You can't believe how many folks have been clamoring for these, the new "No Snowflakes Allowed" boxers. Naughty. Nice. We do it all for you.
Of course, check out the RYS Prodo Storefront for all our delicious items. Even the notorious "handbag."
Monday, March 31, 2008
New Prodo: The "No Snowflakes Allowed" Boxer Shorts.
Was it A Year Ago Already? The Saga of Martin Bell.
Oh, folks have been writing to us for the past couple of days to replay last year's April Fool's Day stunt. You can go back in the archives and find it all, but here are the relevant links.
- The moderator of RYS posts a note saying that he's been outed by a researcher at the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The text of a fake Chronicle story is posted on the RYS site as well, naming Arkansas Technical College Classics prof Martin Bell as the RYS moderator. (Clicking the Chronicle link provided in the post, one gets a page that says: "To read this article you must be a Chronicle subscriber.") Well, there is no Martin Bell, but we did post a few ratings for him on RMP early in 2007, and we're proud to say that he continues to get ratings at that site, and has more than double the number of total ratings of any prof at that college.- The mail pours in. By the morning of the 2nd we've received more than 700 emails, most of them telling us/Bell to hang in there, to keep the site going, etc. We let folks in on the joke, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief.
- The Chronicle editors even give us a little blurb about the "scoop that wasn't."
And then of course we went back to work. Still, it was a fun couple of days. We've never been half as clever since, as many of you take the time to remind us.
Ruby from Richmond Revels in These 18 Remarkable Students.
1 is the first student I ever caught plagiarizing, her telling mistake being that two sentences from her paper appeared in dark grey text instead of black; those sentences led me to the web page from which she’d cut-and-pasted them. After hours of tears and a really sincere apology letter, she then committed the exact same crime again.
2 told me in no uncertain terms, after receiving a “B+” on his second paper, that his parents wanted him to get at least an “A-“ for the semester, so that’s what he wanted me to give him.
3, during a class discussion in which another student talked about alcohol use in her family, asserted, “Maybe your family is just a bunch of alkies.”
4 asked me to write her a recommendation letter but warned me that it was due “somewhat soon.” I’d have to fax it, she said, since she made the request after our early-afternoon class, and the letter was due halfway across the country by 5:00 PM. I think she thought the time zone disparity made her request reasonable.
5 e-mailed me a paper during Spring Break that was in the strangest file format I’ve ever encountered. No program on any PC or Mac could open it. In a text editor, it appeared as an endless string of Qs, 5s, Hs, and 9s. He turned in a paper copy when he returned and argued that it should still count as “on time.”
6 pulled the smartest scam I’ve ever seen. She turned in the first four pages of a ten-page paper; page four even ended mid-sentence. I didn’t notice for a couple days, whereupon I asked her about the missing pages, and she apologized for the mistake and soon provided them. Voila: Her paper is not late (because can you really penalize her for such a silly mistake?), and she got an extra 48 hours to complete it.
7 is the laziest student I’ve ever had. He looked so lethargic I could not tell the difference between Awake 7 and Asleep 7. When he turned in his final paper, it was accompanied by a lengthy composition about why it was late — apparently the paper’s lateness was the result of a collusion between Amtrak, AOL, and the fact that his parents were out shopping when he wanted to use their computer. He once blamed a previous paper’s lateness on an overnight binge of Grand Theft Auto.
8 received a “B” on every assignment and, at the end of the semester, sent me an e-mail demanding to know why he was getting a “B” in the course.
9 rationalized her plagiarism by looking annoyed and saying, “You told us it was a RESEARCH paper.”
10 informed me from the start that he would be refusing to follow standard grammatical rules. “You can keep marking them on my papers,” he told me, “but I won’t change them. It’s my system.”
11 had more than the maximum number of excused absences, each time claiming that her alarm clock failed to go off (and that she thus slept past noon). Once, I asked where she lived, called her building, and confirmed that no power outage had occurred. When confronted, she said that it was her cell phone alarm she meant, and that it had run out of juice.
12 claimed not to have a paper because “the idiots in the library couldn’t help him print it.” I told him I’d still accept it without lateness penalties if he e-mailed it to me as soon as he returned to his computer. I then did not hear from him for several days, Despite sending me an e-mail in which he effused about how much he loved the class, he failed. I offered to meet with him to discuss the grade, and he sent his father instead.
13, during a class field trip, begged our bus to stop at the nearest McDonald’s because he was feeling ill, so we did. Five minutes later, he returned to the bus carrying a burger, fries, and a Coke.
14, on the same field trip, asked if he could use the bathroom. I told him of course he could. He then walked across the street to a gas station, and, standing amidst traffic, urinated on its outside wall.
15, who was in a 200 person lecture section, sent a friend in her place to avoid being marked absent. The substitution would have gone unnoticed had the friend not spelled 15's name incorrectly.
16 brought a laptop to a small seminar class — no lectures, nothing that really requires extensive note-taking. I told him he wouldn’t need it. He said, “Oh, I don’t handwrite.”
17 insisted English was her first language. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she was wrong.
18 showed up to class one day with a perfectly constructed aluminum foil hat.
2 told me in no uncertain terms, after receiving a “B+” on his second paper, that his parents wanted him to get at least an “A-“ for the semester, so that’s what he wanted me to give him.
3, during a class discussion in which another student talked about alcohol use in her family, asserted, “Maybe your family is just a bunch of alkies.”
4 asked me to write her a recommendation letter but warned me that it was due “somewhat soon.” I’d have to fax it, she said, since she made the request after our early-afternoon class, and the letter was due halfway across the country by 5:00 PM. I think she thought the time zone disparity made her request reasonable.
5 e-mailed me a paper during Spring Break that was in the strangest file format I’ve ever encountered. No program on any PC or Mac could open it. In a text editor, it appeared as an endless string of Qs, 5s, Hs, and 9s. He turned in a paper copy when he returned and argued that it should still count as “on time.”
6 pulled the smartest scam I’ve ever seen. She turned in the first four pages of a ten-page paper; page four even ended mid-sentence. I didn’t notice for a couple days, whereupon I asked her about the missing pages, and she apologized for the mistake and soon provided them. Voila: Her paper is not late (because can you really penalize her for such a silly mistake?), and she got an extra 48 hours to complete it.7 is the laziest student I’ve ever had. He looked so lethargic I could not tell the difference between Awake 7 and Asleep 7. When he turned in his final paper, it was accompanied by a lengthy composition about why it was late — apparently the paper’s lateness was the result of a collusion between Amtrak, AOL, and the fact that his parents were out shopping when he wanted to use their computer. He once blamed a previous paper’s lateness on an overnight binge of Grand Theft Auto.
8 received a “B” on every assignment and, at the end of the semester, sent me an e-mail demanding to know why he was getting a “B” in the course.
9 rationalized her plagiarism by looking annoyed and saying, “You told us it was a RESEARCH paper.”
10 informed me from the start that he would be refusing to follow standard grammatical rules. “You can keep marking them on my papers,” he told me, “but I won’t change them. It’s my system.”
11 had more than the maximum number of excused absences, each time claiming that her alarm clock failed to go off (and that she thus slept past noon). Once, I asked where she lived, called her building, and confirmed that no power outage had occurred. When confronted, she said that it was her cell phone alarm she meant, and that it had run out of juice.
12 claimed not to have a paper because “the idiots in the library couldn’t help him print it.” I told him I’d still accept it without lateness penalties if he e-mailed it to me as soon as he returned to his computer. I then did not hear from him for several days, Despite sending me an e-mail in which he effused about how much he loved the class, he failed. I offered to meet with him to discuss the grade, and he sent his father instead.
13, during a class field trip, begged our bus to stop at the nearest McDonald’s because he was feeling ill, so we did. Five minutes later, he returned to the bus carrying a burger, fries, and a Coke.
14, on the same field trip, asked if he could use the bathroom. I told him of course he could. He then walked across the street to a gas station, and, standing amidst traffic, urinated on its outside wall.
15, who was in a 200 person lecture section, sent a friend in her place to avoid being marked absent. The substitution would have gone unnoticed had the friend not spelled 15's name incorrectly.
16 brought a laptop to a small seminar class — no lectures, nothing that really requires extensive note-taking. I told him he wouldn’t need it. He said, “Oh, I don’t handwrite.”
17 insisted English was her first language. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she was wrong.
18 showed up to class one day with a perfectly constructed aluminum foil hat.
"She's Not Going to Make It." What Do We Do When We Know.
She's not going to make it. She's in my developmental class. She said she wants to be a teacher. It's a basic reading course crammed full of people who got through high school without reading a book.
According to policy, I can't even ask her what kind of learning disability she has. I'm supposed to wait until she goes to student services and fills out the forms and comes to me with something I'm supposed to sign. If she decides she doesn't need extra help, I have to let her sink - knowing all the time she can't swim.
Open enrollment feeds that basic lie -- the one that says all men are created equal. We're not created equal. Some of us have more than others from the get go. I get pissed when I see students wasting what they were born with. But I get just as pissed when I see someone in my classroom that everyone knows cannot possibly make it. Why can't we tell them the truth? We're bending over backwards to be politically correct, calling her challenged.
It sucks. It's the worst part of my job. I admit it - sometimes when students fail my class I feel like I'm doing them a favor - that they'll try harder, that they'll wake up and smell the coffee. When I fail her, I'm going to feel like crap because she simply isn't college material. I'm going to feel even worse when she's sitting in the front row next semester, smiling at me, thinking this time it's going to work.
According to policy, I can't even ask her what kind of learning disability she has. I'm supposed to wait until she goes to student services and fills out the forms and comes to me with something I'm supposed to sign. If she decides she doesn't need extra help, I have to let her sink - knowing all the time she can't swim.Open enrollment feeds that basic lie -- the one that says all men are created equal. We're not created equal. Some of us have more than others from the get go. I get pissed when I see students wasting what they were born with. But I get just as pissed when I see someone in my classroom that everyone knows cannot possibly make it. Why can't we tell them the truth? We're bending over backwards to be politically correct, calling her challenged.
It sucks. It's the worst part of my job. I admit it - sometimes when students fail my class I feel like I'm doing them a favor - that they'll try harder, that they'll wake up and smell the coffee. When I fail her, I'm going to feel like crap because she simply isn't college material. I'm going to feel even worse when she's sitting in the front row next semester, smiling at me, thinking this time it's going to work.
"The Inertia of Tradition." Why Things Remain As They Are.
Something has occurred to me over and over again when reading this blog, and while listening to the bitching and complaining I hear at the faculty water cooler.
There seems to be a certain determinism, a certain inevitability in our fate. One would think that we would be smart, self-critical, self-correcting people. One would think that we have a great deal of control over our jobs since there is (comparatively) little hierarchy in academia. But we keep the cycle of misery going. There are things we hate and that we can change, but somehow just don't.
We hate "publish or perish" and lament that our teaching doesn't count for enough, but use the same damned criteria on colleagues when judging their performance.
We hate writing all those letters of recommendation, and yet when we chair a hiring committee, we always insist on them from every applicant.
We hate being treated like shit when we are junior faculty, but sometimes treat others who are our former selves like shit when we "grow up" and get tenure.
We hate it when the plumber or the car mechanic talks to us condescendingly, as if everyone should know how a water boiler or transmission works. We find it uninteresting and just want to get the encounter over with and the job done. But then we assume our students are dumb for not knowing the basics of our various fields or uncurious for not caring to learn.
When we are administration, we seem to forget what it was like in the classroom, either as a student or, in some cases, as faculty, and we insist on evaluation methods we used to think were inadequate, superfluous, unfair, and stupid.
We deplore the commodification of knowledge, but then complain about our pay or use job applications to other schools to negotiate more money from our current job or condescend to the adjuncts who are in it for it and not for the money.
We can all think of more examples.
It reminds me of my days in military school when we were knocking out push-ups promising ourselves that we would not be assholes next year, when we got to train to the new class of incoming freshmen. Then, a year later, the sadistic joy of power and the inertia of tradition took over.
There seems to be a certain determinism, a certain inevitability in our fate. One would think that we would be smart, self-critical, self-correcting people. One would think that we have a great deal of control over our jobs since there is (comparatively) little hierarchy in academia. But we keep the cycle of misery going. There are things we hate and that we can change, but somehow just don't.We hate "publish or perish" and lament that our teaching doesn't count for enough, but use the same damned criteria on colleagues when judging their performance.
We hate writing all those letters of recommendation, and yet when we chair a hiring committee, we always insist on them from every applicant.
We hate being treated like shit when we are junior faculty, but sometimes treat others who are our former selves like shit when we "grow up" and get tenure.
We hate it when the plumber or the car mechanic talks to us condescendingly, as if everyone should know how a water boiler or transmission works. We find it uninteresting and just want to get the encounter over with and the job done. But then we assume our students are dumb for not knowing the basics of our various fields or uncurious for not caring to learn.
When we are administration, we seem to forget what it was like in the classroom, either as a student or, in some cases, as faculty, and we insist on evaluation methods we used to think were inadequate, superfluous, unfair, and stupid.
We deplore the commodification of knowledge, but then complain about our pay or use job applications to other schools to negotiate more money from our current job or condescend to the adjuncts who are in it for it and not for the money.
We can all think of more examples.
It reminds me of my days in military school when we were knocking out push-ups promising ourselves that we would not be assholes next year, when we got to train to the new class of incoming freshmen. Then, a year later, the sadistic joy of power and the inertia of tradition took over.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
"Let Me Consider Your Request. No. Wait. What am I Doing? No. Go Away."
The email I received:
I was a student in your class last year and in your class I recieved a C. Im am writting to ask that you change that grade into a C+.In my freshmen year, I made a practical joke on campus that foreve changed my life. I made a prank call telling a friend that I saw a terorrist go into the administration building with rifles and guns. He ended up telling someone and the college did not take this lightly. they suspended me for a year and a half. I returned excited to have a second chance, but immediatly had to drop all of my classes after becoming very ill that semester. I was diagnosed with diabetis.
Over the course of the next year I have struggled to balance school, work , and my illness, all while being urged to reduce my stress levels.
This past December I marched at commencement only to have done poorly in one class. Right now my GPA stands at a 1.99 and I need a 2.0 in order to finally close this chapter of my life and move on to other things.
Is there any way you would be able to grant me this grade change? I would be willing to complete any extra credit assignment that you can think up. If you can or cannot help, please reply and let me know...I would greatly appreciate it.
Highest Regards,
Diabetis Dave
The response I’ve drafted but have yet to send:
Dear Student,
I’ve tried to think of the most amusing way to deny your request, but you’ve given me so much to work with. Where to begin? Do I point out the inanity of asking for a grade change a year after the fact? Do I actually give you an extra credit assignment and let you complete it, knowing that even if I wanted to change your grade at this point I couldn’t? You see, you imply that you’ve graduated already (or at least “marched”), and I no longer teach at the college anyway. (How did you find me?)
But that’s too easy. I’d say no on the grounds that you faked a campus gunman incident, but that’s so obvious. Perhaps the abundance of typographical, spelling, and grammatical errors, which indicate that you probably shouldn’t have graduated from high school, are sufficient reasons not to boost your grade in a college class?
No, I’m being unfair. This is, as you mentioned, the only class you did poorly in. That you “marched” with a 1.99 GPA is certainly proof that you excelled in the bulk of your studies. And let’s not forget your unfortunate diagnosis of “diabetis.” I’d generally expect that someone diagnosed with such a serious disease, the same one that took a member of my family a few years ago, would know how to spell it, but let’s not get lost in minute details here.
No, I think the most enjoyable way to decline your tempting request is point out the flaws in the pathetically humorous logic that a .01 bump in your GPA will make all of your problems go away. No, my friend, a 2.00 GPA will not save you.
Dear Student,
I’ve tried to think of the most amusing way to deny your request, but you’ve given me so much to work with. Where to begin? Do I point out the inanity of asking for a grade change a year after the fact? Do I actually give you an extra credit assignment and let you complete it, knowing that even if I wanted to change your grade at this point I couldn’t? You see, you imply that you’ve graduated already (or at least “marched”), and I no longer teach at the college anyway. (How did you find me?)
But that’s too easy. I’d say no on the grounds that you faked a campus gunman incident, but that’s so obvious. Perhaps the abundance of typographical, spelling, and grammatical errors, which indicate that you probably shouldn’t have graduated from high school, are sufficient reasons not to boost your grade in a college class?
No, I’m being unfair. This is, as you mentioned, the only class you did poorly in. That you “marched” with a 1.99 GPA is certainly proof that you excelled in the bulk of your studies. And let’s not forget your unfortunate diagnosis of “diabetis.” I’d generally expect that someone diagnosed with such a serious disease, the same one that took a member of my family a few years ago, would know how to spell it, but let’s not get lost in minute details here.
No, I think the most enjoyable way to decline your tempting request is point out the flaws in the pathetically humorous logic that a .01 bump in your GPA will make all of your problems go away. No, my friend, a 2.00 GPA will not save you.
Best of luck,
Bemused Bart
"There is a Time for Many Words, and There is Also A Time For Sleep."
The email I received:
Dear Professor Whitaker,Hi, i take your tuesday / Thursday class. I made a mistake and slept in last week, so I missed the midterm. and this isn't the first time either. because I missed the section test earlier too.
I really don't want this to influence my grade and i hope we can talk about it to solve the solution. sleeping in might really make it hard to pass this course, so I beg you to let me talk to you to correct all this. Thank very much for your time.
Signed,
Sleepy Simon
My desired response:
Dear Simon,
I am shocked that you think it's even remotely appropriate to approach a professor regarding this. You don't want this to determine your mark? How would you like me to determine your mark then, by measuring the ratio of your intelligence to your audacity? Either way, you're not passing the course. I don't understand how lazy ass students like you even make it into post-secondary education. Do yourself a favour and buy a nice, dependable alarm clock - you're going to need it to wake up in time to work the breakfast shift at McDonald's.
Get bent,
Wide Awake Whitaker
Juicy? How About Scummy?
Everyone, it seems, wants us to tell the RYS World about JuicyCampus. And many of you are convinced we have something to do with it. We really don't want to, and we really aren't.
It's so puerile that it makes our site look like NPR.org. Yet, who are we to judge your needs. You may click on the links below to enjoy this new gossip site, or you can just check out the juicy flava (about the most coherent thing we've seen there) we've pulled from their site:
It's so puerile that it makes our site look like NPR.org. Yet, who are we to judge your needs. You may click on the links below to enjoy this new gossip site, or you can just check out the juicy flava (about the most coherent thing we've seen there) we've pulled from their site:
Hey fellas I wear adult diapers because I enjoy the relaxation and luxury of moving my bowels as I please. But sometimes when I am changing the stinky diapers and wiping all the crusty steamy poo off my buns in the dorm hallways some of the residents give me rude stares. Occasionally when I have corn poop I also like to pick out the pieces of corn and re-eat them for a light snack. Where is the best place to change my diaper without these ignorant a-holes giving me the death stare? - The site itself.
- Their blog, with announcements, updates, etc.
- A recent article about the free-speechiness of being Juicy.
- Someone got Juicy and then went to jail.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
"Watson, Come Quickly. We've Solved the Case. It's the Guy Who's Already Given Himself a 94 for Next Week's Exam!"
Dear Burglar Ben,
Most just cheat off their neighbor’s exam. Instead, you broke into my office and changed your grade on my computer. Allow me to critique your efforts so that you might do a better job next time. Somewhere else.
Concept. Grade: A
You broke the lock on the building door, removed some ceiling tiles, then crawled over the doorway to get in my office. You changed your grade and then snuck out, all in 30 minutes. Impressive, as Lord Vader would say.
Breaking in. Grade: D
It’s all about the details, son. I wouldn’t have noticed that anything was amiss and couldn’t convince anybody that you broke in, except for your dirty shoe prints on the walls and desk. Don’t forget to wipe your feet next time!
C
hanging the grades. Grade: F
At that point, your objective was pretty clear to me. Good thing I have a backup grade file. As I booted up my computer, I worried: How am I going to detect which little shit did this? Only an idiot would change just his own grade ... Oh, I see. You are an idiot. You changed only your grade. I was ready to be Sherlock Holmes but I was dealing with Blues Clues. That disappoints me.
Selection of victim. Grade: D
Why me? You needed to raise your GPA. Fair enough. You were probably too stupid to realize that you were getting a C in my class anyway.
Alibi. Grade: C
This was your ultimate downfall but you almost pulled it off. Your roommate was clearly covering for you and the disciplinary committee was about to give up when he spilled the beans. In the future, remember: dead men tell no tales.
Overall Grade: C-
It’s a great war story to tell my friends and it will be one of the best non-Walter RYS posts, so those are points in your favor. However, you really are a stupid, worthless piece of crap for doing this.
