad rather than their mentor. I have no problem asserting my authority, but I don’t want to turn into a grade accountant. Everyone has a different style, and I think the spreadsheets work for some, but I’m much happier with a simpler measure of grades, and at least in my courses, the work tends to be more creative, ambitious and professional.

Enjoy the Flava Of Some Hot Links.

• What? We Can't Go To Parties Now? From AJC.com.


• What? We Can't Use Our School Computer For This? From KMEG.com.


• We Can't Believe This Paddle Doesn't Have Other Uses. From BusinessNorth.com.


• We Doubt There's a Proffie Named Eli Manning Anywhere. But It'd Be a Whole Lot Cooler If There Was. From The BostonChannel.com.


• College Students Go Big For Barack. And Another. From RedOrbit.com & KFYR.com.

On Familiarity and Academic Viability. (One of Our Newest Correspondents Realizes Our Brilliance. Hasn't Anyone Been Listening?)

I wrote in to the moderators today because I was sure, positive even, that Sarah from Sausalito was actually in one of my classes, and that she was speaking about the same super-keener I wrote about weeks ago on this site.

I would bet that this gut reaction to reading an RYS post is hardly unique, as I'm often moved to speculate that Crystal Conservative wrote this "badass" post using a predictably transparent disguise, or that Flamer Fred wrote this other one and let it all hang out like she always does. (I've even thought at times that Wicked Walter might be me!)

But the compound tells me that Sarah goes to a school a couple of time zones away. Different part of the earth. I'm moved by the experience, however, and now feel more strongly than ever that RYS engages some variety of professor-student collective unconscious, or the immortal spirit of the universe, or something.

So fuck it. I am adding every one of my posts to my vita. Maybe it will bait some academic freak into asking me about the legitimacy of the lines so I can then pounce with the utmost sound and fury. It will be a greatly relished defense of us all: I and I (my double, my brother).

Readers Don't Feel Bad for Fred from Flint. This Week's Pile-On is On.

• Your students have the audacity to pack up their belongings before class is over (and indeed leave when the time is up)? Shock! Horror! How long have you been teaching? This happens in practically each and every class I have ever attended or taught. Possible reasons for your students’ behavior: 1) you have conditioned them to expect an early ending to your class; 2) they leave because they have another class to get to; 3) They’re just students and students do that kind of shit.
  


• I know these stories are likely a little exaggerated and aiming to entertain, but people like Fred are ruining the profession. The level of arrogance and self-involvement in his post makes me feel sick. If my son or daughter were in his class, I'd have reason to feel as if we were all being cheated.
  


• Wait a tick....You let your students out early two class meetings in a row and then are upset that they are packing up their things early? They've come to expect that they're leaving early! You've given them plenty of indication to expect that by letting them out of class for an hour. An hour. Why didn't you just keep lecturing on your next subject since you're burning through the material so fast? Heap the coals of knowledge upon their heads. In grad school, I had a professor who routinely went over the end of our allotted time together. While I didn't mind on Monday or Wednesday, Fridays I had a seminar that met across campus in the next block of time. He knew this. I explained this to him prior to the start of class on the first Friday (after he'd gone over our time the first two meetings), and left at the end of class despite him continuing. I knew the consequences, and I made my exit as quietly as possible. This continued every week for the duration of class. There were no hard feelings between us - it was a matter of priorities. Point being, you don't care enough to know what other classes your students are taking. You don't care about teaching this material this year. What example have you set to make your students care about your "authority"?
  


• I teach at a working class school, and I come from a working class environment, so forgive me sounding terse. But you, sir, are a dipshit. Many students organize their classes around work and family obligations, even around other classes. And sometimes they need every minute to get from one side of the campus to the other, maybe to extract their cars from backed up parking garages and navigate traffic-jammed roads for bosses who will fire them if they're late.
  


• You are the problem if your class runs late. You see that round object on the wall? It's not there to hide the some horrible painting accident. It's there to keep your class within its allotted time. You start class on time. Not early. Not late. On time. And you stop on time. Early if you wish, but never, never late.
  


• I can't help but think that the disdain with which Fred holds his students must show through. Nobody is that good of an actor. It's no wonder so many students hate college and think of profs as unreasonable and boorish.
  