Extra Credit:
Most just cheat off their neighbor’s exam. Instead, you broke into my office and changed your grade on my computer. Allow me to critique your efforts so that you might do a better job next time. Somewhere else.
Concept. Grade: A
You broke the lock on the building door, removed some ceiling tiles, then crawled over the doorway to get in my office. You changed your grade and then snuck out, all in 30 minutes. Impressive, as Lord Vader would say.
Breaking in. Grade: D
It’s all about the details, son. I wouldn’t have noticed that anything was amiss and couldn’t convince anybody that you broke in, except for your dirty shoe prints on the walls and desk. Don’t forget to wipe your feet next time!
C
hanging the grades. Grade: FAt that point, your objective was pretty clear to me. Good thing I have a backup grade file. As I booted up my computer, I worried: How am I going to detect which little shit did this? Only an idiot would change just his own grade ... Oh, I see. You are an idiot. You changed only your grade. I was ready to be Sherlock Holmes but I was dealing with Blues Clues. That disappoints me.
Selection of victim. Grade: D
Why me? You needed to raise your GPA. Fair enough. You were probably too stupid to realize that you were getting a C in my class anyway.
Alibi. Grade: C
This was your ultimate downfall but you almost pulled it off. Your roommate was clearly covering for you and the disciplinary committee was about to give up when he spilled the beans. In the future, remember: dead men tell no tales.
Overall Grade: C-
It’s a great war story to tell my friends and it will be one of the best non-Walter RYS posts, so those are points in your favor. However, you really are a stupid, worthless piece of crap for doing this.
Extra Credit:
I’ll raise your overall grade if you break into the office of that Student Affairs jackass who merely rescinded your financial aid (the only way you could stay in school) rather than putting this on your permanent record and filing charges with the police.
Where Someone Knows the RYS Lessons, But Hasn't Learned to Put Them In Play Yet.
I've been kicking myself for days now. Last week a student came to my office to give an oral report on dead languages. After an extremely poor performance that didn't even meet the minimum requirements of the assignment (and which he blamed on a bad case of dyslexia that he had conveniently failed to document with my university's disability accommodation office), he had the absolute gall to ask, "What was this assignment supposed to accomplish?"
He must have smelled blood, because he then took out his mid-term exam from earlier in the semester and asked me to explain why he had received such a low score on one of his answers. How much of a douchebag am I? Well, let me tell you. I asked him to explain why he thought he deserved a better score. Worse still, I patiently listened to his explanation. Then I earnestly re-read his answer. Seeing it again reminded me exactly why he had earned a low score--the answer was utterly incoherent. I suppose that it COULD have been construed to mean what he said he intended, but it was so poorly written that it also could have been construed to mean virtually anything. Instead of simply coming out and telling him that he was functionally illiterate, I circumlocuted my pathetic ass around a series of euphemisms in order to spare his delicate, sensitive widdle feelings. You see, he fancies himself as a WRITER. And given the muddle-headed nonsense that his creative writing instructors have probably swaddled him in for the last four years, he probably thinks that he's a GREAT writer to boot. "Well," he said, after I had obviously bent over backwards to avoid calling him a moron, "I suppose I just have a looser approach to language than you do."
It was abundantly clear that the little dickweed wasn't the least bit interested in my pedagogical approach and only wanted to register a passive-aggressive complaint to the effect that I had wasted his extraordinarily valuable time with some pea-brained requirement that he couldn't be bothered to do a half-assed job on.
I guess I haven't been paying close enough attention to this website for the last few years. If I had been, I would have told him that I didn't plan to explain myself to him until he got his own PhD and became a department chairman and that, in the meanwhile, he was free to withdraw from the class if he disagreed with my approach to the subject. But noooooooo. What did I do? I patiently smiled and told him all about how I got the idea for the assignment and why I thought it was beneficial. I even apologized for being somewhat old-fashioned.
He must have smelled blood, because he then took out his mid-term exam from earlier in the semester and asked me to explain why he had received such a low score on one of his answers. How much of a douchebag am I? Well, let me tell you. I asked him to explain why he thought he deserved a better score. Worse still, I patiently listened to his explanation. Then I earnestly re-read his answer. Seeing it again reminded me exactly why he had earned a low score--the answer was utterly incoherent. I suppose that it COULD have been construed to mean what he said he intended, but it was so poorly written that it also could have been construed to mean virtually anything. Instead of simply coming out and telling him that he was functionally illiterate, I circumlocuted my pathetic ass around a series of euphemisms in order to spare his delicate, sensitive widdle feelings. You see, he fancies himself as a WRITER. And given the muddle-headed nonsense that his creative writing instructors have probably swaddled him in for the last four years, he probably thinks that he's a GREAT writer to boot. "Well," he said, after I had obviously bent over backwards to avoid calling him a moron, "I suppose I just have a looser approach to language than you do." THAT, dear readers, was a not-so-subtle jab at my entirely unreasonable insistence that college-age students understand and consistently use proper grammar. I could go on. He continued to challenge me, and I continued to play Mr. Nice Guy and explain myself to the little punk who can't even write a decent sentence. I was making myself sick with every word, but I couldn't stop. I guess I just don't have the nerve to handle these incidents in the way I know I should, the way that some of you have tried to teach me.
Morty-fried.
Many folks wanted to take Metacritical Mortimer out back for a beating. We're happy to oblige, virtually speaking, of course. Oh, and some folks thought Mort was a plant, a stooge, someone we fired up to provide us a nice juicy bull's eye for target practice. But, please, we don't think that far in advance. Enjoy the flava:
- Totalizing? Reductive? Them's some two buck words, Mort, maybe five with inflation. Run through my de-BSing filter, they mean "pattern recognizing" and "cause analyzing." Do some students demand more than their share? Yes. Do they do so because of an inbred sense of entitlement? At least some do.
We know these kids aren't snowflakes through and through and forever and ever, but we're talking about the role they play in our lives, here. They put on the snowflake hat and dance the snowflake jig, each perfectly unique in exactly the same way. I don't doubt they carry that through to other aspects of their lives ("Can you believe it, he gave me no-fat in my latte when I specifically asked for soy"), but frankly, Morty, I don't give a flip. There are too damn many to fit in my monkey-sphere, so I shall know them by their fruits alone, specifically the fruits they bear in my classroom.
We're not here because it's daring to post anonymously on the internet. We're here to do some voodoo we do so well. We make strawmen of our straw-head students, and we beat and burn them to exorcise their spirits from ours. We huddle around the campfire of our screens and we tell the dark tales, the epics of devils in the night, of horrors unrelenting, and of heroes that protect us. In some of these stories we are the Beowulfs clawing the dark and savage beasts, and we slay our monsters, banish our demons, and re-cage our warrior hearts so we don't run through Ms. Aviators-and-Short-Skirt with our chalk the next morning.
Let me contradict myself, and you as well; we are not here with one voice. We are a cacophony, not a chorus, a democracy, not a bloc. We debate one another, bringing our wisdom and folly clashing in sparks or sputter, and ultimately finding peace again, if not consensus. We don't all agree with one another, or understand each other, but we wear the same uniform and are fighting the same fight. And sometimes, just knowing that much is enough. 
What are you, Mortimer? A grad student? I mean, damn. I get analysis this deep from my first-year PhD students. Totalizing and reductive. Boy howdy. If you wanted an "A" for producing a critique of others without any real content of your own, you should have dropped the word "binary" in there, too. It is one of my graduate students' favorite words as they sit around in my theory class trying to demonstrate how clever they are as they dismiss with everybody from Marx to Frankl as "ultimately reductive and totalizing."
Think of it! A blog! With Fuzzy Wuzzy Pictures of Margaritas! Reductive? Nay, say it isn't so, Mortimer. I come here for my daily intellectual challenge, right after I do the advanced Sudoku in the newspaper. You have torn the scales from my eyes! The five minutes I spend chuckling over RYS in the morning is actually what forms my view of reality: not the 17 hours and 55 minutes a day I spend dealing with students and administrators and writing. This is indeed a dangerous place.
So there's a place we go to vent and laugh at the students and administrators who make our lives harder. So what? Can you honestly sit there and tell me it would be better if all our posts ended with "how I should interact with students depends on a nuanced blend of factors, ranging from the students' positionality and embedded within the space-time context of our interactions?" You'd feel better about the state of the academy if you were reading that here, would you?
I got news for ya, Jack: such abject drivel is likely to make me more cynical, not less. If I want supposedly in-depth navel-gazing and shopworn pomo-speak, I can get that crap anywhere, from my grad students or from my own published manuscripts on pedagogy in peer-reviewed education journals. But Ashley and her copier-pimping dad? That's not just comedy; that's high art. That's hard-hitting reality there, my friend, for while people like you seem to think our intellectual project is Too Important to suspend even in a blog, the rest of the world seems to think our weighty enterprise operates like Pizza Hut and Starbucks, with managers and assistant managers that can be harried into better customer service. One of those views is closer to a nuanced description of my day, but I wouldn't want to be totalizing and reductive and point out which.- Why should I always have to approach problems with constructive criticism? I do enough of that in department, committee, university, and professional meetings. Don’t I get a break? After the meetings are over, all I want some dark, quiet place to have a drink and a smoke--a place where I can rant (or read the rants of others) to my heart’s content. Mortimer, if you think there’s no space for that in the blogosphere then why don’t you just have another sip of your kool-aid and bugger off with your earnest self.
Quite frankly, I’m not even interested in constructively critiquing some of the problems that send me running to RYS. Since when are we supposed to worry so much about the problems with our students? I would be so ashamed if I thought that any of my former professors spent 5 seconds of their valuable research time thinking about how to solve my problems.
And actually, Mortimer, rather than “self-absorbed little snowflakes who don’t properly appreciate what their instructors do for them,” I prefer to think of two-thirds of my students (the ones who make the teaching part of my job into a Sisyphean task) as a great big semesterly bouquet of narcissus. Don’t believe me? Read this!
Just how am I supposed to solve the problems of these narcissistic little bastards when those problems have been created by their parents and teachers over the course of twenty years? I did not join this profession because I wanted to save the world. I have never been good at wiping noses or asses, or saying that it’s big when it’s really little. I am interested in the life of the mind, not the life of hand-holding. I am an excellent researcher and a pretty good teacher. If students are interested in learning and willing to do the work, I am one of the best teachers they will ever have. So I teach the one-third who are real college students. They appreciate me. The rest can go fuck themselves. I console myself with the fact that they are fucking themselves. I only hope they cry near me when they can’t keep a decent job.
I have taught at enough other universities to know that the mouth-breathing cretins with blank, bovine stares who populate my general education courses are not the “universal student” in America. But my current university cashes those students’ checks without any regard for the fact that they are totally unprepared for college. The real solution to this problem would be to close universities like mine as unnecessary and, in truth, immoral. We should tell the good students to transfer to a real college or university where, I hope, I might someday get a job. We should inform the rest of the students that they are not prepared for university. They can either go into a remedial program or buy a pair of goddamned overalls.
Friday, March 28, 2008
Vera the RYS Virgin Finishes Off Our Look at Attendance.
Alvin – your students are lazy bastards. So are mine. Unless there are severe and explicit repercussions for non-attendance, they will not show up until they absolutely have to.
I take the same stance as you do: come if you'd like, there's stuff to learn; if not, you're only missing out on information you've paid for already. That said, I make 20% of the final grade based on participation and I stress that it is impossible to participate if they are not in class. I also give daily quizzes – both to guide their studies (this is a language class) and to reinforce the importance of attendance. Yet if I announce for some reasons that there won't be a quiz, half of my class is gone. One student completely disappeared during a review week only to pop back in for the final. He barely passed because he "didn't have to be" in class and missed material intended for his benefit. Do I feel bad? No – he's an idiot.This quarter, I decided to treat my students more like adults. I announced on the first day that I would no longer be giving daily quizzes, that I trusted them to come to class without the threat of missing points looming overhead. The next day, three of them skipped - two of whom are repeating this class because they skipped too often the first time through. Am I annoyed? Yes – apparently some college students are still children.
Do I need to "save them from themselves"? Do you? Does anyone? No. If they fail to learn material because they choose not to come to class, that's their own damned fault. You don't have to provide incentive for students to come – if they don't want to, they won't and it's their loss. They'll either fail an exam and start coming back, or they'll cram enough on their own that they'll pass and go on their merry way.
If our students cannot learn because they do not bother to show up, then they are no longer students.
To the crows with the lot of them.
Of Course There's This Attendance Policy. Pity the Poor Dog If He Doesn't Show Up For Playtime.
Do you actually think I'm going to bother to learn any of the names of the little snowflakes that I will see for a few weeks out of my life? They’re not that important. Go in early and take attendance? None of them will be there. That minute you say it will take is a minute I could be thinking about a Browning sonnet. Or beer. Most likely beer.
My institution use to have a policy that if a student missed more than six hours of class time they could be withdrawn by the instructor. Then some asshole in middle management decided that was unfair to students who only enrolled to keep their full time status and collect grants and loans. The result on attendance is just what you would imagine.
Learn their names? No. Take attendance? No. Give a shit about their grades? No.
Teach to the best of my ability and then go home and play with the dog? Damn right.
Grade Grubbing Ghoul, Starring Eric the Irresponsible.
Dear Irresponsible Eric,
Several semesters ago, you missed the final exam. You missed the final exam, despite the syllabus stating and me saying repeatedly that I do not offer make-ups for the final exam. You missed the final exam, despite being given the date of the exam on the first day of class. You had no legitimate excuse to offer, just that you didn't pay close enough attention. You asked that I cut you some slack. I didn't. As a result, you failed the course. Over the course of this academic year, you complained to me, you complained to the dean, you complained to the vice-president, you even filed a grade appeal. The grade appeal committee heard your case. They ruled against you.
Several semesters ago, you missed the final exam. You missed the final exam, despite the syllabus stating and me saying repeatedly that I do not offer make-ups for the final exam. You missed the final exam, despite being given the date of the exam on the first day of class. You had no legitimate excuse to offer, just that you didn't pay close enough attention. You asked that I cut you some slack. I didn't. As a result, you failed the course. Over the course of this academic year, you complained to me, you complained to the dean, you complained to the vice-president, you even filed a grade appeal. The grade appeal committee heard your case. They ruled against you.
After dragging me through academic hell, I was finally rid of you. I raised a glass to your persistence but drank to the thought that I'd never have to see or hear from you again. It was delicious. HA!However, it turns out like you're those idiotic murderers from 80's slasher movies--you just keep coming back and back and back. Like the heroes in the movie, I turned too quickly; the grade appeal wasn't the needed decapitation that we all yell for in the theater. Now you're in the president's office, claiming that I have destroyed your college career because your GPA is low and you can't compete for scholarships. Never mind that you've had two semesters to take the class again from a different professor and have the failing grade removed from your transcripts and GPA. Never mind that practically any person with a brain on this campus told you that my requirements were stated clearly on the syllabus and therefore you have no case.
But just like the slasher, reality doesn't apply to you. You have your own! A reality that says you are superior to everyone else. It's a place where the rules don't apply to you, a place where you're so special that we should all bow down and reward you for your irresponsibility and self-pity. Well, I have news for you, Eric. I am not destroying your college career. You are.
You have wasted an entire year bitching to anyone with ears that I'm a horrible, unfair, mean, rigid bitch, when you could have been spending that time acknowledging your screw-up, retaking the class, and moving on with your life. If only you put as much effort into reading the syllabus and listening to your instructors as you do being a narcissistic asshole, you'd be surprised at what you could achieve.
And Eric? It may take a sequel or two, but the end will come.
And Eric? It may take a sequel or two, but the end will come.
Rita from Ruidoso Makes a Case For Attendance.
I would bet a considerable sum that those advising Alvin to let the snowflakes sink or swim (well I guess they all melt) are uniformly tenured professors who are no longer subject to the administrative dictatorship of the student evaluation number.
If Alvin is not tenured, he must introduce a mandatory policy. Why? Well, as Mr. Arnaz used to say, this will take some 'splainin'.
At my university, instruction is assessed along three metrics: student evaluation numbers, number of drops, and class grade point average. This is a brilliant bit of administrative jujitsu that allows chairs, deans, vindictive senior faculty etc. to punish nearly any non-tenured faculty member they want. People with high student evaluation numbers almost always either get rid of the deadwood early on (leading to high drops), or grade easily (leading to high class GPA). On the other hand people with low drops and/or low class GPAs get worse evaluations.
This is all greatly exacerbated by the fact that senior faculty tend to either aggressively get rid of deadwood via "the asshole speech" the first day, or grade easily. Then their high student evaluation numbers brings the departmental mean up, at which point the administrators can go against any junior person they don't like by noting that their student evaluation numbers are below departmental average. It would be remiss not to note in passing that this is really aggressively stupid; administrators sincerely want my university to be Lake Wobegon,where all professors' evaluation numbers are above their departmental average. Feh.
Anyhow, I found that in this context a strict attendance policy is an absolute necessity. If you don't do it, the students that miss all semester convince themselves that their bad grade is your fault and give you a much worse evaluation. If you do keep attendance, not only do your students do better, they also think you care (more?) about them
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Some Thoughts For Alvin on Attendance.
Alvin, regarding the appalling lack of attendance at your class, fuck ‘em. Make sure that the students who don’t go to class and end up doing poorly get awful grades. Word will spread quickly and people will start going to class. Do your colleagues have similar attendance problems? While you’re at it, why aren’t they going? If they thought it was worthwhile, you’d be getting more than half of them to show. I usually have about 10% of my students not showing on a given day. It’s usually the same students most days. They almost always either drop the course at the deadline or they get a D- or an F. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it?- Taking attendance doesn't have to be a big deal. If you have 20 students per class, learning your students' names shouldn't be too difficult, and it makes taking roll much easier. Come to class a few minutes early, run down the roll quickly, and make a note of who is present, who is absent, and who shows up late. We're talking less than a minute of your time. I'll grant that you shouldn't HAVE to be taking attendance--students ought to be mature and responsible enough by this point to be capable of coming to class regularly and accepting the necessary consequences that follow from skipping. But many students aren't. For them, an externally imposed attendance requirement (enforced by some clearly defined grade penalty for excessive unexcused absences) can be a way of keeping them honest and saving them from themselves. And, let's face it, sometimes we don't do the greatest job of inspiring attendance, of making students WANT to show up. Now I'm the last person who would suggest that we should strive to make our classes "fun"--after all, they're classes, not frat parties.
- Alvin...I feel your pain! I exercise a similar practice in my class, and for some strange reason the students perceive this as freedom to come and go as they please. I honestly believe that the reason for this behavior is the continuously lower quality of student that I see come into my classroom each semester. Couple this with how almost every state university and community college seems to feel the need to coddle every student that walks in the door, and we have a recipe for lazy students interested only in what will make them happy (heaven and earth forbid that we should dare challenge the poor dears!). Of course, coming to class does not make a student as happy as, say, not coming to class...so you can imagine which they will pick. The only way I've been able to counter this trend is to offer a "participation" grade in the class, which can be earned by asking relevant questions in class, coming to see me in my office hours (again, with relevant questions), getting their lab work done on time, and attending class. Now, it does not always work 100%, but I feel better when I can knock down their grade at least one full letter for acting like lazy prats. Then when they come see me asking why they are failing (at this point I resist the urge to beat them with my gradebook) I can simply point to the participation grade and say with all the mournful sorrow I can muster "Alas, if only you had but attended class more often! Perhaps you may have passed otherwise."
- Your concern for the students is admirable, but your energy is better placed elsewhere. You don't have to worry about their attendance. They do! Do your job. Do great classes. Make it interesting and rigorous. If they don't come, give them the grades they earn when they are there. You have likely forgotten how much "fun" there is to be had in college, and I can assure you that your students are most likely taking part in it instead of worrying about your damn intro to Sociology (or whatever) class.
"What About Our Mom? You Got Something to Say About Her, Too?" Metacritical Mortimer Brings the Magnifying Glass to RYS.
RYS is successful for two reasons: 1) It breaks down traditional professional and academic barriers of politesse and in loco parentis and liberates all the repressed desires of academics. 2) It then pats those desires on the back, stands them on their feet, and gives them a talk show in which a hundred yes-men support every transgressive utterance with a chorus of cheers. And you know what, this is fine and dandy! It's great to let things out and talk them over, to challenge conventions and preconceptions of behavior. But RYS produces a problem when it does that, because it rarely goes far enough, rarely nuances those releases of emotion and, in proper academic fashion, considers why they arise and how they should be resolved. RYS is where academic integrity, in its intellectual sense, comes to die.
Readers perhaps "tune" into the website at first looking to release some aggression, or maybe to show off their wittiness. It's daring, it's fun, it's like smoking a cigarette in the office of the high school principal after you've snuck in at midnight. Fuck you, principal cum students! Look how awesome I am! And then the reader looks around and realizes that, holy shit, there are a thousand other people smoking cigarettes in there, too. We're ALL cool! And then everyone in that office starts congratulating each other on how cool they are, and they never, ever leave. In a sense, they never grow up and realize that smoking in the office in a stage in the development of any mature human being.
Caught up in this haze of self-congratulation, RYS readers produce too-easily agreed upon statements of the problems of the universe: Two of the favorites are that students are self-absorbed little snowflakes who don't properly appreciate what their instructors do for them, and that the administration doesn't care if it anally rapes the faculty as long as it pleases the students and makes more money. Those comments can occasionally be true, which is what makes them so seductive (take a long drag on that cigarette), but they're ultimately totalitizing and reductive, and they only encourage cynicism and pessimism. And, in fact, those comments enact the same egocentrism they condemn in both students and the administration. And this point is where RYS readers stop thinking. And, in fact, here's where RYS is *exactly* like Rate My Professors; it never gets beyond the bitching.
So here's a challenge, RYS and readers: Stop bitching and start thinking again. Drop the cigarette, get a haircut, and actually critique the problems we all despise so much. Stop wallowing in your communal self-commiseration.
Readers perhaps "tune" into the website at first looking to release some aggression, or maybe to show off their wittiness. It's daring, it's fun, it's like smoking a cigarette in the office of the high school principal after you've snuck in at midnight. Fuck you, principal cum students! Look how awesome I am! And then the reader looks around and realizes that, holy shit, there are a thousand other people smoking cigarettes in there, too. We're ALL cool! And then everyone in that office starts congratulating each other on how cool they are, and they never, ever leave. In a sense, they never grow up and realize that smoking in the office in a stage in the development of any mature human being.
Caught up in this haze of self-congratulation, RYS readers produce too-easily agreed upon statements of the problems of the universe: Two of the favorites are that students are self-absorbed little snowflakes who don't properly appreciate what their instructors do for them, and that the administration doesn't care if it anally rapes the faculty as long as it pleases the students and makes more money. Those comments can occasionally be true, which is what makes them so seductive (take a long drag on that cigarette), but they're ultimately totalitizing and reductive, and they only encourage cynicism and pessimism. And, in fact, those comments enact the same egocentrism they condemn in both students and the administration. And this point is where RYS readers stop thinking. And, in fact, here's where RYS is *exactly* like Rate My Professors; it never gets beyond the bitching.
So here's a challenge, RYS and readers: Stop bitching and start thinking again. Drop the cigarette, get a haircut, and actually critique the problems we all despise so much. Stop wallowing in your communal self-commiseration.
"Saddest. Post. Ever." Not Everyone Likes the New Correspondent Idea.
That was the saddest post ever. We read your blog but we don’t give back.It feels just like the times when you ask the guy, “You’ll call me, right?” as he’s walking out the door the next morning. OK, OK, I’ll call. Just help me find my car keys.
As if you guys don’t make up all this shit anyway. Really, wouldn’t that be easier?
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Seeking New Correspondents!
We've always been overwhelmed at the amount of mail we get, and the site only exists because so many readers send us material.
Over the past couple of months though, probably as a result of us having to turn down a vast majority of what we get, the mail has thinned out. We still get the raw numbers (between 100-150 a night), but more and more of those notes are very brief, comment-y and not full-on posts. (And a lot of them are just "me, too" without any new perspective.)
Y'all know what we write about. If you've read the site at all, and the nearly 1300 posts, you probably know what we favor. We're trying to develop some new correspondents to the page, and we welcome your posts at this address.
Think about what you send. As you know, we anonymize stuff routinely, taking out any references that might identify you, your college, your students, even your location. (There's a formula for this, but we can't divulge it. Only one of us understands it. It does involve a slide rule.) You can help us by letting us know if your post is a little too "real" for mass consumption, or if you've already stripped it of identifying material.
There's no pay. There's no schwag. There's no credit. We sometimes cut the very best paragraph because we're meanies. We often make fun of you and your little concerns. We definitely give you a goofy name, and sometimes we make you a woman if you're a man, or vice versa - but not always. We sometimes pick unflattering photos to represent you. We sometimes take Brad Pitt's body and put one of our own fat heads on the body, but that's just for fun.
But then sometimes we call you a "chief correspondent," and that has a heady feel to it. Past "chief correspondents" have offered us all sorts of hosannas, and walking around knowing you've made it that high on the RYS food chain is really good for your posture, libido, and well, your libido. That should be enough.
Proof your stuff. We're often too hungover to do it. Don't send something you don't want people to see. (We're averaging 200,000 views a month right now.) Write about the profession; write lively. We'll let you know if you're close or off base. We do our best to reply to every piece of mail we get, except for spam about the size of our penis, and anything that starts: "Johnny has leukemia, and if you forward this email, he'll win a pail full of bunnies."
So, are you up for it? There's only one Wicked Walter, but we welcome the rest of you anyway.
Send your posts here, and wait for the chicks to dig you. (We mean, if you want chicks. If you want dudes, the same good mojo applies.)
Alvin from Arlington is Anxious About Attendance.
Years ago I stopped taking attendance. It never made any sense to me. Students who appeared in class regularly and took part did well on essays, tests, and projects. Those that didn't, well, didn't.
I tell my students this. I tell them that they're on their own as far as coming to class, but that material is discussed in class that they can ONLY get here. They run the risk of missing important details of the class if they choose not to come.And for the most part it's worked out.
But this past year or so it's gotten out of hand. I'm running my classes about 50% full most days. Students drop in on the Tuesday but not the Thursday, or skip a whole week and come back happily with, "So, what happened last week?" Now, I'm not giving in, or making it easier on them. They just simply don't come and are suffering lower scores on tests and projects. I don't get it. They don't even seem particularly perturbed by it.
Yesterday, with the biggest essay of the semester due in a week, I had scheduled a special day where an English professor colleague was going to come to our class and talk about ways to organize these papers. I had 6 out of 20 students, even though I'd stressed how essential this info would be for us.
It's truly information that can't be replicated for them, because I'm not asking my pal to come back again for those folks who don't come to class.
Nobody's complaining. Nobody in class even seems to give a shit, but I know they're missing crucial stuff, and don't know what else to do. Should I keep attendance? I don't want to. I think it's stupid. I don't want to feel like a babysitter. Yet, it's bugging me that my students aren't getting the experience they could be. Am I supposed to save them from themselves?
We Don't Know if this is Some Kind of Logic Problem, Or Just some Super-SAT Question, But We Like it Anyway.
Original due date for take-home exam: March 10.Date I had a car accident on the way to work and didn't make it to class: March 3.
Week of Spring Break: March 17-21.
Days when class was not canceled: March 5, March 10, March 12.
New due date for take-home exam (because Heaven forbid a due date stand after I so thoughtlessly had an accident on the way to work one day an entire week earlier, and Heaven forbid I not extend it by two days plus Spring Break even though class was only canceled once): March 24.
Time of tragic news from "T": March 24, 2 AM. "I had my take home test on the day you didn't come and because you didn't come, I couldn't turn it in. It seems I am coming down with some sort of virus so I won't be able to make it back until at least Tuesday."
Since the take home exam was handed out on the first day of class and was identical to the in class exam with different numbers and more questions (not my normal MO, but this is the class from Hell and I gave up. I thought if I at least gave them questions they already had and told them so, that they'd be able to scrape out a class average of a C, or maybe a D+, but no, no, never mind that they could have copied half of it from textbook problems and then memorized the T/F questions, but this is now a tangent from a tangent...) and since she got something in the 20's on the in class exam, and since that story doesn't make any fucking sense, it's safe to say this is bullshit.
What I wanted to say: "Good thing you have some sort of virus, because you're totally full of shit and you could use the cleansing. How dare you try to use my car accident, on a day totally unrelated to the exam, as an excuse! Especially after I OVER compensated for the cancellation with a ridiculous extension. Your story doesn't make any sense and I double dog dare you to bring it to the department chair."
What I said instead: "Oh, too bad you didn't turn it in one of the other three days we had class before Break, since you were going to turn it in a week early anyway. Next time you're done so early and I have an accident on the way to work, make sure you put it in my mailbox, where I told you you could always turn stuff in early. Scan it and e-mail it by 5 PM or it doesn't count. The final will count twice. Feel better."
Now, it's time to hit the road and get ready to hear the whining from whichever friend she designated to do her dirty work. "Professor, I don't know if you checked your e-mail yet, but T is really sick and she wanted me to tell you she can't come until tomorrow. It was really hard to understand her over the phone through her violent retching, so she tapped out what she wanted me to tell you in Morse code by banging her phone against the toilet tank while she puked. She said if you know Morse code, she can tap out her take-home exam answers for you if you call her at this number."
Ashley "I Wanna Be a Helper" Does INDEED Get Her Dad On the Copier Case. An Update For the Ages.
I didn't really expect that Ashley's dad, let's call him Mr. Copy, would get in touch with me, but I just got off the phone with him. Apparently asshole runs in the family.
---
Phone rings.
Dr. M.: Hello?
Mr. Copy: Hi, I would like to speak with Dr...., um, the person teaching the course on philosophy.
Dr. M.: Yes, I'm "Dr. M." and I teach a course on philosophy. May I help you?
Mr. Copy: Oh yes, hello, my name is Mr. Copy and my daughter informs me that that you need help with a copier problem. My daughter said that you are desperate to learn how to use your copier correctly. My company, Ricoh, runs tutorials on how to maximize copier use and I'd be happy to run one for your office. We offer a 30 minute luncheon session and a 2 hour session. Which make and model copier do you have?Dr. M.: (a touch disarmed) We have an old Xerox machine. I am afraid I do not know the model. But, I need to tell you....
Mr. Copy: (cutting me off) Oh, so you are in the market for a new copier. Well, we have a number of makes and models available that would suit the needs of a large office. (He proceeds to go on for 3 minutes about various types of copier). When could I come by and show you around our catalog?
Dr. M.: Actually, Mr. Copy, I am not in the market for a copier. Though I appreciate your offer, I do not have the authority to ask you in for a tutorial, nor do I make office equipment acquisitions. I think your daughter misunderstands the situation. I am an assistant professor in the department of politics.... (cuts me off again)
Mr. Copy: Oh, if you're only the assistant, may I speak with the managing professor?
Dr. M.: Sir, I'm sorry, but I think your daughter misunderstands. She was upset that I don't collate and staple the class notes. I am in charge of his course and we do not have a "managing professor," that's not how we operate... (cut off again!)
Mr. Copy: Can you transfer me to the managing professor now please?
Dr. M.: (lying through gritted teeth) Sir, he's out of the country right now. I do not believe my department is looking for a copier or copier tutorial, but I'll be sure to pass on your contact information for when we are.
Mr. Copy: See that you do. I'd also like to talk with him about the amount I'm being charged for my daughter to be taught by his assistant.
---
In retrospect, I should have transferred him to our "managing professor." I'm sure my department head would have loved that conversation.
I cannot wait to see Ashley again. I cannot wait for her final paper. Here's hoping I can restrain myself and not go totally bat-shit with the pink pen in a stroke of pure vengeance.
In retrospect, I should have transferred him to our "managing professor." I'm sure my department head would have loved that conversation.
I cannot wait to see Ashley again. I cannot wait for her final paper. Here's hoping I can restrain myself and not go totally bat-shit with the pink pen in a stroke of pure vengeance.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Uh, We Prefer the Dropkick to the F, but We're All About Giving What's Earned. Prof. Meanie Wants Eddie to Understand.
I realized about 5 years ago that most undergraduates, even the brightest and most eager to learn, have NOT been trained in high school on how to avoid plagiarism through the proper quotation or paraphrasing of material...let alone crafting manual-specific citations! And so I teach them how.I used to spend one day on it. Then I started spending 2. When I started teaching writing classes, I spent a whole week. When I taught a How to Write a Research Paper course, I spent 2 weeks. Then I started splitting it up: Having a week-long intro then a refresher day later on before the big research paper was due. Quizzing them on specifics [e.g. What are the 4 most important items to use when providing internal documentation? etc.]. All the while assigning required reading in easy-to-read style manual-ettes designed for [functionally illiterate] undergrads.
For a significant portion of my classes, NONE of these techniques worked! The sweet, little darlings more often than not invented their own citation style [at the best end], or simply ctrl+v-ed their way to a pastiched paper with varying tone, awkward sentence structures, and a complete absence of quotation marks or bibliography [on the worst end].
So when Eddie says, "punishment should be corrective, not vengeful. I see a lot of instructors post here with the thinly veiled motive of seeing their cheating students suffer." Uh...yeah...I *do* want revenge! I did everything in my power to teach these students how not to do something. Do most of them just go, "Shit! I really fucked up!"? Oh, no...I get vicious screeds on my evaluations about how bad a teacher I am, or I get a student who completely withdraws from participation in class because I so obviously hate him/her [instead of simply assessed what was given me], or I get a student mod who rebels on the final assignment and decides to do as little work as possible.
Eddie needs to accept that on some college campuses, ignorance is the rule. Students get whatever they want from administrations who really could care less about education. Faculty are given mandates by this same administration and then given mixed messages about how to handle situations; I myself worked in a department where I was told to: 1) counter grade inflation, 2) make sure students were prepared to advance past the intro course [and fail those who weren't], but 3) not told how to handle plagiarists even after requesting advice from my supervisor/department chair. This is not just my story, but a common one across the academy.
So, yeah, I *AM* "willing to dropkick students the hardest," as Eddie says. I assess them only on what I taught them, I assign relevant readings and expect them to prepare for class. When students do not do the work, cannot be trusted to be professionally ethical, cannot accept responsibility for their own misbehavior, I will use every power at my disposal [and they are few] to make sure that student gets exactly what s/he has earned...even if it's an F. Since when is an F *NOT* one of the potential grades earned by a student? Isn't it the teacher's job to assign the grade earned in the course?
"Corrective Suffering." A Reply to Eddie from Edmonton.
Eddie says: "Look, plagiarism sucks, but punishment should be corrective, not vengeful. I see a lot of instructors post here with the thinly veiled motive of seeing their cheating students suffer."
Suffering can be darn corrective. Behavior rewarded is behavior repeated. These students have been rewarded for plagiarizing, and rewarded for fighting against the measures that were in place to prevent or deter plagiarism. They'll do it again. The only thing they have learned is that in the eyes of the authority, plagiarism is no big deal. Oh, and that if you get caught you need to have a cover story. (And maybe an onion in your pocket to help bring on the tears.)
The *only* fair thing to do when a student plagiarizes or cheats is to enforce the policies that are in place--assuming, of course, that students were/should legitimately have been aware of the policies.
Unfortunately, cheaters *do* win, bad people prosper, and not every white-hat-wearer is a good guy. If it were really true that cheaters were only cheating themselves, I'd say, let 'em. But really they're cheating all of us. In my classes, someone who earns a good grade by cheating could keep a more deserving student out of medical school or a nursing program.
Suffering can be darn corrective. Behavior rewarded is behavior repeated. These students have been rewarded for plagiarizing, and rewarded for fighting against the measures that were in place to prevent or deter plagiarism. They'll do it again. The only thing they have learned is that in the eyes of the authority, plagiarism is no big deal. Oh, and that if you get caught you need to have a cover story. (And maybe an onion in your pocket to help bring on the tears.)The *only* fair thing to do when a student plagiarizes or cheats is to enforce the policies that are in place--assuming, of course, that students were/should legitimately have been aware of the policies.
Unfortunately, cheaters *do* win, bad people prosper, and not every white-hat-wearer is a good guy. If it were really true that cheaters were only cheating themselves, I'd say, let 'em. But really they're cheating all of us. In my classes, someone who earns a good grade by cheating could keep a more deserving student out of medical school or a nursing program.
I try to make it inconvenient for people to cheat, but that's keeping honest people honest. If people are really dishonest, and I can catch them, I will do what's in my power to keep them from becoming doctors or nurses. Whether they are dishonest by nature or simply incompetent to learn material without cheating, they should not be allowed to gain a position in which their dishonesty or incompetence could hurt others. You can see that as wanting to see them suffer, but I see it as a duty.
All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.
-- Edmund Burke
Monday, March 24, 2008
Once More Into the Plagiarism / Punishment Breach. Eddie from Edmonton Says No to the Vengeful.
There has been a spat of posts lately on plagiarism. Always a hot topic. I agree that Trish the TA has cajones the size of volleyballs, if not bigger, and I hope to hell the professor she's grading for gets dragged through the ringer not only for his disregard of academic principles, but also for his blatant sexism. What a piece of work. Trish is correct when she notes he is the instructor of record, yet the rules of academic integrity are the institution's and not his personally.
All the same, looking at Stanley from Sioux City, I see an unwillingness to acknowledge the same, this time from the instructor of record. In this case the penalty has been assessed by the Dean's office, and the instructor just can't accept it. And here's where I get confused.
I won't pretend I have a final answer for what constitutes a reasonable punishment for plagiarism. I'm sure we can all agree that a slap on the wrist is insufficient and the severing of hands is excessive, so we can at least establish a range. Within that range, there's bound to be a variety of opinions. What interests me is that we can't seem to agree on a process. We accept that we might have different opinions, in good conscience, about the appropriate severity of punishment. So who, finally, gets to make the call?
I just can't agree with any suggestion that the instructor of record should be the final God-Almighty authority on academic regulations. That's not appropriate, and Trish's situation amply demonstrates why. Meanwhile, Stanley is upset precisely because administrative authority has stepped into the matter.
Look, plagiarism sucks, but punishment should be corrective, not vengeful. I see a lot of instructors post here with the thinly veiled motive of seeing their cheating students suffer. Sometimes we all feel that - it's human after all - but no system of punishment that has any pretense of "justice" can be based around a vengeance motive. That's exactly why administrative structures step in, and people who aren't involved in the immediate situation have the final call.
Am I the only one around here who thinks this is an important principle? It seems to me we often lose sight of this issue, when we only focus on outcomes. There are times, and this is one of them, where the process may be as important as the result. Or does everyone around here honestly think that every individual instructor should be free to punish or not punish based on their individual feelings, priorities, and (more often than not) biases? It seems a lot of people like that idea - just as long as the instructor is a hardass. When he isn't, opinion swings the other way. Does anyone even care, or are we just on the side of whoever is willing to dropkick students the hardest?
More Spring Break Madness. The "Family Vacation" Ploy Doesn't Soften the Heart of Professor X
Dear Professor X,
I know that you have an exam scheduled for the day before spring break, and my daughter Gina requested that she take that exam earlier. You said “no” because you didn’t think her family vacation to Jamaica was a good enough reason. I think you’re being unfair, and now Gina is going to get an F for the midterm because you refuse to consider her situation. Therefore, I’m asking you to think this over again and get back to me as soon as possible.
Signed,
Gina’s Mom
This is what I would have liked to write back:
Dear Gina’s Mom,
Where do I begin? I didn't just refuse her request because she is going on vacation; I refused her request because I have a class of 250 students. If I offered her an alternate time, then I would have to offer an alternate time for all students. This means reserving a room through the scheduling office, finding TAs to invigilate this extra sitting, creating a completely new midterm, and generally taking up my personal time that I don't get paid for just to make your daughter's already pampered life a little more convenient. She won't receive a zero on the test because I refuse to allow her to write it early, she'll receive a zero because she decided 10 days of vacation just wasn't enough for her and that extra day of vacation was worth getting a big fat zero on my midterm.
I know that you have an exam scheduled for the day before spring break, and my daughter Gina requested that she take that exam earlier. You said “no” because you didn’t think her family vacation to Jamaica was a good enough reason. I think you’re being unfair, and now Gina is going to get an F for the midterm because you refuse to consider her situation. Therefore, I’m asking you to think this over again and get back to me as soon as possible.
Signed,
Gina’s Mom
This is what I would have liked to write back:
Dear Gina’s Mom,
Where do I begin? I didn't just refuse her request because she is going on vacation; I refused her request because I have a class of 250 students. If I offered her an alternate time, then I would have to offer an alternate time for all students. This means reserving a room through the scheduling office, finding TAs to invigilate this extra sitting, creating a completely new midterm, and generally taking up my personal time that I don't get paid for just to make your daughter's already pampered life a little more convenient. She won't receive a zero on the test because I refuse to allow her to write it early, she'll receive a zero because she decided 10 days of vacation just wasn't enough for her and that extra day of vacation was worth getting a big fat zero on my midterm. And you'll forgive me if you didn't get a course outline before the new semester started, but I didn't know I would have the pleasure of teaching your little princess. Had I known, I would have called you immediately to schedule my midterm around all of your family's plans! And since when did it become kosher for parent's to email university professors? Your daughter, despite her spoiled upbringing, is considered an adult now. This nonsense may have worked with your kid's high school teachers, but it isn't going to fly here. She needs to decide what's more important - her education or her tan line.