• Yes, everything I say is brilliant. The students are enraptured and I could dance all night. But fuck that. When the big hand hits the twelve, that's it. My carriage arrives and the night is over. Students who want to chat after class can waltz with me solo (as long as I can reach my bus on time). But students with other commitments know that I respect their time. I don't hold class late - ever. Try it. You'll be much less of a douche.

Listen, If You're Going To Provide Your own Silly Names, What the Hell Are We Going to Do? Some Sprightly Morning Smackdown!

Noxious Natalie:

There are three books on the syllabus. One is a novel. No one is infringing on your civil rights with these "oppressive" reading requirements, and any implication to the contrary is both ignorant and offensive.

Sigma Delta Zack:

I respect your right to devote 100% of your lecture time to surfing Facebook, Gossip Geek, and the Drudge Report; however, in doing so, you forfeit the right to ask asinine questions at the end of class. The professor may be good-natured enough to force a smile before repeating herself, but I'm right behind you, sharpening my pencil, and I'm feeling stabby.

Vain Veronica:

Like, omigod, could you please stop talking about your weekend for more than five seconds? I know, right? Like, why do you always seem to follow me when I move to a different seat? Like, maybe I'm trying to take notes? And I'd like to be able to hear? Wouldn't that just be, like, totally great?

J. Farnsworth Bluffington IV:

Let's hope the trust fund is maturing more quickly than you are.

Blaring Bianca:

If you aren't going to turn the damn iPod off during lecture, at least turn down the volume so that you're the only one who can hear it.

Amorous Amanda:

I know you're excited about taking this class with your hunky boyfriend, but you should really give it a rest. The poor guy actually looks like he's trying to pay attention, and it must be hard for him to hear with your tongue in his ear. It's 10 in the morning - you've gotta give him a break sometime, or he's going to burn out.

Our Favorite Student Athlete of the Week.

I am a student registered in your Sociology class on tusday and thursday nights. I have missed the first three weeks because I am traveling for over a month this semester with the volleyball team i will be gone from febuary 17th untill march 15 aprrox will you help me complete the course through email while i am gone?

I will be at the university Thursday night for your class or if you can meet me during your office time some time this week I will come in and see you.

Phil from Phoenix Does Not Have His Sights Set Incredibly High.

After every semester, I redesign my courses for the benefit of providing my students with a better educational environment and experience. I look for readings that are more "enjoyable" and new resources, try to use more technology, make more "real-world" connections to the material.

But after this semester, I'm just going to take all my students to a bar and get some margaritas. I'm sure this setting will be more familiar to students than the traditional classroom, and make me forget about the things said during faculty meetings.

I promised myself that I would stop complaining about my job, and I have managed that fairly well. I particularly like the different kind of students in my classroom. I enjoy failing lazy bastards and giving A’s to hard-working, smart, and intellectually curious students.

I appreciate my job. I can have a normal conversation with most of my colleagues. With the salary that I receive, I can afford a decent living and a vacation to Monterrey once a year.

Sarah From Sausalito Sure Is Obsessed With Snappy Simon the Super Keener. (She's Got a Problem with the Proffie, Too, But We Sorta See Her Side.)

Dear Professor,

The semester has just begun, but already the sour waves of defeat and failure are washing over me.

Let me clarify here, this is no complaint about the workload. Yes it's crazy hard shit, but it's also going to be my life's work and I adore it. Let me also assure you, it's not me; I read the books, I do the work, I argue with classmates over the dinner table - I promise you I am invested. The real problem here is ... you.

Wait! Hold your horses, don't write this off as a whiny sob story about how "Professor Meanie is out to get me for no reason and it's not fair!" Seriously, I swear it's not. I can even understand you on some level: this is a high tier course, and there was the big concern over enrollment numbers.... Well you needn't have worried. True, there aren't that many of us, but who needs the rest when you have Simon Super-Keener in your class?

He certainly talks enough for the rest of us. What interesting questions he has, to turn a workshop-style class (in which class participation is a major factor for the grade) into a one-on-one tutorial between you and Studious Simon. Or a master class, and the rest of us are only here as an audience, to watch and make Simon Spectacular feel even more superior and self-satisfied that he already is. Even when one of secondary students manages to get a comment in, Savvy Simon speeds to the scene and takes over.

I'm so psyched you two are having a great time here... but I signed up for this class for a reason, and whatever you may think, it was most definitely not to bask in the genius of Simon the Scholar. I want to learn this stuff, and it's not going to happen if Snappy Simon calls out the answer before I can work it out for myself, or if Simon Surpassing is ahead of the game by a few weeks and steals class time asking you about it.

Please... stop it. Stop him, shut down the Simonator and let the rest of us in on the game once in a while. I promise that we can be just as interesting and engaging if you give us the chance.

Very Sincerely,

Sarah

(ANOTHER one of your students)

Fred From Flint Is Fed Up.

I realize that this semester I have not been putting my all into my introductory classes. I don't particularly care, and I'm tired of fighting my lazy students who believe a college degree is an entitlement and that I should give them all an A for breathing and showing up to my class have the time. No more essays, no more papers this semester. Exams are all multiple choice because that's what they want. Ironically, they will find out, students in my classes do worse on the multiple choice portion than on the essay portion of the exam.

On the first day of class, when I asked students how many of them were paying attention to the presidential race, out of 35 students only 2 raised their hands. Something in me snapped. I was stunned. Here was the most interesting presidential contest in my lifetime, and no one was tuning in. I thought to myself, "These idiots don't have the right to an opinion." Rather than do my usual give and take lecture-discussion hybrid, I decided that I would lecture the entire semester.

When I lecture, with little interruption, I can just fly through the material. For two days in a row, I let the class go early. One day, 45 minutes early--the next 20 minutes. Yesterday, however, some of the student actually decided to engage me during a discussion of civil liberties. I decided to indulge them, and I got some really great questions. Maybe these students weren't so bad after all.

About five minutes before the class ended, however, some of the students who apparently didn't care for the discussion or for the learning that was going on, began to pack up their supplies. I was taking questions right up until the end of class, and started to go just a bit over the class period. To my surprise, students just got up and walked out.

I couldn't believe the little shits and their gall. I stopped my thought in mid-sentence and said, "Don't I have any authority here? We are not done class--do not just get up and walk out. That's rude and disrespectful."

I think I'm going to show up 15 minutes late to class next week. I obviously have more important things to be doing than to waste my time with these jokers. Better yet: I'll just pack up my things while students ask me questions next time.

WW III

By my count, the "Guess Who" appearance on Sunday was Wicked Walter's 3rd post ever. It looks to me like you've got more than 1000 other posts up, but I will take Walter's 3 over the rest any time. He's crazzy - his spelling - but he comes at it right from the heart.

I'm about 60% sure that he's about 80% an act, but one line from his most recent post has given me enough strength to keep on keepin' on in a profession that's been hard on me from the beginning:

Do you know how I know when I'm on the right track? It's when 6 people tell me to "watch out."

No truer words, Walt. I have been fearful in my career from the beginning, thankful to have ANY job, and therefore solicitious and insecure. I'm betting Walter doesn't suffer from fear. I'm betting Walter believes in himself, and doesn't worry when the crazzies around him want to bring him down.

So when Walter says put the pedal to the medal, I know what he means. Turn up the Foghat indeed.

Speeding along like a bullet from a gun,

It's a three day ride, we're gonna make it in one.

I'm back on the road and I ain't gonna stop,

Goin' to roll 'til I'm old, gonna rock 'til I drop.

Road fever, wheels turnin' in the rain,

Road fever, fire burnin' in my brain,

Go driver go! Move like a hurricane.

"Road Fever"

by Price & Peverett

from Foghat's Rock & Roll (1973)

When the Saracasm Gets Going, It's Tough To Stop It. Here, a Proffie Feigns Surprise At the Busy Schedule of the Typical Undergrad.

Dear Student,

I've been selfish. In my zeal to teach to you, I have completely neglected your personal life. As you pointed out, I was indeed under the impression that this class was all you had going in your life. But you're taking other classes you say? Surely that can't be! Why would the university allow you to overload yourself when the four credits of my class should be taking up your entire life. I mean, what with the 30 pages I expect you to read every week and those two-page homework assignments, I surely expect you to spend more than 30 hours outside of class thinking about this gen ed physics class.

Thank you for informing me that you have three other classes. I will take that up with the university when I get to my office later this morning. A precious ray of sunshine like yourself shouldn't be overextended like that.