Signed,
Professor X
Signed,
Professor X
Where We Teeter on the Brink After a Big Email Night About Trish.
You know, I read all the advice to Trish, and I thought "gosh, what a lot of people with no moral character -- yeah, turning in her prof might be career-wrecking, maybe. But maybe not. And if he's grading that capriciously, no doubt the university would want to know before a student turns it into a lawsuit. And then she goes and does the right damned thing. Never, ever give into the fear-mongering of petty people too afraid of losing the careers they evidently hate. Doing the ethical thing requires courage. But it is also, in the long run, far far better than cowering under the threats of moral cowards. So go ahead -- call me unrealistic. Trish did the right thing and she knows it, and I'm proud of her. She's my newest hero.- One of the things I try to tell my own graduate students is, "Don't fuck your career up while you're still a naif." This is what Trish has done. If she gets away with this betrayal of trust with her professor, it will only embolden her to do something else foolish, and she'll eventually get her ass handed to her. Oh, yes, I'm sure she's on the moral high ground here, but as a teaching assistant, she needed to do what was asked of her, not decide that her own inadequate and clearly incomplete training was enough to circumvent what's already in place.
- The whole profession needs regular doses of integrity and gumption, and you have them both in spades. The fact that you stood up to a "good ol' boy" who, on top of letting cheating students slide, made extremely unprofessional and inappropriate comments to you, is going to shape your teaching and classroom demeanor in a powerful way. Twenty years from now, you will still be holding your head high, rather than feeling a shameful sense of regret. SCREW people who tell you to keep your head down and take it...nobody becomes a leader that way.
- Darlin', you've just fucked yourself, and likely brought some misery to someone who has a lot more wisdom about handling the situation than you'll ever have. Enjoy taking your half-finished degree into the retail world.
- This story has it all: women, intrigue, corruption, and a young idealistic hero.
- Run, Trish. Run and keep running. No doubt you've pissed a lot of people off with your grandstanding maneuver, and I can't help but think you're going to get your little ass tanned for it.
- Dear Trish. I think I'm in love with you!
- What an arrogant move. I wouldn't want the kind of shitstorm you're going to find yourself in. Your prof is going to stay up nights finding ways to make the rest of your short career in the academy miserable.
- Holy crumbs. Trish is my new hero. As someone who’s seen countless plagiarists let off the hook by professors who simply don’t want to deal with the backlash, I say bravo. I’m stunned that she was able to somehow elicit a response from her prof that combines ignorance and misogyny put, very stupidly, into writing. This prof sounds moronic enough to have sunk himself, and that’s exactly what he did, and right quick. Slam dunk. Let’s just hope the Dean doesn’t think she’s cute, too.
- I hope Trish has protected herself from retribution, because revealing her prof as the apparent letch that he is - and a lousy prof to boot - doesn't seem like a recipe for success. I want to admire her move, but in the end I think it was stupid.
RYS Flashback: One Year Ago Today.
Party Girl Turns Professor:
I'm a professor, and I'm afraid I was once a typical student. I went a little wild my freshman and sophomore years, then settled down somewhat, but not completely. I blew off almost an entire quarter of calculus to go to the beach. I decided not to write the three assigned papers in one of my classes because I judged them not to be worth the effort. I was a party girl. I often went to class with a hangover, or not at all. I sometimes fell asleep in class, and spoke up in class maybe twice in 4 years. After a few years, I became interested in a subject and started caring more. I managed to get involved in research with a few faculty members, improve my GPA, and score well enough on the GRE to get into a good graduate program.I also took responsibility for all of this behavior. What I didn't do was blame my professors for my bad grades.
If I skipped class, I did not go to the professor and ask for a personal make-up lecture on the material I missed. I did not make up stories or excuses about why I missed an assignment. I did not ask for extra time on assignments, or ask to reschedule a test so that I could go on vacation early. I didn't beg for points on exams, or for a grade higher than the one I earned. I felt that it would have been deeply shameful to do any of these things. I felt that it would have demonstrated a lack of respect for my professors, and it would have been dishonest.
What pisses me off about some of my current students is not that they sometimes screw up (I can relate to that), it's that they expect me to spend time that I can't really spare (and don't want to) helping them clean up their messes. They refuse to accept the consequences of their behavior. They are shameless and disrespectful. I'm grateful that most of my students aren't like this, but I resent having to spend precious time with the bad ones that I could be spending with the good ones.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Who We Needed At Just the Right Time.
I joined a new social networking site for my college alumni. One of the forums there was “What professor had the most impact on your college life.”
I changed my major to philosophy in my sophomore year of college. Pretty cool, since I didn’t know what philosophy was when I arrived. I just knew I had to take 6 hours and it had something to do with Socrates and Aristotle.
However, my intro instructor was AWESOME. She managed to take something I was dreading and turn it into something I loved and still love. I’m a philosophy instructor now because of her.
But when I got ready to write my response, I realized that I couldn’t remember her name.
But it’s cool, because I still have a lot of stuff from my undergraduate days, including folders, books, catalogs, yearbooks. It’s Friday, I’m a little drunk. I don’t have shit else to do at 2:00 am.
So I look. Can’t find the class folder, don’t have the class book. A-ha – here’s a course schedule from Spring 1992 (back when they actually printed them - oh the memories.) I know she’s here. Maybe after I write my contribution, I’ll look her up and just see what she’s doing now.
So I look up Philosophy and get to the page and see the line I drew over to “T/R 2:40 – 3:55” and there it is… “STAFF."
She was an adjunct.
Yep, this woman who saved me. She helped me learn to love philosophy. She caused me to change my major. She inspired me to teach.
Looking back, I think she was a graduate student at a nearby university – still excited about teaching, just wanting a little extra money and experience, yet she ended up changing my life. Not the full-time professors, with their pictures in the yearbook (yep – I looked there too), but that dreaded adjunct teaching that shit intro course.
I am going to find out her name.
I changed my major to philosophy in my sophomore year of college. Pretty cool, since I didn’t know what philosophy was when I arrived. I just knew I had to take 6 hours and it had something to do with Socrates and Aristotle.
However, my intro instructor was AWESOME. She managed to take something I was dreading and turn it into something I loved and still love. I’m a philosophy instructor now because of her.
But when I got ready to write my response, I realized that I couldn’t remember her name.But it’s cool, because I still have a lot of stuff from my undergraduate days, including folders, books, catalogs, yearbooks. It’s Friday, I’m a little drunk. I don’t have shit else to do at 2:00 am.
So I look. Can’t find the class folder, don’t have the class book. A-ha – here’s a course schedule from Spring 1992 (back when they actually printed them - oh the memories.) I know she’s here. Maybe after I write my contribution, I’ll look her up and just see what she’s doing now.
So I look up Philosophy and get to the page and see the line I drew over to “T/R 2:40 – 3:55” and there it is… “STAFF."
She was an adjunct.
Yep, this woman who saved me. She helped me learn to love philosophy. She caused me to change my major. She inspired me to teach.
Looking back, I think she was a graduate student at a nearby university – still excited about teaching, just wanting a little extra money and experience, yet she ended up changing my life. Not the full-time professors, with their pictures in the yearbook (yep – I looked there too), but that dreaded adjunct teaching that shit intro course.
I am going to find out her name.
Some Folks Go Old School.
Yes, you've got a nice ass, and you're used to showing it to one and all. But could you please wear something a little more modest. I mean, this is a church school, and you're not a working girl. (I don't think.)- Oh God, tell us one more time about going to Firenzo or Forencia or wherever the hell it was you went in Italy last year. I mean we haven't heard about every minute of the trip, though it seems like it.
- Okay, you're closer to my age than you are to the other freshmen, but we're not buds. Quit slugging me on the shoulder you nutjob, and walking me to my car after class does not make us colleagues or friends. You're creeping me out!
- You're cute-but-neurotic and it's driving me crazy. I can't tell if your desire to wipe down your desk before you get to work is honest germophobia, or a ploy for the attention of the entire class (which you get). And I don't care. You're smart enough to do the work; can you please just get to it?
- Oh I know you're busy. Sheesh, you've got a full plate. But that doesn't change the fact that the rest of us have 16 weeks to slog through. Your constant explanations are tiring me out. If your cousin in Ohio simply can't get married without you, then so be it. But we're going to go on without you, okay?
- You think because you're a foot taller than me that you can do whatever you want, and I'll admit the administration so far is being a too soft on you for my tastes. But if you want to play teacher-vs-student, I happen to know who will win, and the one of us who's been in trouble with the law before is going to be the loser.
- Nobody has this much trouble finishing an essay. Quit telling me you're blocked. What you really are is lazy. How many times do I have to say, "Write an introduction"? It's not a very intoxicating thought, and I know it's not a very exciting activity. But your essay needs it, and I'm sick of waiting for you to do it.
- You're right: I absolutely am "treating you like you're in sixth grade." There's a reason for that. Actually, were I to try to put an age on your behavior, I would be forced to admit you act worse than my TWO YEAR OLD. Grow up.
- I would pay you money to shut up. Don't you get that there are 45 people in this class? Don't you see that all of us - even I - have glazed over eyeballs the minute you begin your newest insane side note? I've asked you politely after class to give your classmates a chance, but all you said was: "I paid my money; I'm getting my money's worth." Try this. Try listening. It's not all about you, and a classroom dynamic might help you if you'd quit stomping on it.
An Update from Trish the TA, Who - It Appears - Has Cojones The Size of Volleyballs.
Thank you so much for posting my plea as well as the feedback you received regarding my difficult situation. Even though there was not a consensus, I found all of the comments rather insightful which is exactly what I needed. Here is an update.
Based on the clear and specific language included on the class syllabus, I failed the plagiarizing pair. That's right. They got big, fat zeros. I let each of the students know (via email) that they had to contact the professor to discuss their grades because I had turned their papers over to him. I sent the papers to the professor with all of the plagiarized passages highlighted, explained how I had handled the situation, and offered to notify the Dean according to university policy.
Here is how the professor replied:
Dear Trish: You are so adorable to put so much effort into grading papers but these students shouldn't be so harshly penalized. Go back, grade their papers, and lower each of them one full letter grade. It is important, after all, that some penalty be assessed for plagerism. And try not to take this too seriously. You're a pretty girl who is going to get wrinkled way before her time.
My response:
Dear Professor:
The policy on your syllabus and university policy is such that the matter of plagiarism is not to be taken lightly and must be handled in a specific manner. Therefore I stand firm on my position and feel justified regarding the actions that I took. However, please be aware that I understand that, as the professor of record, final grading decisions are at your discretion. Additionally, you will be hearing from the Dean shortly. I forwarded to her your email and she seemed very eager to speak with you.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
"There Will Be Blood." The Art of the Red Pen.
Want the truth? This guy can't handle the truth. My students can. The red pen is the Truth, a rubric, the words of Jesus F. Christ. The red pen cannot lie (well, most of the time). I go through boxes of red pens. I like the kind that have liquidy ink that spatters like blood--and sports little spots like claws or bleeds from those colons or periods resembling the puncture marks of sharp teeth.
Actually, I do a lot of work on these papers with red ink--the student can see it. I don't write mean things, "Don't quit your day job (fast track to fast food manager)", but instead leave all sorts of droppings: commas, circles around typos, usage errors and yes, lots of comments, from "good word choice" to "Well, Blimey, this is GREAT!" to more instructive "Review commas in handbook."
Sure, the first papers are delivered from the emergency room to the waiting room and met with shocked silence, but after first blood, they know not to faint.
Another Academic Learning At the Feet of a Master.
To my dear dissertation advisor, Mr. Big-Shot Tenured Professor,
First of all, I want to apologize. You do so much for me, a lowly PhD student, and I know how hard you have it. I don't mind listening to your complaints and frustrations, knowing (hoping!) that they will soon be my own. I know your job is tough, and I appreciate everything you do for me.
So I want to apologize. I'm sorry that, when you asked to fill in as a nanny for your brood, I wasn't able to. I know it was selfish of me wanting to spend time with my own child, in the rare free time I have when I'm not teaching the low-level classes you are too good to teach, working my second job as a clerk at a discount shoe store to help support my family or writing my dissertation. I'm also sorry that, when you asked me to grade your undergrad seminar papers--something that is not part of my job, since I'm your advisee, not your TA--that I didn't do it as quickly as you would have liked. I know your job is stressful and those department meetings and dinners with visiting scholars, those visiting lectures and drinks afterward must be time-consuming and stressful.
So thank you for demanding chapters of my dissertation early and never reading them. You've done so much for, been a real mentor, showed me how best to succeed when I finish my degree and hopefully become a professor myself.
And I'm really sorry that, after rescheduling my defense twice you just weren't able to come today. It's important to go out of town early with your wife for your place on the outer banks, and after all, why would I mind? I know I'm glad you were taking some time off for yourself, and I bet your colleagues--my other committee members who did show up--are impressed by your selfless devotion to think of your students and rest up when you're feeling too taxed.
I completely understand your pain. Enjoy a stroll on the beach. Relax. You deserve it.
Devoted ABD
First of all, I want to apologize. You do so much for me, a lowly PhD student, and I know how hard you have it. I don't mind listening to your complaints and frustrations, knowing (hoping!) that they will soon be my own. I know your job is tough, and I appreciate everything you do for me.
So I want to apologize. I'm sorry that, when you asked to fill in as a nanny for your brood, I wasn't able to. I know it was selfish of me wanting to spend time with my own child, in the rare free time I have when I'm not teaching the low-level classes you are too good to teach, working my second job as a clerk at a discount shoe store to help support my family or writing my dissertation. I'm also sorry that, when you asked me to grade your undergrad seminar papers--something that is not part of my job, since I'm your advisee, not your TA--that I didn't do it as quickly as you would have liked. I know your job is stressful and those department meetings and dinners with visiting scholars, those visiting lectures and drinks afterward must be time-consuming and stressful.So thank you for demanding chapters of my dissertation early and never reading them. You've done so much for, been a real mentor, showed me how best to succeed when I finish my degree and hopefully become a professor myself.
And I'm really sorry that, after rescheduling my defense twice you just weren't able to come today. It's important to go out of town early with your wife for your place on the outer banks, and after all, why would I mind? I know I'm glad you were taking some time off for yourself, and I bet your colleagues--my other committee members who did show up--are impressed by your selfless devotion to think of your students and rest up when you're feeling too taxed.
I completely understand your pain. Enjoy a stroll on the beach. Relax. You deserve it.
Devoted ABD
Stanley from Sioux City Reports on Six Who Skated.
I and my 4 TAs turned over 6 cases of plagiarism just before Spring Break. We documented these cases thoroughly, pulling information from Turnitin.com and assorted Google searches, highlighting the plagiarized passages. It was a thick folder of incontrovertible evidence.
When I returned to my office yesterday, a note under my door told me that all of the cases had been reviewed by the Dean's office, and all of the students had "apologized" and had given a variety of "explanations" for the "errors."I was told by my Dean to lower each student's grade by one letter grade and carry on.
I wouldn't do it. I got that motherfucker on the phone faster than you can say "tenured full professor." I told him I wouldn't take the students back, and that was it. I am not a hothead, and have no history of incivility, but I got the sense that the Dean was surprised.
I felt good all night.
This morning I got a call from a junior faculty member asking me for grades for 6 students. The Dean has moved all 6 of the cheating students out of my class and forced them into the class of one of my colleagues.
Those students have been given a free pass by the Dean, by the college. They are - I can assure you - laughing it up. They cheated. They got caught. And the college looked the other way, made it as convenient as possible for them to get into another course. I even bet the Dean's secretary filled out the drop/add forms. I am sick at heart.
This is academic reality. This is about the last thing I can stomach.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Horace the Hippie and the Red Pen Conspiracy.
Junior faculty have mandatory sessions with this dippy flippy "master" instructor who wears Hawaiian shirts in the middle of icy cold and has Farrah Fawcett feathery bangs. Our sessions with him are *agony* because he dictates to us "youthful instructors" the latest fashionable, watered down horseshit from educational theory designed to de-center us massively powerful assistant and adjunct professors from our positions of "authority" over the helpless widdle sons and daughters of the American elite.Recently he lectured us on how important it was NEVER to mark students' papers with Red Pens, because the Red Pen would discourage them and suggest to them that their work was something that others could deface. Instead, we were to write them all individual letters, commenting not on what is right and wrong, but instead giving gentle guidance on how a student's choices in the assignment reflect their thought processes.
I’m teaching a total of 150 students, and I only have one worthless TA. I objected: individual letters to 150 students? He looked at the rest of the group, sighed, and said "You'll find, as your career unfolds, that you can always find excuses for not doing your best by your students."
Big Thirsty Replies. Fresh Madness from the Dean's Office.
- We were to treat our students like customers because some business study showed that dissatisfied customers told 10 or more people of their discontent, while those who were satisfied told only 2 or 3 people of their delight. The administration immediately saw a need to have lots of satisfied customers to keep the students coming in with their full price credit hours. And you can guess what the equivalent of the customer satisfaction survey became – the student evaluations of professors, not their opinions of the counselors or administrators. I guess the powers that be here think that professors are the equivalent of plumbers or carpet installers that can guarantee results.
- Anything involving more access for parents.
We were asked to take part in "team-building" exercises with our incoming freshmen. We were expected to attend a training seminar with a "motivational speaker," who would lead us - and these new students - through a number of games, contests, and challenges. "Just like 'Survivor,' goes the literature." Only one person from our department opted to attend, and she fell off some scaffolding and broke her ankle.- Our provost put in place "Dress like a student day," to bring us closer to our charges.
- The worst mandate that comes down from administration is, "From now on we will require you to [[insert anything time consuming here]], but unfortunately, due to budget constraints, we can't allocate any additional time for you to complete [[said hellish task]]."
- We admit a large number of remedial students. They are placed in a special program. In order to pump up their GPAs they only take easy courses and are not allowed to take any math or science courses their first year. Guess what happens when they end up in our remedial math courses the next year, and guess who gets blamed for this.
- We were offered tiny incentives to work in the cafeteria on Fridays, serving students food, and then putting on a little "pageant" at the end of the semester.
- We had a policy that if a student retook a course only the most recent grade was used in GPA calculations. For example, if you failed English 101 twice and then got a C, only the C would count. After a couple a years students took it for granted that it was normal to take certain courses several times. I had students tell me the first week that this was only their "first pass" through the course so they weren't planning on doing much. One girl - a math major - told me she took each of her math courses twice. When I suggested that no one was ever going to hire her she cried. (Unbeknownst to most students all their grades were recorded on the official transcript.)
- Our president mandated a collective office hour, one hour a week when every single member of the faculty would be available. It was supposed to show the openness of the college, blah blah blah. It ended up being 5:30-6:30 on Thursday afternoons. On the first offering of this fresh madness, nobody in my building had a single student, and after that we gradually phased the idea out.
- Group grading. Eee--yew. All the tenured profs with their 4 course load actually want to grade more papers?! Ha.
- A new Dean decided writing should take place in every course. Faculty from every department were required to attend seminars taught by a fresh faced new faculty member in English. I didn't understand a thing that we were taught, and when the semester started, nobody was available to help me with questions I had. "Do you know how many essays I have to grade?" the training professor asked me. "I gave you the tools. It's up to you to make them work." My whole department had to write a letter to the Dean's office to get excluded from the wonderful new initiative. Within 2 semester all the other departments had done likewise.
- Assessment.
A Gorgeous Gallimaufry of Hot Links.
- When parents can't get their shit together. From From-Mom.Com.
- Don't drink until death. Stop when you're "buzzed." From Minneapolis Public Radio.
- Cheating with Facebook. From CNN.com.
- Prof's "Day in the Life." From Dr. Crazy.
- Prof Arrested, but mostly we love the comments. From The Flat Hat.
- A Professor's Plagiarism. From Newsday.com.
- One Nominee for Student of the Year. Guns & Creative Writing. From Tri-Cities.com.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
This Week's Big Thirsty. What New Terrible Idea Has Come?
Q: I'm only in my second year of teaching, but it seems to me that there is no end to the terrible ideas, suggestions, and mandates that come down to mere faculty from the administration, the Dean's office, and the department chair. Everything seems designed to make the job harder, to give more and more power to the lowest common denominator, and to suck any of the joy out of being a college proffie. What's the worst "new idea from the President" or "program change for better education" that has ruined your job?Four Quick Answers For Wanda and Shauna.