Yours,
The Meanest Professor in the World

We Prefer Going After Students With a Sock Full of Pennies, But To Each His Own.

You seem to be under the impression that I am in some way associated with the recruiting department here at Big Midwestern U. I assume that's what you must think, since you have already brought along two "prospective students" to class, though from what I can tell this title is a misnomer, and something more like "my loser friends" would be fitting.

Your last email requesting to bring yet another eager candidate into my classroom even suggested specific techniques to entice these potential matriculators. You "hope we're doing something fun" because you "really think that she is college material." That's excellent. Maybe, then, instead of learning how to write, we could play a game? And not one of those lame-o games where you have to "know" stuff, but I'll just bring in my Candyland board and we'll show her what college is really about.

I know my class is early, and that can deter these more reluctant students. Does your friend like French toast? Because I'll just whip some up, and we can have a delicious breakfast while we play games and laugh. Good times will be had! We can tell secrets and braid each others' hair! She'll think college is, like, so totally fun! Then, when she comes here, she can zone out, write shitty essays, and act as though her professors are making undue demands on her precious free time.

Perhaps, dear student, you have picked up on a certain amount of sarcasm. I must admit, I haven't even the foggiest idea how one goes about making French toast. The point here is, I am actually not paid by the recruiting office, and I'm not in the business of "selling" my class like some slimy used car salesperson. If you want to hang out with your loser friends, skip my class. If you want to be in college, go to class and forget the loser friends. But there's no more room at the inn for vagrants and wanderers.

Spreadsheet Steve Stiffens His Resolve.

One of the reasons I like academic life is that most people (except deans, who don’t count) aren’t too fussy about paperwork. And I’ll be honest; I’m not the best at keeping records about attendance, participation and all that sixth grade shit.

Mostly, this attitude derives from my idea that a university is an intellectual community and that each class is a smaller version of that community. Supposedly, everyone is motivated by a desire to learn and contribute to the learning of others. You may ask, “What are you smoking?” Just call me an old idealist, I guess. But I am changing my ways.

My idealism has lately been so crushed by grade-grubbing whiners who want to dispute every singly percentile of their grade that I am turning over a new academic leaf. I am about to become the whiners’ worst bureaucratic nightmare. Of course I have always had an attendance and participation policy on the syllabus, but I’ve tended after the first few weeks to let it slide. We’re all here to learn, right? (Yeah, right.)

So I have a sign-in sheet that goes round every day so I don’t waste time calling the roll and after class I put a check mark beside the names of folks who spoke up and contributed. Every week I enter the results into a simple spreadsheet. What I’m discovering is that by holding students to account I feel a greater sense of self-respect.

Who knows? Maybe all these months of reading RYS has stiffened my resolve. Maybe the real reason I let record-keeping slide is that I had lost my belief that it mattered, or that what I was doing was important. In any case, I can hardly wait for the end of the semester when I post my grades & I have to opportunity to go over the numbers with some whiner who wants me to believe he earned a B instead of a C. “Well, yes, now, let’s take a look at the spreadsheet . . . “

Guess Who?

How queer are you guys?

I read that abomination from Saturday and I don't give a shit about your introspection. Why do you insist on making this such a "professional" endeavor with all the hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing of a 4 pm meeting with the Trustees? If I haven't lost that copy of the map to your compound I found on rec.insanity.rys, I'm going to get in my Trans Am and make a night-time visit that will look like a cross between Brokeback Mountain, The Blair Witch Project, and Snakes on a Plane.

It's a blog, you increasingly-anal assholes. It used to be loads of fun. It occasionally still is. If you aspire to get yourself a little space on the Chronicle website or something, where you can ruminate on the "profession," then deal directly with them about it, and close this thing down, because you seem keen on ruining what was once in this space.

You're worried that people don't LIKE the site? You're all nervous because by a 6:1 ratio people didn't like that crazzy Michigan lady? Listen. Do you know how I know when I'm on the right track? It's when 6 people tell me to "watch out." Then I put the pedal to the metal and I'm on my way.

It's seems all I do is write to you assholes to tell you to get all four wheels on the highway. You're always veering off, taking little pictures of the scenery, buying trinkets for the folks back home. Fill it with gas and let it rip. Burn up the 4-lane, and quit looking in the rear view mirror to see if your passengers are happy. The shitheads and the weenies will hop out a window on a curve, and the folks who want to take the trip will be back there anyway.

Turn down the voices in your head, and turn up the Foghat. Don't make me come down there and kick your asses.

A Long Time Reader Shows What It Means To Go "Old School" At RYS. Super Bowl Sunday Smackdown, Suckas!

Miss J -- You warmed my heart the first day of class, with your horrified mug. You had signed up for Junior Miss Faculty -- the one who is desperately kissing student ass because she wants to be popular. Instead, you got me -- crusty old crab cake. You've never really recovered, and sit, looking mildly horrified, through every class. I'm ever so sorry that I actually don't care to hear your opinions on what could make you happier, or make me a better teacher. I don't care if you like me or not, nor do I care what your opinions are of my clothes. No, we can't "hang out" -- and I am vaguely disturbed at the implications that you and Junior Miss Faculty meet up at bars. See, you're under 21, and she's being a twit.

Mr. P -- Your ever-changing hair colors never cease to amuse me. You're a veritable rainbow! Surely Manic Panic is kept in business by you and you alone. We have class twice a week, and each time we meet, your hair is a different color. It's a shame your intellect isn't as bright as your hair -- indeed, your coiffure is the most interesting thing on (or in) your head.

Miss K, companion to Mr. P -- Stay away from magnets. I fear your face will be pulled off, given all of its metal accessories. How ever did you get the bridge of your nose pierced? Oh, you did it yourself? My, what fortitude. Perhaps if you applied such determination to your papers, you'd not be failing.

Mrs. H -- it's always hard for adult students to join in with traditional undergraduates. However, you're a fellow student, not a surrogate mom to them. please refrain from giving "motherly" advice and scolding. Just because you and I are the only 'real' adults in the room does not give you license to be my sidekick. Let me handle the classroom. You need as much help as they do in the writing department. I don't care how they did it at Moose Knuckle High in 1957 -- I promise you that the APA style has changed since then.

Delightful Dora from Detroit Dishes It Out. Why We Proffies Are the Way We Are.

Dear Parents:

I promise, your child is in my class. You see, Rate Your Students is not just read and written by the few rogue professors who are bitter, worn down, jaded, and disillusioned. Nearly all professors are cynical bastards, and that's not because there's something inherently wrong with academics.

It's because there's something inherently wrong with a system that requires a 200% time commitment and compensates with a very low salary. Parents, do you realize that our job isn't just to teach your kids? We are expected to give 100% to our classes and our students -- and then we are expected to give an additional 100% to our committee meetings, to grading papers, to planning lessons.

And to our research. If we don't publish papers, present at conferences, and otherwise engage in professional development, WE LOSE OUR JOBS. Most academics work more than 40 hours/week. We don't spend our summers sipping umbrella drinks poolside -- we spend our summers working on the projects we need to do in order to get published in Peer Reviewed Journal X and to have our grant proposal accepted for Project Y. And a lot of us teach, too. So pardon me for being a little stressed out, and for venting about the part of my job that gives me the most grief: your children.

Why do I do this job? Because working for a corporation wouldn't allow me to do my own research. Because working for the government wouldn't let me pursue my own interests. Because I do enjoy sharing my passion with others. The problem is that so many of the students just don't care, so I sometimes feel like I'm wasting my time.

Don't worry, though, parents. I come to class each day, I smile, I answer questions. Then I come home and read Rate Your Students because my face hurts from all that faking. Your children? They don't have a clue. If they did, my job would yield many more actual smiles.

-- Doctor D!

Where the Moderators Lose Their Minds and Give Up More Inside Dope Than Is Kosher. (And Where We Sneak In a J-Love Reference, Cuz She's The Bomb!)

So, lately the mail has taken a turn.

We can't fully explain it, but the mail goes in cycles here. We continue to get more than 100 emails a night, and we continue to read them the same way, looking for lively and energetic pieces that suit the style and content of what we've been doing here since November of 2005.

Sometimes it's a feast, and we turn down plenty of good stuff because we have the issues or ideas that are currently in play covered. And then sometimes, it's just a lot stuff that isn't up to our "standards." (Yeah, we know...quit laughing.)