Tired of getting stood up by the students the week before Spring Break? Do what I do: schedule the midterm examination for the class meeting immediately preceding the break. If you can stand the occasional hissy fit from the little ones when you refuse to give them personal make-up exams, it works wonders. They have to show up, and you get to retain your dignity and avoid blowing up your syllabus to accommodate their party and suntan plans.---
I may be in the minority, but just ignore the fact they're not there. Whatever happens in class is still something they're responsible for, right? I wouldn't go nuts and offer a test at 4:00 pm on Friday, but I'd make sure something was done that had some weight. They are taught by the system that taking off early - especially for "family" trips - is okay with everyone. Like anyone gives a shit if their dads work for American Airlines and get those free coupons to Maui or not. Just once I'd love to skip class, not send a sub, not send a note. And then a week later when I rolled through the classroom, I'd just tell the students - "Oh man, my family had a chance to go up to Yosemite. Did I miss anything?"
---
Everything you're doing can be eliminated by putting all your notes and handouts and exams etc. online. Make students submit assignments electronically. No more paper. No more staplers. No more secretarial work. I've been doing that since the mid-90's in the college classroom.
---
I teach statistics, and a couple of semesters ago, I gave up. The constant complaints about availability of PowerPoint slides online, the assumption that if it's not explicitly written down somewhere the students don't need to know it, the requests for paper copies because "my printer didn't work." Jackasses, all of them. And it finally got to me. So I gave up on my pandering and killed all of it. I still teach the same statistics class,but I don't use PowerPoint. At all. No notes, no outlines, no written anything. Occasionally, I will post a diagram online that I don't want to sit in class and watch them scribble down for 10 minutes. But that's it. I just stand there, talk, write, draw, and use my calculator. And guess what? My student evals didn't change at all. If anything, their ratings went up,especially in the "the instructor is an expert in the subject material" department.
Mimi From Memphis Won't Play This Game.
When you walked into my office, I noticed you were wearing the expensive, silky workout gear with the school logo. Was it your obvious height - I mean you ducked down to get through my doorway? Was it your lean frame - you even look fast? Were you all bulked up - I know we're starting a wrestling them - or maybe it was the ever-present baseball cap. In other words, I knew at that moment "this is a student athlete."I also noticed it was two weeks into the semester. I listened as you explained there was confusion about what classes you were enrolled in, and tried not to smile at the way you looked at me when I asked if you had been attending someone else's class. No? Oh...you're in that new program - play sports, skip class. I know it worked so well for you in high school. And you have that smile. You're smooth in the way you talk to me. No problem, right?
You assume it's okay with me that you don't even crack the book. You assume that I'll pass you because you've got a scholarship. It's worse than that. You assume that I don't care that the college will let you play with lousy grades, that the coach will turn a blind eye because you get our name in the paper. You assume that I'm fine with knowing that two years from now we'll be done with you, we'll have all those trophies, and you'll have zip, squat, nada. You assume it will be okay with me that I won't see you in the NFL or the NBA or any of the other alphabet areas - I'll see you in Wal-mart stocking shelves because you never learned how to do anything but make a basket or run a race. You assume that I think it's fine that we're taking advantage of you while all the while you think you're getting away with something.
It's not okay with me. It pisses me off. I see you as valuable. I see you as worthwhile. I'll sit with you for hours and teach you to read, teach you to write, convince you that there's a serious need for a back-up plan because I believe in you.
That's what I told you that first day. That's what I tell you every time we talk. I'll do anything except play into the game where we cajole you, keep you around, suck the youth out of you, and toss you aside when someone taller/faster/stronger comes along. Hate me if you want, but I refuse to ignore that you are a STUDENT athlete.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
File This Under: "We're Getting Right On It, Douchebag."
Dear Sir,
I came to your office as well to talk about the reassessment of my grade, however at that time you said that it is not possible. I however consulted several seniors as well as TAs and everybody told me that it is.The issue was that i am above the mean by a huge margin in both the midterm as well as the final exam. I compared my marks to a couple of my friends who were below the mean in both, by quite some margin as well, and these two exams form the significant portion of the grade. Yet we all ended up with the same grade, i.e a B+. I even calculated our aggregates and there was a difference of about 16% over all.
I therefore kindly request you to please look into this matter once, and reassess my grade. This happened with me once before too in the autumn quarter this year, and my grade was eventually improved, because the grader had made a mistake. I just want to be reassured that that is not the case this time. Thanking you for your expected cooperation.
Sincerely,
Bold Barry
---
Dearest Snowflake Barry,
If the seniors (seniors!), and not only seniors but TAs!!! (TAs!!!!!!!) and EVERYONE say that grades can be changed, then of course they can.
Perhaps the stress of the two weeks I spent marking hundreds of exams (the two weeks you call 'quarter break') caused a psychotic break with reality. I seem to have found myself hallucinating some sort of alternate reality in which seniors (seniors!) and undergraduate TAs (undergrad TAs for crying out loud!!) and EVERYONE simply don't have any say in my academic policies.
I obviously made an extreme misjudgment when I allowed your friends to have the same letter grade as you when you were a whole 16% better than they were. You make a strong case for lowering their grades. If you will send me their names, I'll will see to it that the matter is corrected.
Better yet, I will personally rewrite the grading software that assigns incorrect grades to fine scholars such as yourself. If it doesn't recognize your genius, there must be a problem. Of course, the change of grade petition will have to go to the Dean and he might not want to change all these grades, even if you and the seniors! and TAs!! and EVERYONE says he should. The poor fellow is as unenlightened as I am.
Regards,
Prof. "Hanging On By A Thread" Harry
"Yeah. Good Luck With That." The RYS Serenity Prayer.
Grant me the serenityTo accept the students I cannot teach,
Courage to teach the students I can ,
And wisdom to know the difference.
Taking this thankless occupation
As it is, not as it was advertised to me;
Trusting that administration will grant me tenure one day,
If I surrender to their will.
As it is, not as it was advertised to me;
Trusting that administration will grant me tenure one day,
If I surrender to their will.
"Two Paths Diverged in a Yellow Wood, And I Realized I Was Fucked." Bad News for Trish the TA.
It was a giant virtual bag of email we faced this morning concerning Trish the TA. We wish we had better news for her, a more clear answer. But we don't think we've got anything like a consensus. We've tried to choose a representative sample of what came in, and we hope she'll keep us posted on what she decides to do. Please to enjoy the flava:
Do nothing if you want to have a future in academia, otherwise do the right thing. Sorry, that's the only 2 choices. - Listen, you're in training. You work at my pleasure and convenience, and you don't have any idea why I do or don't take your suggestions on cases of plagiarism or anything else. Should I choose to give every plagiarist an A, a brand new car, and a trip to Disneyland, it's got nothing to do with you. Feel free to bring these matters to the professor's attention, but then your responsibility for them is over.
- If plagiarism disgusts you, as you have indicated, do something about it. You are not “merely an inexperienced TA.” You are an ethical, adult graduate student. You may lack experience in the teaching profession but unless you act, you are complicit. Follow the same procedure that you did last semester, by the highlighting the plagiarized passages and forwarding the paper and the original source to the professor but this time cc the Dean and include verbiage to the effect of, “in accordance with university policy, I am reporting these incidents of plagiarism to the Dean’s office.” The asshole who you work for will have no recourse against you, as you followed proper procedure.
- I would love to tell her to do the right thing and snitch on her boss and his plagiarizing protegee, but she has to watch out for her own posterior. Face it: Trish is powerless, and to report the unethical professor--probably tenured to the gills--would certainly result in a bad outcome for her. The Professor and His Cheatin' Snowflake would still get away with their nefarious deed, and poor Trish, her career in tatters, would end up selling flowers (or worse) on a street corner. This case does serve as a reminder that baddies and snowflakes do exist in our esteemed profession--shocking, I know, but so true. Trish, this is my sage advice: Bite your tongue, keep quiet, get through your graduate studies, and move on.
- Forward the plagiarized papers, highlighted, with the accompanying original source to the Dean. Then (and only then) give the same information to the professor.Tell him what you’ve done, and that you’ve saved him the trouble of reporting the incident to the Dean.Then say something like, “It’s amazing that they thought they’d get away with it! What were they thinking?”Don’t forget to smile.
- I feel your pain. I am a professor and regularly submit plagiarism cases to the Dean’s Office. Even when the Dean looks at me and says it isn’t about punishing the offenders and lets them go, I still persist. However Trish, I have tenure and can get away with it, you do not. I think your best course of action is to accept that the intellectual integrity of the class is ultimately the prof’s responsibility and finish the semester. After that I would request a different assignment the following semester and if pressed for a reason just say you have a significant difference in grading styles. It would not do you any good to get blackballed by a vindictive prof this early in your career. Take it as a moral lesson and promise yourself to do better when in the professor’s chair.
- How is the dean? Is he serious about cheating or just pro forma? If he’s serious, send the papers to him, along with the one from last semester, if you have it. It’s his job to pursue this and it’s his job to protect you. As for your supervising prof, I consider his dereliction and irresponsibility matters for a disciplinary committee.
- I would recommend doing something that will hopefully let you act on your conscience and maintain your relationship. First, you should explain to the professor (politely) that you're puzzled as to what you should do, since you know the university has a policy in place on these matters, but the student you caught last semester suffered no penalty. Act puzzled when said professor is unable to explain to you why that student received an A; ask what you should do about plagiarism, and perhaps bring in the written version of the university policy - you're just trying to do your job well, after all. If what the professor tells you does not cohere with university policy, then mention - out of your earnest desire to know more and do your job well - that you're thinking of going to the department head to see if he or she might have a better sense of how to deal with these issues. Hopefully, the professor will get the message; if you play it right, though, you'll seem like a good eager beaver.
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
When Does Spring Break Start? Waiting-For-You Wanda from Wisconsin Wonders.
Every Spring Break it's the same. I want to meet my classes normally - as my department requires - and the students want to get a jump on their visit to Cabo or Key West.
I've modified my own schedule so now I just schedule individiual conferences on the Thursday and Friday before Spring Break. I pass the sheet around and say, "Listen, if you're leaving early for Spring Break, don't sign up. I don't care. Go and have fun. But just don't sign up and leave me hanging.""Oh yes, Proffie...we hear you. We appreciate it. That's great. We're going to hoist a few to you while we're gone."
And then on Friday I stare at a list of names of folks who don't come, who have signed up, but who don't come. Minutes pass. I grow older. I dare not eat a peach.
This semester the last 6 people on my list were no-shows, and these were times before noon on Friday. That's an hour of my life. That's an hour of reading, sexing, drinking, whistling, nodding, stripping, knitting, yawning, that I'll never get back.
Do I just give up? Tell my chair, "I can't hold them, Guv'nor! They're spinning out of control! The center cannot hold!"
Isn't Spring Break enough? Do I have to give everyone a pass the week before, too?
Shauna from Sacramento: Secretary, Scholar, or Stapler?
One day, I will sit down and tally how much of my class prep is really simple secretarial work.How much time do I really spend typing up exams, worksheets, handouts, then copying them? How much time do I spend at the copy machine, shrinking, enlarging, and recopying handouts? How much time is spent trimming copies, and then recopying them so they look neater?
How much time do I spend picking up the discarded handouts, casually left behind?
How much time to do I spend stapling students' papers because they cannot find a stapler or paperclip or the lazy student's paper clip (dog-ear them together)?
If I compare this to how much time I actually spend reading, researching, and staying up to date in my field, then I have no doubt which one wins.
Am I a scholar, or a secretary?
Maybe one semester I will experiment by doing what my professors did: just lecture.
The little snowflakes will be on their own.
Trish the TA, Beset by Plagiarists and Betrayed By Do-Nothing Proffies, Comes to Us For Help.
I am a first year graduate teaching assistant doing my best to tend to the demands of the professor to whom I've been assigned this year. Basically, he doesn't like to grade papers but has no problem assigning them to his undergraduate students several times throughout the semester. I fully accept that it is my responsibility to take care of all of his grading and, other than the fact that it is an arduous task, I have no complaints. That is, I didn't have any complaints until a student blatantly plagiarized last semester. The professor failed to take the appropriate action (in my opinion) and I let it pass without raising any objections, however, this semester I am faced with a similar situation and just don't know if I should let it go again.The nature of the plagiarism last semester was such that the student literally did a "cut and paste" from a published article and incorporated several passages into his own paper. I highlighted the plagiarized passages and forwarded the paper with the published article to my professor who told me that he would take care of it. I suppose if "taking care of it" consisted of giving the student an 'A' on the paper and ignoring the plagiarized passages, then the professor did his job. However, the university has a very strict policy regarding plagiarism that requires professors to turn these students in to the Dean's Office. They even subscribe to Turnitin.com and urge professors to have students turn their work in through this site. It baffled me that the professor not only failed to turn the matter over to the Dean, but he rewarded the student with an outstanding grade. I later found out that the student was one of the professor's favorites and had been doing some research for him on the side. And...hold onto your seats...the professor is now chairing the plagiarizer's honors thesis committee.
I was extremely disillusioned but ultimately decided to let the matter go. However, in the midst of grading papers this semester I have come across a pair of students who plagiarized in tandem. I guess they thought that they were smart about it since their papers consisted of reordered versions of the copied passages. In one paper, the plagiarized work is at the beginning. In the other, it is in the middle. Of course, I have an incredible urge to confront both of these fools with their obnoxious stupidity but I realize that this would be highly unprofessional. So, what should I do?
If I turn it over to the professor, he will take no action. I don't think I'm okay with that but at the same time I feel as though it might be the best thing to do since he is the professor and I am merely an inexperienced TA. Nevertheless, I feel strongly that it is so unfair to allow this to go unpunished when most of the other students took the assignment seriously and invested their time and energy into doing a good job. Additionally, I believe that the professor has an ethical obligation to hold his students accountable for their work.
Okay. Give it to me straight. What is the best course of action? Should I turn the other way and pretend I don't see what's happening? Or do I take a more assertive stance?
Monday, March 17, 2008
The Hangers On.
Yesterday was the deadline for dropping my course without academic penalty. Today I checked to see if any of the half dozen students whom I've not seen in lecture since January took advantage of this opportunity. Sigh! None. Not one. They're still enrolled in the course. A couple have shown up to write tests (how do they know they're coming?), which they have, of course, failed with great aplomb. (I regularly warn students that my course cannot be passed without regular attendance at lecture.)
Why do I care? Because I know that in three weeks or so, as we approach the end of term, each one of these invisible students will materialize in my office, begging for assistance, assuring me that they "really want to do well" and that they "really enjoy the material" and wondering why I can't just "help them out."
Yet, my university tells me that I can't explicitly tell these students to drop the class. So, I'll wait for them and their shabby excuses and I'll watch them fuck up the class average. But I won't be happy.
Smirking Seth Vs. Plagiarizing Padraig.
Student: I want to speak to you about my grade.
Me: Ok, what's up?
Student: It's unfair for you to give me a zero for plagiarizing.
Me: How is that unfair?
Student: I didn't plagiarize.
Me: Yes, you did.
Student: No, I didn't.
Me: Yeah, you did. Show me...
Student: You say I plagiarized here *points to paper wherein I found a sentence taken from online*
Me: You didn't use quotation marks.
Student: It's not fair. It was an accident.
Me: It's perfectly fair. You didn't use quotation marks. That's plagiarism.
Student: No, it's not.
Me: Yes, it is. And you know the code, and all the rules, and you know it's plagiarism.
Student: But it was an accident.
Me: It's still plagiarism. It perfectly fits the definition of plagiarism.
Student: But I had the quotation marks in my draft. They were here *points to paper* and here *points to paper*
Me: But they aren't there now. That's plagiarism.
Student: But this grade is gonna hurt me.
Me: Then you should have been more careful not to plagiarize on an assignment about plagiarism.
Student: How can you stand there and smirk?
Me: How should I act? All concerned? *feigns concern* Aw, that's too bad. I'm really sorry you did that. *ends feigning, resumes uncomfortable smirk* I'm not sorry. You plagiarized and got a zero for doing it. You were taught not to do this and you did it anyway.
Student: But it's not fa....
Me: *interrupts* You know the code. We've gone over all the rules
Student: Can I talk?
Me: No, you've stated your case. And you have none. If you don't like your grade, file a grievance.
Student: I won't do that.
Me: Good. Because you won't win. You plagiarized.
Student: But you can see I cited the source. And I did it right everywhere else. You know it was an accident.
Me: People get arrested and fined for accidents all the time. If you have a traffic accident, your insurance still has to pay.
Student: It's not the same.
Me: Sure it is. It's a perfectly acceptable resemblance argument. We've spent the whole semester talking about the types of arguments. You should understand how they work.
Student: But I can't have a zero in my grades. With the other scores I have, I can't have this 3 weeks before the end of the semester.
Me: Then you shouldn't have plagiarized. We spent plenty of time going over the rules and how to avoid plagiarism.
Student: But it was an accident. It's not fair. *leaves room disgruntled*
Me: Ok, what's up?
Student: It's unfair for you to give me a zero for plagiarizing.
Me: How is that unfair?
Student: I didn't plagiarize.
Me: Yes, you did.
Student: No, I didn't.
Me: Yeah, you did. Show me...
Student: You say I plagiarized here *points to paper wherein I found a sentence taken from online*
Me: You didn't use quotation marks.
Student: It's not fair. It was an accident.Me: It's perfectly fair. You didn't use quotation marks. That's plagiarism.
Student: No, it's not.
Me: Yes, it is. And you know the code, and all the rules, and you know it's plagiarism.
Student: But it was an accident.
Me: It's still plagiarism. It perfectly fits the definition of plagiarism.
Student: But I had the quotation marks in my draft. They were here *points to paper* and here *points to paper*
Me: But they aren't there now. That's plagiarism.
Student: But this grade is gonna hurt me.
Me: Then you should have been more careful not to plagiarize on an assignment about plagiarism.
Student: How can you stand there and smirk?
Me: How should I act? All concerned? *feigns concern* Aw, that's too bad. I'm really sorry you did that. *ends feigning, resumes uncomfortable smirk* I'm not sorry. You plagiarized and got a zero for doing it. You were taught not to do this and you did it anyway.
Student: But it's not fa....
Me: *interrupts* You know the code. We've gone over all the rules
Student: Can I talk?
Me: No, you've stated your case. And you have none. If you don't like your grade, file a grievance.
Student: I won't do that.
Me: Good. Because you won't win. You plagiarized.
Student: But you can see I cited the source. And I did it right everywhere else. You know it was an accident.
Me: People get arrested and fined for accidents all the time. If you have a traffic accident, your insurance still has to pay.
Student: It's not the same.
Me: Sure it is. It's a perfectly acceptable resemblance argument. We've spent the whole semester talking about the types of arguments. You should understand how they work.
Student: But I can't have a zero in my grades. With the other scores I have, I can't have this 3 weeks before the end of the semester.
Me: Then you shouldn't have plagiarized. We spent plenty of time going over the rules and how to avoid plagiarism.
Student: But it was an accident. It's not fair. *leaves room disgruntled*
Another Letter of Thanks To Ashley! Where Profs Continue to Reach Out in Warm and Fuzzy Appreciation To Students Who Show Us the Righteous Path.
Let me say, first of all, I am amazed. Your powers of observation, especially as they pertain to areas of lack, deficiency, or imperfection, are nothing short of astounding. You are right; the notes handed out are not stapled or collated for you prior to class.
Your ability to make inferences based on such limited information is similarly astounding. How were you able to surmise, with such intuition and clarity, that this situation owes entirely to the vilest form of ignorance on my part?
Here is where your gifts of generosity emerge with unparalleled brilliance. How many other students would so graciously and generously offer to give up their time — not to mention their father's — in order to be of assistance? Not many!
I wish I could stop there, but that's not all. Oh no. You manage to find yet another talent in wrapping all your astuteness into such thoughtful, kind, and respectful language that one cannot help but be compelled by their evocative power (not to mention motivated to follow up on them right away).
In fact, I cried as I read them out loud — first to myself, and then to my significant other last night. We both agreed it's not often that professors get letters like these; they serve as only the most powerful and inspiring reminders of why many of us chose this line of work in the first place.
This is just my way of saying, Ashley, that students like you, just don't come along every day.
It is in that spirit, then, that I wish to repay my enormous debt to you by pointing out, as your instructor, some information that may be of use to you in future discussions of this kind with professors, colleagues, and the like.
For one thing — and I'm sure there was no way you could have known this — these copies are intended primarily to help those of your classmates for whom English is not a first language. This is to say, they are not made for your exclusive benefit.