The fact is, RYS succeeds or fails entirely because of its readers and what they choose to send us. By a ratio of about 6:1, people hated Laura Lasso. Usually when we get vitriolic mail about something, there's an absolutely opposite reaction from a whole other set of folks. But poor Laura - who writes to us lengthily and OFTEN - took a shit kicking yesterday.

As we explained to some of the folks who wrote in - or at least the ones who didn't call us fucking imbeciles - Laura's post is like a lot we get. Unhinged. Nutty. Silly. There are worse things in the world, you know? It was pretty "lively" in our estimation, and we loved the Dr. Waffle character spinning his Nine Inch Nails CDs for the kids.

In fact, after the lukewarm reaction, the moderator du jour sent the entire contents of her "deleted" file to the other moderators and we all agreed with her. There wasn't much in there more interesting than Laura's post. It doesn't make it a masterpiece, we agree. But we're not making dinner for anyone here. It's potluck, honey, and if you don't bring it with you, you can't be sure it's going to be here.

So what? What next? We tend to let issues boil up and then when they die out, we don't keep hitting them. So sending us an email about a hot topic a week later isn't a great idea. And, when folks jump all over a topic, we usually offer up as many as 5-10 perspectives on it before we look for the new thing. If you're #11 on that list, it feels like shit. You spent some time, wrote some stuff you like - look at my joke about Descartes; that rocks - and then we sent you a little "thanks, but no thanks" note. That person might not write back to us for a while because of that, and we're the lesser for it. But we can't publish everything. We've heard from plenty of folks who say they don't want a dozen posts a day. And, based on our schedules, reading the mail and getting 3-4 pieces up a day is the absolute limit for what we can do.

And then there are meager days when we get 100 posts that contain nothing but, "Man, you shoulda seen my stupid student today. He wore an iPod to class and his cell phone rang!" What are we going to do about that? Or about 100 of those?

Laura or Wicked Walter or Weepy Wayne start to look pretty good, because at least they're hanging it out there and letting it rip. (Which we always admire in our pals.)

Actually, another side issue to this is not the quality of the posts, but their content. We get far more mail that's about academic life in general, the fate of the professor, the state of the business. We get a lot of folks who bitch that there isn't more rating of students ("the site is called Rate Your Students," everyone tells us, like we've lost our collective marbles), but not really many who send us those ratings. And we try to be representative of what comes in. In fact, the state of the profession posts do very well, generate a lot of really interesting posts. (And then of course the backlash, when we get 40 emails that say, "If I wanted to be bored, I'd go to a faculty meeting.")

And, in the midst of all this ennui, we have to share that our hits this past week were the second highest we've had in the history of the blog, and January was the second highest month ever. (After the May '07 orgy brought on by the Blogger.com feature.) So people are still reading in big numbers. For that, of course, we should all be grateful.

So, these are the contents of our shared brain this afternoon. It's sunny out. We're sated from a nice plate of huevos rancheros, and we're going to siesta like a mofu and then watch "Ghost Whisperer" on the Tivo. We'd love to know what you think.

Yer pals,

Compound Crystal, Clint, and Calvin.

Usually, When We Get an Email From A [[BLANK]] It Says This...

Parent:

• You should be ashamed of yourselves.
• I hope my son/daughter never gets you for a professor.

Professor:

• I have some stories I could tell you!
• How come you never publish my stuff? It's better than that shit you put up yesterday.

Student:

• I really appreciate my professors.
• My professors are all dipshits.

Someone outside the academy:

• If it's so bad, why don't you quit?
• You lazy bastards only work 8 months a year. How hard can it be?

Pornographer:

• Do you love Asian ladies as much as we do?
• Don't you want your ©0¢K to be bigger to bring more pleasure?

A Long Time Reader:

• That post today was the worst thing you ever put up. This site was much funnier before.
• That post today was the best thing you've ever had. You should do more of that. You're much funnier now than before.

A First Time Reader:

• This is so funny.
• I had this idea before you guys, and my version would have been better.
  

Marshall the Manipulator.

I get sick of the manipulation, even on a small scale. My classes have been in session for 2 weeks now, and that's 4 classes of material. Sure, one day is an intro (syllabus, guidelines, etc.), and that's not a big deal. But on the other 3 days my class has really been making some progress.