Secondly — and I'm sure regardless of your powers in this regard you couldn't have intuited this either — these notes are no easy task to copy. Thus I think you'll find, in future communications, that some nod in the direction of acknowledging — instead of disparaging — the efforts of others might prove to your benefit.
Thirdly, the copier I am forced to rely on doesn't have the functions you presume — I'm sure based upon rock-solid experience — it should have. Perhaps it should, but at the present time it doesn't.
Let me then apologize for the fact that your expectations of this class may have been moderately to severely violated.
Now I can't imagine such an experience of frustration is unique to you. For some strange reason, I suspect you may already be deeply familiar with the experience of others failing to live up to the standards you set for them.
I, as a part of that universe, failed to staple and collate the copies for you. I did this under the belief that this is something you, and other students, might be willing and able to do for yourselves. I realize that this assumption in and of itself may violate other expectations on your part, but there they are.
Perhaps I am wrong in assuming that you would be OK with stapling and collating the copies for yourself. If I am, I'm sure you'll let me know. That way I can fulfill my highest calling as your instructor and adjust my behavior so as to prevent you from this very awful feeling of frustration. God knows you'll encounter plenty of it throughout your travels in an imperfect (perhaps even recalcitrant) world; no need for that experience to start right here, in my classroom.
I trust that this little exchange has shed some light on the situation. If not, do not hesitate to contact me so that we can clarify this matter at once.
Cheers,
Your Professor
Your ability to make inferences based on such limited information is similarly astounding. How were you able to surmise, with such intuition and clarity, that this situation owes entirely to the vilest form of ignorance on my part?
Here is where your gifts of generosity emerge with unparalleled brilliance. How many other students would so graciously and generously offer to give up their time — not to mention their father's — in order to be of assistance? Not many!I wish I could stop there, but that's not all. Oh no. You manage to find yet another talent in wrapping all your astuteness into such thoughtful, kind, and respectful language that one cannot help but be compelled by their evocative power (not to mention motivated to follow up on them right away).
In fact, I cried as I read them out loud — first to myself, and then to my significant other last night. We both agreed it's not often that professors get letters like these; they serve as only the most powerful and inspiring reminders of why many of us chose this line of work in the first place.
This is just my way of saying, Ashley, that students like you, just don't come along every day.
It is in that spirit, then, that I wish to repay my enormous debt to you by pointing out, as your instructor, some information that may be of use to you in future discussions of this kind with professors, colleagues, and the like.
For one thing — and I'm sure there was no way you could have known this — these copies are intended primarily to help those of your classmates for whom English is not a first language. This is to say, they are not made for your exclusive benefit.
Secondly — and I'm sure regardless of your powers in this regard you couldn't have intuited this either — these notes are no easy task to copy. Thus I think you'll find, in future communications, that some nod in the direction of acknowledging — instead of disparaging — the efforts of others might prove to your benefit.
Thirdly, the copier I am forced to rely on doesn't have the functions you presume — I'm sure based upon rock-solid experience — it should have. Perhaps it should, but at the present time it doesn't.
Let me then apologize for the fact that your expectations of this class may have been moderately to severely violated.
Now I can't imagine such an experience of frustration is unique to you. For some strange reason, I suspect you may already be deeply familiar with the experience of others failing to live up to the standards you set for them.
I, as a part of that universe, failed to staple and collate the copies for you. I did this under the belief that this is something you, and other students, might be willing and able to do for yourselves. I realize that this assumption in and of itself may violate other expectations on your part, but there they are.
Perhaps I am wrong in assuming that you would be OK with stapling and collating the copies for yourself. If I am, I'm sure you'll let me know. That way I can fulfill my highest calling as your instructor and adjust my behavior so as to prevent you from this very awful feeling of frustration. God knows you'll encounter plenty of it throughout your travels in an imperfect (perhaps even recalcitrant) world; no need for that experience to start right here, in my classroom.
I trust that this little exchange has shed some light on the situation. If not, do not hesitate to contact me so that we can clarify this matter at once.
Cheers,
Your Professor
Blackberry Bimbo, Blah Blah Blah.
Dearest Bimbo (you don’t come to class often enough for me to bother remembering your real name, and you definitely don’t deserve a fun and exciting fictional RYS name):
Could you just stop coming to class altogether?
When you’re there you only disrupt class with your text messaging, which you seem to think is cleverly surreptitious. Here’s a news flash: the two students who sit near you when you bother to show up--you know, the only two in the whole class who do their work and pay attention--HATE you and your texting. They make fun of you when you’re not in class and I don’t stop them.
And I’m hoping that the next time you take that contraption out one of them grabs it and uses it to go medieval on your ass before I have to tell you for the tenth damned time to put it away.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Sheesh. Little "I Wanna Be a Helper" Just Can't Get a Break!
The email I got:
Dear Dr. M,
I noticed that you never have the copies of our notes collated or stapled before you come to class. You realize that most photocopiers have a collate and staple function, right?
My dad is the district rep for Ricoh and he does tutorials for businesses on how to use their copiers all of the time. I sent him an email to get in touch with you so he can help you learn to use the copier. The students would appreciate it if the notes were better organized when you handed them to us.
Thanks,
Ashley
The reply I wish I could write:
Dear Ash-hole,
I know how to use a copier. I use one that is so old and decrepit that I have to sing sweetly to it so that it will turn on. It doesn't have a collate function, and stapling?! not that either. Do you realize that I spend 45 minutes babysitting this monstrous old copier in order to make copies of your notes every two weeks like I promised. I don't make copies for your convenience, I do so because 3/4 of your classmates are non-native English speakers and the notes help them to succeed in the course. I'm attempting to level the playing field here.
But, because the looseleaf notes bother you so, please don't be surprised when I miraculously run out of copies before I get to your desk next time.
Oh, and if you're dad calls me, please know I will tell him what an asshole he raised.
Love and hugs,
Dr. M
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Bonnie From Barstow Offers Some Real World Perspective For Buddy From Butte.
Dearest Buddy-
How silly of me to have read your paper closely enough that I noticed those one or two misspelled words. And I offer my deepest apologies for deducting points for something a computer program would have alerted you to had you simply pushed one little, tiny button. You see my dearest, darling little snowflake, I was under the impression that spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes undermine the authority of your essay. I was under the impression that "there" and "their," oh yes... and even "they're" are very different words that a student who has taken the time and effort to proofread would find if that student had, say, a third-grade reading level.
I was under the impression that in that magical, mystical place that students call "the real world," your ass would be handed to you if you made such a small, insignificant faux pas as a homonym error in the big presentation for that really important client. Really important clients in "the real world" like people with at least sixth-grade reading levels, and I have to admit that insignificant profs like myself do here in academic la-la-land as well.
Dearest Buddy, you call my grading unfair, because you thought it would be "easy" to write these papers, because I test you on something as unnecessary as remembering what you were assigned to read, because I don't provide you with a complete outline of all major points that your essay should cover. How silly of me to think that an adult would be able to glean from a reading the important facts. How silly of me to think that you might be capable of thinking beyond the bare-boned requirements. Tsk, tsk. I just don't know how I will ever sleep tonight after experiencing the wonder of your pain.
Dearest, darling little snowflake...the "real world" is going to totally and utterly kick your ass.
XOXOXO,
Prof. Bonnie
Lucky 13! Now, Is that Your Age, IQ, or Shoe Size? Nyah Nyah Nyah. See, Aren't You Glad You "Perseveered"?
I don't understand your moderators at all. I've sent you a lot of really good stories for your site and you haven't published any of them. I read the other shit on here and can't believe you think it's better than mine. Most of the stuff you put up you just make fun of anyhow!I sent a story the other week about the student who went to the bathroom and never came back. I mean he NEVER came back all semester. And I sent a long one about how my students have gone deaf by running their mp3 players so loud so I'm always shouting at them in class.
But instead you publish shit that probably is funny for some people, but not for me.
This is my 13th and last email to your jackasess. I feel like I've perseveered long enough.
Friday, March 14, 2008
"Er, So, Will You Have It Tomorrow?"
No, I haven't graded your paper yet. Maybe you turned it in on time, maybe you turned it in late. Maybe you made sure it looked great, maybe it looked like something the dog chewed on. You won't believe this but it doesn't have anything to do with you. Why is it that you expect me to accept your pleas for time because you/your kids/your spouse/your dog/ your neighbor has a cold/flu/asthma, but expect me to work 24/7 without sleep or food so you can get your papers back instantaneously?
You see, I actually read your papers as I grade them. In fact, after wading through this last stack, I'm pretty sure I've put more time in on this assignment that you did. Sending me countless e-mails, leaving voice mails on my phone, stopping me in the hall will not make this happen anymore quickly than my reminding you weeks ago that these papers would be due on the date announced at the beginning of the semester.
I wish only that you were as good a working your way through assignments as you are at working your way to the bottom on my stack.
Buddy from Butte Goes Off a Cliff. Wonder if He Got His Meeting?
I wanted to know when you were available to go over some things from this past class?
QUIZZES:
I know that you probably wont change my points, but I do have suggestions and questions about the structure and content of your quizzes.
The majority of your questions were memorization based, we had to read two chapters and remember things like peoples names and dates. I believe this is unfair and I'm pretty sure I've heard or at least could find research on how questions that required people to basically memorize information weren't good. Personally I hate having to memorize something, I'd rather have it lectured, and I can tell you that every question that asked me who was the inventor of this or what date did that happen I guessed on.
My suggestion is that if your going to have questions based on memorization of text read, you should give some kind of homework assignment before the quiz that reinforces the knowledge that we SHOULD have memorized. Because who can memorize 60 pages of text in hopes that 50-60% of it will be on the quiz for the following week.
The questions I did want to go over are based on your lecture in class because I think some of the answers would be debatable or just plain wrong based on what you said in class.
Again I'm not expecting you to change my points, but I figured if your going to continue teaching here this is the information you might very well be able to use.
PAPERS:
Now I think this has been the most unfair part of class and I would like to argue for some point changes in my two papers. You gave a syllabus with how the structure of the papers should be, which was excellent. The first thing I thought was "This is great, these papers are going to be extremely easy." which is what I'm sure you wanted, but then after I saw my grade I noticed you had a rubric with at least 20 other points that we should have touched on.
UNFAIR:
You took away points for key things that were missing from the syllabus, things that in some cases I think I briefly touched on as well as points for spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes. I would think I would lose points for blatantly misspelling something instead of typing "there" instead of "their" and not having my eyes catch the mistake. And I have to review my papers again but I can be pretty sure that there weren't more than 1 or 2 mistakes on at least one paper to begin with.The same thing goes for grammar.
I felt like the papers were structured like this: 1/3 Content, 1/3 Spelling/Grammar and 1/3 Content We Weren't Told About.
I feel like I followed the syllabus exactly for the content you required and shouldn't be faulted for content you DIDN'T require (based on the syllabus). I also felt like at least my paper was graded unfairly in terms of spelling and grammar. If I knew this was going to be a Writing Intensive Course instead of a Content Based Course (This is the topic, I'm going to teach you the topic and the things about the topic, and not grade you on how well you speak, or how well you can write, or whether you know how to spell infantalize or not.)
After reviewing my quizzes and papers I would like to schedule some time to go over the grades you gave me as I believe, at least in terms of the papers, they are highly unfair.
QUIZZES:
I know that you probably wont change my points, but I do have suggestions and questions about the structure and content of your quizzes.
The majority of your questions were memorization based, we had to read two chapters and remember things like peoples names and dates. I believe this is unfair and I'm pretty sure I've heard or at least could find research on how questions that required people to basically memorize information weren't good. Personally I hate having to memorize something, I'd rather have it lectured, and I can tell you that every question that asked me who was the inventor of this or what date did that happen I guessed on.
My suggestion is that if your going to have questions based on memorization of text read, you should give some kind of homework assignment before the quiz that reinforces the knowledge that we SHOULD have memorized. Because who can memorize 60 pages of text in hopes that 50-60% of it will be on the quiz for the following week.The questions I did want to go over are based on your lecture in class because I think some of the answers would be debatable or just plain wrong based on what you said in class.
Again I'm not expecting you to change my points, but I figured if your going to continue teaching here this is the information you might very well be able to use.
PAPERS:
Now I think this has been the most unfair part of class and I would like to argue for some point changes in my two papers. You gave a syllabus with how the structure of the papers should be, which was excellent. The first thing I thought was "This is great, these papers are going to be extremely easy." which is what I'm sure you wanted, but then after I saw my grade I noticed you had a rubric with at least 20 other points that we should have touched on.
UNFAIR:
You took away points for key things that were missing from the syllabus, things that in some cases I think I briefly touched on as well as points for spelling mistakes or grammar mistakes. I would think I would lose points for blatantly misspelling something instead of typing "there" instead of "their" and not having my eyes catch the mistake. And I have to review my papers again but I can be pretty sure that there weren't more than 1 or 2 mistakes on at least one paper to begin with.The same thing goes for grammar.
I felt like the papers were structured like this: 1/3 Content, 1/3 Spelling/Grammar and 1/3 Content We Weren't Told About.
I feel like I followed the syllabus exactly for the content you required and shouldn't be faulted for content you DIDN'T require (based on the syllabus). I also felt like at least my paper was graded unfairly in terms of spelling and grammar. If I knew this was going to be a Writing Intensive Course instead of a Content Based Course (This is the topic, I'm going to teach you the topic and the things about the topic, and not grade you on how well you speak, or how well you can write, or whether you know how to spell infantalize or not.)
After reviewing my quizzes and papers I would like to schedule some time to go over the grades you gave me as I believe, at least in terms of the papers, they are highly unfair.
Thank you for taking the time to read this.
Regrets? We'll Post a Few.
- I regret that I settled for my discipline because I couldn't cut the mustard in the field I really loved. Now I work in a job I hate and I put myself here.
- When I get a really good student, I stop actually reading their work very carefully. These are students who are going to get A's no matter what I mark on their tests. I figure why bother. I use the extra time helping flunking students improve.
- I regret not failing every plagiarist the FIRST TIME they plagiarized in class (instead of giving them 2nd and 3rd chances).
- I regret that I've adopted a placid mediocrity at my college just because that's the only way to get ahead.
- I regret that I hopped around for "better" jobs, because now it turns out my first one was the best one, and I'm looked at as a flake.
I regret that the only thing I can think to do when a student disputes me is to be vindictive with the grades.- I regret that I've passed dozen of students who I should have flunked. I passed their problems on to someone else because I didn't want the headache.
- I regret that I don't enjoy my teaching more. I'm so worried that I won't be liked (and get good evaluations), that I only teach to make the students happy.
- My colleague is a student favorite, and after I got tired of the endless parade of loving devotees at his office door, I went to a computer lab in the library and gave him a half dozen lousy comments on RateMyProfessor.
- I'm as old as their fathers, but I still get a dirty charge out of looking at the young co-eds.
- I regret that I settled at this shitty college.
- When I was a beginning TA, most of the students were close to me in age. Two or three of them became very flirtatious, particularly when they saw me around campus outside class. While I was their TA, I'd be on my best behavior. But when summer rolled around and I was done being a TA, one of them came over to my place on some pretext or other. We ended up fucking like wild animals for hours. Do I regret this? No... but I regret I didn't do the same with the others. TAs can get away with a hell of a lot more than professors can.
- I took my Dean literally when she asked “what do you honestly think of this proposal” prior to getting tenure.
- I regret that every time I'm asked to take it up the ass for the college I usually say, "How far in do you want to go?
- I regret not tossing every single disruptive student out of class when their cell phones went off and they took the call, when their side conversations were louder than I was, and when their inappropriate computer use became the obvious reason why they had no clue what I was trying to teach them.
- I regret that I've turned my courses into Mickey Mouse versions of what they once were. I'm too tired to fight with these new students who would revolt if I gave them the grades they actually earned.
- Without question (and far outstripping any of the nearly uncountably many bad decisions I've made) I regret marrying one of my students. God help me, it seemed like a good idea at the time....
- My biggest regrets are having dumbed down my courses, inflated my grading, and having caved in to disciplinary problems because of pressure from senior faculty who take anonymous student evaluations too seriously.
- I regret that as a professor at a teaching college my research has suffered. I went into this field because I loved research, and now I spend so little time "doing" what I love.
- I regret not putting forth as little effort as many of my students. After all, if *trying* is all that's supposed to be enough, then a half-assed effort might have been all I needed. After all, why work 60 hours a week prepping, grading, and e-mailing when you barely make more than minimum wage trying to educate the willfully ignorant?
- Once, when I ran out of time, I didn't grade the finals. I had to have the grades in within an unreasonable period of time, so I just took a look at the rows of accumulated grades representing a gazillion hours of other grading instead.
- I regret that because of the nature of the job of professor (i.e. working all hours, weekends, holidays, summers....) that my family life suffers.
- I regret caring so much about students who clearly don't care about their own education.
- I regret that I've stopped caring about doing a good job.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Coming Clean. The Big Thirsty To End All Thirstys.
Q: What have you done in your role as a college professor that you now regret?
A: Send them here, tenderly.
A: Send them here, tenderly.
"I Used To Teach Saturdays, But Then I Won These Awards."
For my first few years, every time my turn to teach a low-level gen ed course came around in the rotation, I always jumped on the Saturday course. I like teaching them. I figure in an average two-day or three-day lecture, I waste so much time with classroom management, that wasn't wasted in a Saturday course. In my experience, the students were more serious as well. I had a lot of non-traditional students (people finishing their degrees for a promotion, bored housewives looking to better themselves, etc.), a few people who needed the class to graduate, and a couple nerds like me who just liked Saturday morning classes.
Well, my shift as Saturdayman ended a couple years ago. A book I wrote won a couple awards around the same time that somebody notices a practical use for a theory in my dissertation and I guess I was a "hot commodity" to the dean or something, because my department chair and I were called into a meeting with him where we discussed why I shouldn't be "wasted" on non-traditional students. (Wasted was his word, not mine, and this ignored the fact that the only people who would care about my research are physics students, who I was still teaching Monday through Thursday, not communication and history majors who just needed a science credit).
You see, the administration doesn't care about non-traditional students or commuter students. They only care about their precious "live-on-campus, go to class between 9 and 3 traditional students that are more likely to be wonderful successes." That attitude tends to creep down the ladder after so many years (or get forced into our throats) until you have faculty members who regard the "non-traditional" time periods with as much disdain as the administration.
Well, my shift as Saturdayman ended a couple years ago. A book I wrote won a couple awards around the same time that somebody notices a practical use for a theory in my dissertation and I guess I was a "hot commodity" to the dean or something, because my department chair and I were called into a meeting with him where we discussed why I shouldn't be "wasted" on non-traditional students. (Wasted was his word, not mine, and this ignored the fact that the only people who would care about my research are physics students, who I was still teaching Monday through Thursday, not communication and history majors who just needed a science credit).You see, the administration doesn't care about non-traditional students or commuter students. They only care about their precious "live-on-campus, go to class between 9 and 3 traditional students that are more likely to be wonderful successes." That attitude tends to creep down the ladder after so many years (or get forced into our throats) until you have faculty members who regard the "non-traditional" time periods with as much disdain as the administration.
Sometimes as well, it's not so much that they share the feeling, it's more that they just know it's not worth the fight, so they pass these courses along to the adjuncts and junior faculty, and happily skip along to their weekends.
Who Knew Cioppino Was a Gateway Drug? Drinking Darren Livens Up A Grading Session!
So I'm currently grading papers after two thirds of a bottle of wine with dinner (cioppino with a side of asparagus risotto, so the wine was a California chardonnay because, for my money, they trump anything French).Did I mention I don't drink much as a rule, so am a little drunk? I heartily recommend grading papers drunk. Everything is "excellent” and I don't care to read too closely. I'm whipping through them. Will I feel guilty tomorrow, sure.
But now I wish I could find someone in this town who can hook me up with some pot, because at this point I think I might have a research project suitable for College English, or at least the Crapical of Higher Crapucation: "'Good Job Susie!': The Pedagogical Value of Grading Papers While Under the Influence of Mind-Altering Substances."
I bet these would be really. fucking. interesting. if I were tripping on 'shrooms. Where can I get some 'shrooms 'round here?
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Newest RYS Prodo - Academy of Ignorance V-Neck!
People love to wear their RYS allegiance proudly, and we've received more than a few requests for something "just for the ladies." Since it's spring already here on the compound, Compound Crystal has designed the new "Academy of Ignorance" V-neck for - what she terms - the gals!
Of course there's other RYS Prodo available, including the BBQ apron, which is a slow mover, and the infamous "handbag," which is actually a tote, you mofus.
Look at it lovingly. Buy it soon.
There's also an "Academy of Ignorance" t-shirt available for the menfolk.
"RYS: the search for intelligence in the academy of ignorance."
The Knitter.