So it's with such terrible dismay that I got 2 emails yesterday from different people telling me about poor Marshall, a student of mine who's missed the first 2 weeks for a variety of reasons. My departmental administrator wrote to tell me that his small town in Vermont had bad weather and he couldn't get out until after the first class of the semester had run. Also, there was some kind of dorm problem once he got to campus.

My department chair wrote to tell me that he came by to tell her that he was really excited about the semester, but his on-campus work schedule had not been set yet, and he simply couldn't put his mind to classes until that was sorted out. Oh, and of course he can't afford the textbook yet, and he felt it would be disrespectful to the professor to arrive in class without it.

The gist of each email was that I should cut Marshall some slack. I don't know what kind of charmer this kid is, but he's gone out of his way to talk to 2 people in my office, and neither was me. He clearly knows who his prof is, and instead of dealing directly with me, he's going to anyone he can think of to tell his tales of woe.

I'm not unaware of the challenges students face. I've mentored and advised undergrads for 12 years now. Marshall, had he come to me directly, would have had my sympathy, and I could have made allowances, helped him get caught up, even lent him a book. But because he's gaming the system, I simply want to crush him.

Thirsty Replies for a Thirsty Nation.

In response to this week's Big Thirsty, we got responses that ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous - like that's surprising. We posted our favorite late yesterday, but here are some others we liked:

• Big education publishing houses hire all sorts of academic folks. I supplement my meager income by accuracy checking problems in new/revised textbooks, making new problems and checking other people's solutions. As an English professor I'm sure you could get work as a copy editor, freelance content creator or as an in-house writer.
  
  
• My suggestion to the poster is to try the communications field. I work for a social justice non-profit and we have a communications director that is a former English prof. (most of our staff, including me, moonlight as adjuncts.) Increasingly, these positions require experience in "new media" versus print media, but they are still print media heavy. It's not quite advertising, its not quite PR and it doesn't require technical production knowledge. Former professors seem particularly suited to the work because in many ways, developing communications materials for campaigns is basically a process of education.
  
  
• I laughed at the characterization of English professors because it's so true. The problem is, of course, that academics think that everyone thinks just like they do--liberally, irrationally, etc. So, certain kinds of jobs never occur to them. What can English professors do? What can English majors do??? Can you afford retraining? Information Systems, Law school, library science. Companies scream for good writing--but you might have to work for a company that--gasp--supports the defense industry, isn't green, doesn't believe in solipsism, doesn't think that theoretical concerns are better than lived reality, etc. Can you fake being normal?? Can you fake having a work ethic? Even better if you really do have a work ethic--and that doesn't mean that you worked for hours on an article no one in her right mind would care about, don't complain about how hard you make your courses to teach, don't understand why you're not rewarded for failure, etc. etc. etc. I submitted the article, why don't I get promotion credit for trying??? If you're really reasonably bright, personable and funny, then you are way ahead.
  
  
• Prison guard?
  
  
• I would put myself in the movies and make a big star out of myself. Either that, or rent surfboards on the beach. Actually, these jobs are connected to teaching in college. Entertaining the masses while looking out into a vast ocean of emptiness.
  
  
• I quit teaching a little less then a year ago, and I've never been happier. I currently work in the adult classroom as a manager. ("Managerial educational theorist" is my self-proclaimed title.) Seriously. I gave up on teaching and decided that the managerial approach is the way to go. I quit reading books about shifting academic paradigms and curving learning and started reading management texts instead. I now walk out of the classroom regularly, give "non-cheating exams," and dump loads of responsibility on them... and they eat it up. My reviews as a non-teacher are higher then ever... and I (once again!) WANT to go to work each day. I'm exploring it on a daily basis. Some days I crash and burn, others I soar. It makes life a lot more interesting and engaging, particularly when the bulk of my students come to me with minimal interest in learning stuff that they'll "never use" (you know, like grammar, literature, and psychology).
  
  
• First of all, I've quit before, back when I was a much younger prof. I went into private industry with no concept about the working world, the hours, the backstabbing, the boredom. Slogging away 8-5 alongside people who actually would consider maiming you to get your job, desk, or parking spot, was eye opening. A real boss, someone who could be capricious and actually impact your employment - and I mean today! The relative calm of the professorial life called me back and back I went after 2 years. You could not believe the relief I felt when my biggest problem was a 19 year old with a bad attitude. Like I care.