Dear Knitting Boy: It is quite lovely that you knit, and I'm sure you make top quality hats, scarves, or whatever it is you're intently working on. (I really haven't had the time or place to check.)
However, perhaps you could do better on the exams, maybe even above the median score, if you put down the knitting needles and picked up a pen during my class.
Just a thought.
Lovin' On Richie Rich.
You missed class when your girlfriend dumped you. You missed class because of "some stuff back home." You missed class because your grandmother died. Though class meets every day, you could not find time to come even once during the last two weeks of the quarter. And after all this, you complained about the grade I "ended up giving you," lamenting that your "investor doesn't see your grades, just a failing GPA." You kept the grade you earned.Yet you enrolled in my class again this quarter. You immediately started skipping – again. The excuses poured in – again. Sometime back in week three, you were beaming. On a chance visit to a telecommunications store, you were offered a job. You told me you'd been there for two months and had already been promoted, that you were pulling in 40k a year. You are a sophomore. You are not yet 21. This was the last time I saw you.
I congratulate you on your success. I congratulate you for making more than three times my salary.
I absolutely loathe you.
Zelda, Honey, These are For You.
Zero-sympathy Zelda is kindly invited to step this way and suck it.
There are full-timers who teach the crap courses. I am one of them. As a (very) junior member of the department, such classes fall to me. Unfortunately I have not learned to bilocate or clone myself, so adjuncts are hired to fill in on those nights and Saturdays that I inconsiderately can't be in Moose jaw Township on the east side and Cracker Crumb Towers on the north side.
When the subject of Saturday classes, Friday evening classes, etc. come up in department meetings, the venerable, stodgy senior faculty members suddenly clam up. All of their pontifications about the death of academe due to "scabs," as Zelda so lovingly refers to them, dries up in the face of the fact that they are unwilling to climb down off of their lofty (self-awarded) pinnacles and teach at inconvenient times.
If they, or I was to just "quit!" as she encourages, do you think those senior academics would step in and volunteer to give up their double-scotch Friday happy hours to teach? Would Zelda roll her doughy, crenellated ass out of bed at six AM on a summer Saturday to go unlock the local nursing home's common rooms to teach the just-coming-off-night-shift RNs? You know what might lessen that pain? If I stopped whacking myself in the head with that hammer, and started whacking the assholes like Zelda, who refuse to teach the lower division classes and the offsite non-trads, and still bitch that non-traditional instructors were ruining the tone of their precious academic atmosphere.
Just quit, indeed. News flash, Zelda: those junior faculty members and adjuncts have families to support, too. Are they not allowed a job they enjoy?
Why don't you jam that butter and bacon sandwich -- after rolling it in rock salt?
There are full-timers who teach the crap courses. I am one of them. As a (very) junior member of the department, such classes fall to me. Unfortunately I have not learned to bilocate or clone myself, so adjuncts are hired to fill in on those nights and Saturdays that I inconsiderately can't be in Moose jaw Township on the east side and Cracker Crumb Towers on the north side.
When the subject of Saturday classes, Friday evening classes, etc. come up in department meetings, the venerable, stodgy senior faculty members suddenly clam up. All of their pontifications about the death of academe due to "scabs," as Zelda so lovingly refers to them, dries up in the face of the fact that they are unwilling to climb down off of their lofty (self-awarded) pinnacles and teach at inconvenient times.
If they, or I was to just "quit!" as she encourages, do you think those senior academics would step in and volunteer to give up their double-scotch Friday happy hours to teach? Would Zelda roll her doughy, crenellated ass out of bed at six AM on a summer Saturday to go unlock the local nursing home's common rooms to teach the just-coming-off-night-shift RNs? You know what might lessen that pain? If I stopped whacking myself in the head with that hammer, and started whacking the assholes like Zelda, who refuse to teach the lower division classes and the offsite non-trads, and still bitch that non-traditional instructors were ruining the tone of their precious academic atmosphere.
Just quit, indeed. News flash, Zelda: those junior faculty members and adjuncts have families to support, too. Are they not allowed a job they enjoy?
Why don't you jam that butter and bacon sandwich -- after rolling it in rock salt?
---
While Zelda is sick and tired of hearing long term adjuncts and weekend warriors gripe about our positions on the academic totem pole, I'm sick and tired of hearing the full time professors and instructors like Zelda use language like "scabs" to describe us. "Scab" suggests a sense of violated solidarity, which I have yet to have experienced at single community college, four-year college, or private college where I've taught as an adjunct.We adjuncts teach the classes that no one else wants to teach because the full timers sweep in and horde the higher level, more "prestigious" classes and the classes offered at more "convenient" times or days. Do you honestly think that any of us want to come in and handle the remedial writing, math, and reading courses--and the students that wind up in them? Oh that's right; your overwhelming sense of self entitlement tells you that you're too good to teach "those" students. Do you honestly think that any of us want the 7 am classes, with the working professionals who try to use work as a way of skipping out twenty minutes early or the students who think that our class is just extended nap time? Oh that's right, getting up before 9:00 am is such a punishing task, so punishing that you got all that schooling to avoid it, so you could live the "academic" lifestyle. Snowflake, please... Teach anything other than a Monday-Wednesday or Tuesday-Thursday class? Sweet Christ, no! We can't have those potential four day weekends going away now, can we?
So who teaches those students and classes? Who takes the 7 am classes? Who takes Friday nights and Saturdays? Who takes the classes that meet three and four days a week? Who takes on the classes filled with students who were socially promoted out of high school with a fourth grade skill set? The adjuncts--the hyenas left to battle for the scraps after people like Zelda have fed on the class rotations for a semester. They'll snipe a class from us at a whim, but we're still scabs for trying to keep our CVs active, as we too try to hold out for a full time teaching job. You can't have it both ways, Zelda.
"Scab" suggests a violation of work conditions during a labor strike. This would entail job security of some sort for the adjunct. Job security? For an adjunct? I don't take seven to nine classes in the fall term because I'm saving up for Christmas presents at the end of the semester. I've had too many institutions try to curry my favor in the fall, then give me some scraps (one, maybe two classes) in the spring, and then give me sad, sympathetic looks and empty pockets in the summer, as the full time faculty not only take their contracted classes, but suck up the excess classes to make some extra cash. Fall is when I make the savings that I leech off for the rest of the year. Where's your "scab" mindset when you put *me* out of work for a summer?
I might even have sympathy for Zelda's "scab" notion if adjuncts were given the most minuscule dignities on the job--something to create a sense of camaraderie and belonging--something beyond the token cubicle space shared between three to six people at a time, the key code on the photocopier (almost always right next to the full-timers copier--the one we're not allowed to use) that always seems to spend more time with an "out of order" sign on it than the machine spends producing photocopies, or the rare invitation for a social gathering that always seems to arrive just one or two days after the event. If I could go somewhere as an adjunct and feel that I got more respect than a common street whore, I might feel a little sympathy when my flexible availability and price-cutting services keeps people like Zelda from getting that contract raise. Why shouldn't I? People like Zelda look down on adjuncts all the time. Hell, even the department secretaries (many of whom are lucky to have a GED, much less an AA, BA/BS, or anything beyond) look down on adjuncts. Why shouldn't they? We're disposable... Even the scabs have scabs who are ready to take the classes we might abandon.
Scab? We have to cross a line of solidarity to be a scab. To cross that line of solidarity, we have to be welcomed and embraced by those on the side of the line we're walking from. Becoming a scab is an act of betrayal against camaraderie. In five years of teaching as an adjunct, I've never once felt that sense of camaraderie from the administration, support staff, or faculty where I've adjuncted. People like Zelda have to acknowledge that adjuncts are a part of modern academia, and have to take our needs into consideration just as much as their own. If you want to keep your cushy positions, teaching two days a week, or teaching after 10am, teaching classes that are truly worth your ego's assessment of your merit as an academic, then adjuncts are a necessary evil. We do the things that the Zeldas of academia are just too self-important or too highly strung to do, and as a result, we're usually treated as the menial grunts we're seen as.
Chances are, if Zelda handled the classes we're left to teach, the time periods during which we're left to teach, and the conditions that meet us at our jobs, she would be crushed, whining with a more self-entitled tone than even the snowiest snowflake. Zelda would be begging for "scabs" to come in and take those classes more than a C-list celebrity would beg for reality TV exposure on VH1.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
The Return of Academic Haiku, Occasional Verse That May Or May Not Actually Match Any Meter or Scansion...Oh, Shit, You Know.
thanks for the fat cat
it was so delicious with
the steamed broccoli
drowning in our sarcasm.
smoking a big bowl.
my students believe
that I'm their personal serf
(until grading time)
spring break coming fast
pretty girls, please don't speak your
hot Mexican plans
Sympathy.
Really, what can I say? Your daughter is having surgery. Multiple surgeries, she could DIE from this birth defect. You missed an exam TO HOLD YOUR CHILD'S HAND while she woke up.
Yet, you come and apologize to me for missing class. How could I dare think my class is more important than your baby? I am so sorry that you think I would be that presumptuous, I cannot imagine the stress you are feeling. I cannot imagine worrying about a stupid class when your baby is in intensive care.
I am the person who wrote in to RYS saying "I don't want kids," so I cannot begin to empathize with you. Take the class another time, as we talked about. I do not think less of you, even though you ask me not to think "you are a quitter." NO, you are not a quitter. You made the right decision. I am not worth missing your child. You thank me when I hold your hand as you tell me you are dropping.
It's the least I can do. I wish more students were like you--- prioritizing life and being an adult.
I wish I could do more. I am crying as I write this, you deserve better than the hand you have been dealt. YOU (and students like you) are the reason I teach. I hope you come back next year, with a healthy child, and I would be honored to teach you.
Yet, you come and apologize to me for missing class. How could I dare think my class is more important than your baby? I am so sorry that you think I would be that presumptuous, I cannot imagine the stress you are feeling. I cannot imagine worrying about a stupid class when your baby is in intensive care.I am the person who wrote in to RYS saying "I don't want kids," so I cannot begin to empathize with you. Take the class another time, as we talked about. I do not think less of you, even though you ask me not to think "you are a quitter." NO, you are not a quitter. You made the right decision. I am not worth missing your child. You thank me when I hold your hand as you tell me you are dropping.
It's the least I can do. I wish more students were like you--- prioritizing life and being an adult.
I wish I could do more. I am crying as I write this, you deserve better than the hand you have been dealt. YOU (and students like you) are the reason I teach. I hope you come back next year, with a healthy child, and I would be honored to teach you.
Zero Sympathy Zelda.
I'm just so sick and tired of hearing from long-term adjuncts and, worse, people like "Saturday Professor," who complain about how bad their lives are because of their non-traditional teaching lives. If it's that bad, guess what, quit! No one is making you do this (the exception, of course, are those grad students who need some teaching experience). I have absolutely no sympathy you in your self-created, albeit institutionally perpetuated, hell. Indeed, the reason the administration can keep exploiting you guys is because you keep coming back for more. Quit!!! You know, it feels good when you stop hitting yourself in the head with a hammer (and the rest of us will be feel better too when your complaining stops).Oh, I know how much you love teaching. Well, I love butter and bacon sandwiches, but I'm not going to have them for lunch everyday; I love sleeping until noon, but I've got a family to support and a life to live; I'd love to tell you all this in person, but... well...I guess that's what we've got RYS for.
You're going to come back and tell me I have no right to say all this, blah, blah, blah. Well, yes I do. I was literally days from giving up on an academic career; I'd hit the market hard, tried, but no luck--close sometimes, but no cigar. Then I finally did get an offer which I accepted. But the point is that I faced reality and was willing to make a life in another arena (And, yes, people do live meaningful, contributing lives outside academia!). Moreover, you make it harder for all of us when you are willing to be, essentially, scabs. You cross the line and work for peanuts, cheapening the whole endeavor for all of us.
God Bless Walter.
We've posted more than 1200 items here at RYS, 4 of them by the Wizard of Waxahachie, Wicked Walter. Each time the mail explodes and we get a true sense of our own worth:
This is the first time in a month this fucking page has made any sense.- God bless Walter. You could let him have space every week, couldn't you?
- Wherever you keep Walter in between his posts, please let the poor man out.
- WW, he rocks. (No other message.)
- There he his. Thanks be to him, and y'all for posting him.
- Yay Walter! Smoke a bowl for Wordsworth today!
- I suppose he's "crazzy" as a mofu, but Walter makes my day every time he appears. I read RYS every day just in case he's featured.
- I think it's the ballsiest thing you've ever done to just post Uncle Walt by himself today. We're used to getting 3-4 pieces every day, but shit, who wants to share space with the king? I must have checked your page 5 times today, and each time I was pleased as punch to see Walt still swinging for the fences. He's so freaking zen. I'd give anything to buy him a round. If you're ever in Carolina, Walt, look me up.
- I swear I cried this morning I was laughing so hard. Walter took the temperature of the academic ninnies we've become (with his superbig Texas "thermometer") and I loved every minute of it!
- This might be the crazziest shit I've ever read, and I am down on my knees to the master.
- I will never send another piece to RYS because I can't even come close.
- This fucking job would make sense only if I had Walter down the hall from me. God bless him.
- Keep it rockin', Walter. You are the baddest of the bad. You're Alexander Pope and everyone else is Nipsey Russell.
---
Monday, March 10, 2008
WW4.
Yo yo yo. You fellas have done finally turned it around. I like how you're all eating each other now, taking on each other - profo to profo. Good on ya. Rating those sweaty students was like shooting fish in a barrel. Much more juicy is the meat of a fine colleague than one of them stringy ass students.
I'm liking the new mission so much that I'm willing to rename the site right now to RoastMyColleague.Com. I figger it will catch on like wildfire, because there's nothing worse than a bunch of academics. I mean, do you ever go by the faculty club and see the losers in there? If they aren't wearing bibs, they should be. And lately I've been spending a couple of minutes each day hitting the academic blogs to see what's out there. I can barely contain myself. I end up snorting, retching, and peeing my pants so much you'd think it was 1975 and I'd just gotten back from an Eagles show in Riverside.
But I digress.
You got the crazzy asses all lined up, and I think we need to move on it pronto. Why not take one of the newest Kompound Kids and let her or him make a few more t-shirts and purses. Let 'em post the occasional student smackup to keep the charter good and legit.
But the rest of you dudes gotta get full time on the problems right here in Frailty Hall. I mean, what is it with the fucking cats. Every blog I go to has some child-substitute cat that is featured prominently. Some gasbag writes: "Mr. Majeepers made a poopie today, and he's so cute I just want to put down my research on Ayn Rand." Then there's a blurry ass picture of some cat so god-awful looking that if you saw it on the side of the highway you'd think it was the bad half of an armadillo.
Then there's the crazzies who are writing books, or MONOGRAPHS! They keep score on the word count like it's the Super Bowl of nerd-dom. "I have revised chapter 7, but chapter 4 keeps vexing me! With all of the strain and stress, I almost forgot to drink some expensive tea and to wear my spats to the modern drama class."
Oh, and I love those librarians who can't catch a break. Nobody tells them they're pretty. "Gimme a book, Glenn," is all we say. Well, Glenn, nobody told you to work in a service industry. If you didn't want to be treated like the guy who runs the french fry machine at Wendy's, you should have taken two extra science courses and gotten a real degree.
Oh, and English profs. They're delicious. English departments are where dreams go to die, right? I mean these English profs always have the nice Shakespearean fonts on their websites, a big quill next to their unbelievably white faces. They're always writing about how summer will bring them to England or Scotland, where they will trudge down some muddy trail to where Wordsworth once smoked a big bowl, or where Coleridge once ate a beaver because he thought it was Mary Shelley.
Science and math profs have such cool diagrams and shit on their pages. I'd make fun of them, but I have no idea what they're actually doing. I believe they believe they're doing important work, equations and shit. I love them for their lab coats. But they're only high on the food chain because of grants, and that whole grant world just makes me sick...we're all sucking someone's teat already, and I'll be damned if I'm going to beg some fey foundation for $7500 when I could instead just tell them to eat it and spend my summers shooting whatever animals cross the poorly constructed fence outside the WW ranch.
And I won't even get started on the whole insular world that is academic blogging, with all the above inanities tagging each other with memes. "I tag WonderProf and TeachingSuperstar with this newest meme: 5 authors you'd like to poke with a stick and 5 sexual positions you could get into where it'd be easiest to revise your un-sellable and boring dissertation."
Finally, a special shout out to those cretins on the job path. Oh, they are lovely, sweet dears, so persecuted, so incredibly sure that the system is out to spoil their chance at success...all the search committees have ganged up to find ways to make them unhappy, and when they do get interviews, they imagine senior faculty Stanley is flicking boogers at them, and not playing along with the modus operandi which is supposedly: "We welcome you and your intellect, and can't wait for you to show us how it's done, you 27 year old fucktard." Oh yeah, and the Super 8 hotel near the flyover state uni where you interviewed didn't serve you a radish and raspberry compote like you got at the grad school heaven you left 2 years ago, and some boor looked at your boobies during the campus tour and you're thinking of writing a long missive to the Chronicle of Higher Education forums about the trauma.
Oh, but I'm off track. I just want to say you guys have found the path to salvation. The students have got enough trouble. Keep going after each other. It's bound to brighten things up for all of us. At least those of us who are real Americans professors, sure of ourselves, not crouched in a permanent fetal position like 95% of our kind, standing strong, teaching it right, calling it crazzy when it's crazzy, and being real when real is like so out.
Sunday, March 09, 2008
Friday Night Franny.
I am the Friday Night Professor. My college is the 7-Eleven of education: open all the time and serving anyone wearing shoes and a shirt. Guess I should be glad for that at least.Saturday Professor is dead on. Teaching 3 hours once a week seems to be harder than teaching 1 hour 3 times a week. You have to be able to improvise, which is hard late on Friday night. And I, too, have been faced with a sea of empty seats. I have learned to just keep going with my plan. If I start catering to the few, then I fall hopelessly behind.
Saturday Professor, do your students also fail to show up when there is a test or paper due? Mine do. I now plan for half of the class to be gone these days.
There is nothing quite like the lonely feeling of being the only faculty in your building on a Friday night. The parking lot is empty but for a handful of cars - some you hope belong to your students. There is nothing like getting on the city bus late on a Friday night, with the rest of the late shift workers. You are the only with a stack of tests, though, to grade.
And it wrecks your social life.
We're Getting Into the Compound Bus and Heading Over to Saturday Sheila's House To Beat Her Senseless With a Sock Full of Nickels. Who's In?
Today, Saturday, is the first class of a brand new semester -- Accelerated class -- 8 a.m. -- yep. 8 A.M.!!!!! To 12:30 p.m. On a Saturday morning -- 22 students -- all showed up -- 7 had just been in the class that finished two weeks ago on a Saturday afternoon with me, and they still signed up. Four of the other students had been in previous classes of mine -- so they know what they're in for -- and we have amazing, stimulating, wonderful classes.
And now, I'm home, drinking that coffee I missed this morning and smiling because, despite everything, slackers, evals, unequal pay -- I love what I'm doing. I know I'll burn out, and a couple of times I've been close, but right now, I'm in love again - -with a new class.
Pedro the Proctor on Pee-Pee Patrol.
I was proctoring a first year computer science exam on Thursday evening. Two hour exam. We're well into Winter Term so the students have 6 months of university exam experience under their belts. They do not, it seems, have their bodily functions under control yet. 30 minutes into the exam, a hand goes up. "Yes?" "Can I get a drink of water?" "No." The stunned look lead to my follow on remark: "I am the only proctor here, I can't let you leave the room." Can I get a drink of water? If only I had a bright orange traffic cone like my son had in his grade one classroom. Headcount. Where is so-and-so? Ah - they have a cone on their desk, they must be going pee-pee.As I left this parched student, another hand went up. I surmised from the nearly empty water bottle in front of this student what the issue was going to be. "Can I go to the bathroom?" "No" I said and immediately gave the same explanation to avoid another stunned look. 60 minute mark. Mister tiny bladder's back teeth are swimming "Can I go to the bathroom; I drank two bottles of water." "That's not my problem, and NO, I can't let you leave." Focusing on his bladder impaired his ability to comprehend what I told here mere minutes earlier. A few minutes later a few of the students finished up their exams and were leaving. Opportunistic urine-boy fires his hand up "Could I go out with one of these students then come back?" "If you want to leave now, hand in your paper." Somehow he managed to persevere to the bitter end, but hopefully he learned something in that exam. Either drink less water or wear incontinence protection.
Similar thing happened during final exams last Winter. Big gymnasium, hundreds of students, multiple proctors. If Little Johnnie "Two Bottles of Red Bull and a litre bottle of Evian" has to go pee, we'd escort him to the washroom. At one point, we looked around - there were three proctors in the men's washroom! Who was left back the exam proctoring?! We quickly came up with a system - one male chair, one female chair at the front of the room. Gotta go pee? Wait 'til the chair corresponding to your gender is free and go sit in it. Eventually a proctor who doesn't want to see your bladder explode will escort you to the toilet. As I was walking one student back from the bathroom, I asked him why he was drinking a massive bottle of water. "Have to keep hydrated" came his honest reply. Hydrated? This is a freaking EXAM! It’s not a triathlon! Do they televise exams? No. Why? Because people don't sweat. Unlike sports and Dancing with the Stars. Hydrated? Gimme a break. You can't pay me enough to do this shit.
Saturday, March 08, 2008
The Saturday Professor.
Yes, I'm one of those weekend teachers, one of the ones who's too stupid or lame to get a "real" job, one who plies his trade on weekends, on Thursday nights, and oftentimes in odd places: a high school classroom, a seminar room in a downtown office building, and - for one week - a prison visiting room.
That's all by way of saying that it's Saturday morning and I'm getting ready for a class. I know that when I get there I'll walk the long hallway of locked office doors until I find the teachers lounge. It'll be empty. Later I might find my classroom locked, and my students and I will stand outside for 20 minutes while we wait to be let in by the sleepy and miserable campus safety guy - he's a Saturday guy, too, I guess.
I won't be able to consult with a colleague, because there's no one there. I won't be able to check with the Dean about anything, or the department administrator. If I want a pen, I'll need to go to Walgreen's. If I need companionship, I'll need to get a dog. I'll have to do a week's worth of teaching at one shot...15 weeks in a row of 3 hour and 45 minute classes. If you haven't done that, think about it. Take your class plan for M, W, and F, and set it up so you can do it all at one go. No time for reading, homework, writing assignments.
And my students! They're working folks. Most of them have families, jobs, full lives. Getting up for a 9 am Saturday class is often last on the list of priorities for the week, and only about 50% of them show each Saturday. And they want to leave early because their kid's playing basketball or because their husband is flying home from Sarasota. They want a long break in the middle of class. They want to get out early. They want to eat their frozen waffle right on top of the textbook.
I have 20 on the roster, and last Saturday only 3 showed up. Do I keep those on target, keep pushing ahead, or do I hold things off till the next week? And what if those 3 don't make it back next week and I have 4 different students. How does last week's class speak to this week's? Am I supposed to throw a whole Saturday away, or just keep going. And if I keep going, what will my Saturday students say: "Don't you know I have a full time job?" "Don't you know that I only take classes on the weekend to better myself?"
And they want to know about me, why I'm teaching on a Saturday. Why don't I teach during the week? Why don't I have an office? Why do we have individual conferences in the teachers lounge? Am I like them, a regular person from Monday-Friday?
Yet the class is just another class, equal to those taught during the week with the real professors, the real students, the real college behind it all. The same credit, although, I can tell you, what we get done on a Saturday is NOT equal to what gets done on the normal schedule. Oh, yes, I drank from that river once, a few years ago. Students whose sole job was going to class. 2 or 3 meetings a week, time for the info to process. A full staff of help, of colleagues, of open doors, of "we're in this together!"
But now I'm a weekend and nights guy all the way. And I just don't want to go this morning.
My college keeps giving me the Saturday classes. And I keep taking them. (Oh, I do a Saturday afternoon one, too...but let's not even talk about that nightmare.) What else am I going to do?
When I was a kid, Saturday was the best day of the week.
That's all by way of saying that it's Saturday morning and I'm getting ready for a class. I know that when I get there I'll walk the long hallway of locked office doors until I find the teachers lounge. It'll be empty. Later I might find my classroom locked, and my students and I will stand outside for 20 minutes while we wait to be let in by the sleepy and miserable campus safety guy - he's a Saturday guy, too, I guess.I won't be able to consult with a colleague, because there's no one there. I won't be able to check with the Dean about anything, or the department administrator. If I want a pen, I'll need to go to Walgreen's. If I need companionship, I'll need to get a dog. I'll have to do a week's worth of teaching at one shot...15 weeks in a row of 3 hour and 45 minute classes. If you haven't done that, think about it. Take your class plan for M, W, and F, and set it up so you can do it all at one go. No time for reading, homework, writing assignments.
And my students! They're working folks. Most of them have families, jobs, full lives. Getting up for a 9 am Saturday class is often last on the list of priorities for the week, and only about 50% of them show each Saturday. And they want to leave early because their kid's playing basketball or because their husband is flying home from Sarasota. They want a long break in the middle of class. They want to get out early. They want to eat their frozen waffle right on top of the textbook.
I have 20 on the roster, and last Saturday only 3 showed up. Do I keep those on target, keep pushing ahead, or do I hold things off till the next week? And what if those 3 don't make it back next week and I have 4 different students. How does last week's class speak to this week's? Am I supposed to throw a whole Saturday away, or just keep going. And if I keep going, what will my Saturday students say: "Don't you know I have a full time job?" "Don't you know that I only take classes on the weekend to better myself?"
And they want to know about me, why I'm teaching on a Saturday. Why don't I teach during the week? Why don't I have an office? Why do we have individual conferences in the teachers lounge? Am I like them, a regular person from Monday-Friday?
Yet the class is just another class, equal to those taught during the week with the real professors, the real students, the real college behind it all. The same credit, although, I can tell you, what we get done on a Saturday is NOT equal to what gets done on the normal schedule. Oh, yes, I drank from that river once, a few years ago. Students whose sole job was going to class. 2 or 3 meetings a week, time for the info to process. A full staff of help, of colleagues, of open doors, of "we're in this together!"
But now I'm a weekend and nights guy all the way. And I just don't want to go this morning.
My college keeps giving me the Saturday classes. And I keep taking them. (Oh, I do a Saturday afternoon one, too...but let's not even talk about that nightmare.) What else am I going to do?
When I was a kid, Saturday was the best day of the week.
"Dear Madge..."
Sadly, we live in a world where everyone is expected to be the same, and certain abilities are not valued. The poor chaps who, unlike you and me, do no have an excess of analytical and verbal intelligence, have been drilled their whole lives to be something they're not. A few of the braver ones disobey and try to make a living playing in a band or being social justice activists, but the meeker ones have been told so much to go to med school or become a lawyer that they may not even *know* that what they're really good at is baking pastries, or writing poems, or designing board games.
-Madge from Moose Jaw (3.4.08)
Since when did activism, poetry, game design, and baking become no-brainer activities? You are making an assumption: it's all about the college credential, not about the cognitive capacity. I can actually envision how an education helps an advocate and a poet and a board game designer--and even a baker (running a small business or a home successfully is hard!). How patronizing of you to assume these are jobs that don't require verbal and analytical intelligence commensurate with ours! Do I think it's possible to develop these abilities outside of college? You bet. Do I think you develop them without working at it all via being 'good' at something? Hell no. Being good at anything takes work and sacrifice. And it's that 'work' and 'sacrifice' part that eludes most of us most days.Just because some students lack the vision and balls to let go of the sugar tit that is their parents' money doesn't make them helpless widdle victims in the big bad system. Are they meek or do they show as little imagination and capacity to sacrifice for what they want in their lives as they do in my classes? If you think I sound harsh, you should read what they write about REAL victims of pernicious structures: "I don't get why Africans can't get their act together." Yup, you betcha--people should just get over colonialism and genocide but middle-class ennui--boy, now that's crippling.
If you obediently shuffle off to college, then you have your answer: you didn't want whatever dream it was enough to toughen up and get it even if that means doing without parental approval and money. And if you don't have any dreams that college will help you with, and you don't come to my class, and you don't do the work because it all has no meaning for you, then by all means, you go and you do what you want with your time. Throw away your parents' dough. It all keeps me employed whether you use the services you have paid for or not. But be adult enough to leave me alone when you see an "F" for your grade on Blackboard. Don't come, as so many of these little misunderstood victims do, whining / throwing tantrums / making threats / negotiating / lying / excuse-making / sniveling for a better grade.
College doesn't work that way (or it shouldn't)--life doesn't work that way-- and most days I'm glad it doesn't.
Tanya from Toronto Takes Aim At a Post from Last Week.
I know you're frustrated with your students. I'm frustrated with mine. They can be self-centered, often struggle to think deeply, and sometimes have advantages that I did not. But you, my sister, have a chip on your shoulder the size of a chateau.
You had a "disenfranchised youth?" Really? Then you have something in common with every single person under the age of eighteen.
But perhaps you're using the wider, recently distorted meaning of the word, the one that doesn't refer to voting. Perhaps you came from a low income household, or a single parent one, or a badly managed school system. And if that's the case, that sucks, and I'm sorry that you had to go through that. Me, I've had problems that would make any therapist cringe. But I'm not handing the check for my past to my students. It's not their fault. It's their fault if they don't hand in papers, don't listen, don't take charge of their own education. But it's not their fault that they came from privilege or that their asses are "lily white."
You had a "disenfranchised youth?" Really? Then you have something in common with every single person under the age of eighteen.
But perhaps you're using the wider, recently distorted meaning of the word, the one that doesn't refer to voting. Perhaps you came from a low income household, or a single parent one, or a badly managed school system. And if that's the case, that sucks, and I'm sorry that you had to go through that. Me, I've had problems that would make any therapist cringe. But I'm not handing the check for my past to my students. It's not their fault. It's their fault if they don't hand in papers, don't listen, don't take charge of their own education. But it's not their fault that they came from privilege or that their asses are "lily white."
And gee, whatever your "disenfranchisement," you seem to have done pretty well for yourself, what with your college teaching job and all. Somehow you must have managed to get an education and a job, yes? It might not have been easy, but here you are-- teaching at a school, I'm willing to bet, that probably doesn't take issue with your anarchist zine past, and likely even sees it as a diversity asset. That's the way it is with just about every non-sciences department I've worked with, anyway.
Oh, and I would suggest that you avoid pointing out to your students that "women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar that men make," not because, as you assert, it would be "lost on them," but because that figure doesn't take into account the fact that men tend to work more hours; that men are more willing to take on hazardous assignments that pay more; and that despite decades of Title IX, during which I was educated and fully encouraged from within the system to enter non-traditional fields, men tend to enter the high-income hard sciences in larger numbers. The reasons behind all this, perhaps, are for a doctoral thesis rather than this post, but you are not, I promise, the victim you seem to think you are. Eight years of women's education and several gender studies classes taught me a lot, but they didn't teach me to use the word "bitch" as a pejorative, to resort to class warfare, or wish death upon my students. We're at war with them enough without begrudging them their ski weekends.
Your students think of feminists as "whiners?" Huh. I can't imagine where they'd get that idea.
Friday, March 07, 2008
Patrick the Poseur Sucks It Hard On the Side of the Road, and Sarah Schadenfreude Gets All Giggly.
Punk-Anarchist-Nihilist Student, you have spent the last eight weeks ranting about the evils of materialism, capitalism and the free market. All of us are lowly, consuming, wallowing pigs in a pen of sloth and material goods. You, at all of eighteen, are clearly more in tune with The Way It All Works, and The Way It Ought to Be.
The rest of the class has managed to overlook your Armani Exchange t-shirts, your Uggs, your swank leather duster, and your mega-gig video iPod. I have not. It's easy to rant about how unfair THE SYSTEM is when you've got every material and creature comfort handed to you. Yes, handed, because you also feel that students should not work -- "education is, like, a full-time job and responsibility, and, uh, we should focus on the good of society while we get educated!"
Imagine, then, my joy -- nay, unholy glee -- when I saw you standing forlornly by a 2008 Lincoln Navigator, having had a fender bender. When I stopped to make sure you were OK (all right, to savor your pain), I learned that said land yacht was actually yours -- a gift from Daddy to make college a bit more bearable. Even better -- Daddy is making you pay the deductible to replace the $800 bumper, to teach you the value of that money which, "isn't real and doesn't mean anything, anyway!"
A bit of sweet, sweet schadenfreude will make your poseur ass a bit more bearable for the next six weeks.
The rest of the class has managed to overlook your Armani Exchange t-shirts, your Uggs, your swank leather duster, and your mega-gig video iPod. I have not. It's easy to rant about how unfair THE SYSTEM is when you've got every material and creature comfort handed to you. Yes, handed, because you also feel that students should not work -- "education is, like, a full-time job and responsibility, and, uh, we should focus on the good of society while we get educated!"Imagine, then, my joy -- nay, unholy glee -- when I saw you standing forlornly by a 2008 Lincoln Navigator, having had a fender bender. When I stopped to make sure you were OK (all right, to savor your pain), I learned that said land yacht was actually yours -- a gift from Daddy to make college a bit more bearable. Even better -- Daddy is making you pay the deductible to replace the $800 bumper, to teach you the value of that money which, "isn't real and doesn't mean anything, anyway!"
A bit of sweet, sweet schadenfreude will make your poseur ass a bit more bearable for the next six weeks.
Er, Maybe You Care a Little Bit? Greensboro Gertie Gets Good and Garrulous.
I do not care where, exactly, your name is placed on any given page, so long as your name does in fact appear on your work. I do not care where your page numbers go, or if you include a page number on documents of only one page. My life is really not so boring that I sit around getting my panties in a twist because you have placed your identifying information on the right-hand side of your paper instead of the left. Generally, I tell students this once, and they understand. Why do you insist on revisiting the issue with every single assignment?I do not care that you spent 8 hours on the homework and then failed the test. Since you seem unwilling to change your study habits, I see no reason to have to discuss this phenomenon. I do not care that, although the exams are open-note, and although you have very fine notes written out, you cannot read and answer the questions within the allotted time. I certainly do not care that you want me to "ask who needs more time" when I am sitting at the front of the room and can clearly see that the entire rest of the class is sitting around waiting for you to finish so we can move on with the lesson. Unless you have a documented disability, we aren't going to all twiddle our thumbs for another ten minutes because you haven't finished. Why must you continue coming forward to imply that the problem with this situation is somehow me? 50 other students have managed just fine, under the same conditions.
I do not care that your current method of studying "works well for you" and that you are concerned that I expect you to change it since I introduced a new way to prepare notes. I am presenting this new option to an entire classroom of people, some of whom may find the information useful. The class does not exist solely for your needs.
I do not care what your other teachers have said about you. I do not care that you have a GPA of ten billion. I do not care that your current skill set has "worked so far" and that you see no reason to change. It is not working now. Why do you continue asking what you can do, only to list reasons that my suggestions will not work for you?
I do not care that you want to "do it right" -- this is not an intro-level class, and you do not have to double check every single comment you're about to make during group work. There is a whole room full of other students who might also have questions. I do not care to know how on earth you got placed into this class in the first place, when you seem to be so very far behind the rest of the group.
What I do care about, just a little, is that you're annoying the heck out of me. And that if you pass this class, I will know that you barely deserved it; or that if you don't, you'll want to discuss every single detail of your grade from the entire semester, and probably every grade you've ever received just for comparison. Why can't you be disruptive, or stop coming to class, or arrive unprepared, so that I could jettison your faster than you can say "just one more quick thing I wanted to double-check..."?
When it Comes to Ejecting Students, We're All Keen. But Toenail Boy Wins the Big Thirsty Bonanza.
In the light of the PowerPoint, they glow a strange shade of orange, the pre-tanned. The room smells faintly of lotion, and between my words of wisdom and the burr of the LCD, there is a odd yet familiar noise. A snipping, a grating, a strange reminder of...my ex husband? No.. I roam the room casually then I see him. In the back. In the shadows. How dare you. I know it is almost Spring Break, but DON'T CLIP YOUR TOENAILS IN MY CLASS! That, my friends, is who I would eject. Toe-nail boy.- Would I have to use the ejector seat on a student? I'd rather just use it myself.
- The "dude" who wears his sunglasses while he takes a test because he is simply too cool for any thing less, then skips the day after the test because he "has no concerns about how I did on the test - I know this stuff."
- The guy who missed the first two weeks of class and exclaimed, "I know you think I am behind, but I am not. I can do these models in my sleep." Should have slept, because a 08% (yes 8 out of 100) really means you are a moron.
- The big, boring moon-faced kid in the Honors Program who thinks he’s my colleague. He’s not enrolled in any of my classes this term, but he was in one last year and now he thinks he’s a junior member of my department. Following me into my office this afternoon – not during office hours – he said, “So, how’s the Intro class going this term?” “Not bad,” I replied, thinking: But no doubt you could give me some pointers. (This is not the first time that he has cornered me, you see.) Sure enough, seeing that I was preparing the answer sheet to a quiz, he said, “Is that for Intro? I thought you decided last semester after we talked that quizzes are poor pedagogy?”
- The glazed-eye piggy. He's stupid and hostile. He refuses to take notes, read, or come to class more than once a week. He sits and stares at me, trying to play some stupid male "I'm gonna stare down the woman" game. He makes appointments, fails to show up, and shamelessly lies about why he couldn't make it. He's really mad about the D he earned on the last paper and wants exhaustive reasoning for my grading.
- The guy who thinks he's so brilliant that he cites himself in his papers.
- The guy who will email to double check every assignment, every deadline, to make sure I received his assignment, to see if there is anything he can do to bring his grade up, etc.
- I want to eject this one guy who doesn’t do the reading, doesn’t participate in discussions unless forced to, and is quite good at bullshitting. He’s already missed more than the maximum number of allowable absences, but he actually got a dean to vouch for his week-long flu (during which he was way too sick to do the work or to respond to my e-mails but not too sick to comment on friends’ Facebook photos.
- It would be the idiot who stood up with his group to present and then went off on his own tangent - including the line "those who can't do, teach, right?" When challenged, he actually tried to defend his statement. Did I mention that he's taking this course to transfer in as a Master's in Education student? I wonder if he can ski.
- The guy who sends me an e-mail hinting in all seriousness that I should hire him next semester to help do the grading.
- I would auto-eject Bob the Bad 80s Goth. The long, manicured, yellowing fingernails. The stringy, greasy, long, thin, bald-spot showing hair. The black trench coat and motorcycle boots in summer. The pasty skin and snaggle tooth smirk. The attitude that class exists for him and him alone, the professor is there solely to answer his questions, any remark he would like to make about the lecture during the lecture (such as "Isn't that obvious?") is to be valued by students and instructors alike.
- The girl who noisily eats a three course breakfast in the 8 am class and hands in her assignments on crumpled, food-stained paper?
- The student who told me I had a kind face, just like her grandpa.
- The pregnant girl who assumes that because she invented reproduction, she doesn't need to come to class or do any of the assigned work.
- The poor dear who missed class last week because when he looked into the classroom he didn't recognize anyone, and this "gave him a strange feeling."
Thursday, March 06, 2008
This Week's Big Thirsty!
Q: If you could "ejector-seat" any student this semester, free and clear, no repercussions, no grade appeal, no more see 'em, who would it be? And why?
A: Send your replies here.
The "Nerd Sex" Post.
Anthropologists DO NOT have all the sex. No way.
Number one for sex...Environmental Studies.
Yes I know…interdisciplinary. And maybe they are trying to breed and multiply, like spreading the dangerous interdisciplinary meme. I'm not sure. It has the same combination of fieldwork and book research, so you can get away with all the sex without getting caught. But there's something a little sexier about naturalism that ethnography just doesn't have. ES definitely has the most sex AND the best sex.
Number two for sex is Human Resources and Labor Relations. First of all, it’s just a smaller world. Sex rumors get out faster and retaliatory sex is common. In that sense, it’s more incestuous. But seriously, how can not study juicy workplace rumors (or "sexual harassment cases" as they are called in the real world) without feeling a little flushed?
Anthropology is in the mix for #3, but don't discount the math guys. Nerd sex should not be underrated.
Number one for sex...Environmental Studies.Yes I know…interdisciplinary. And maybe they are trying to breed and multiply, like spreading the dangerous interdisciplinary meme. I'm not sure. It has the same combination of fieldwork and book research, so you can get away with all the sex without getting caught. But there's something a little sexier about naturalism that ethnography just doesn't have. ES definitely has the most sex AND the best sex.
Number two for sex is Human Resources and Labor Relations. First of all, it’s just a smaller world. Sex rumors get out faster and retaliatory sex is common. In that sense, it’s more incestuous. But seriously, how can not study juicy workplace rumors (or "sexual harassment cases" as they are called in the real world) without feeling a little flushed?
Anthropology is in the mix for #3, but don't discount the math guys. Nerd sex should not be underrated.
A Mindbending Post on Logical Fallacies. We Had to Invoke the Hookah Rule To Celebrate Its Inclusion, But That's Actually Compound SOP In Many Cases.
Angela needs a course on logical fallacies.Logical Fallacy #1 - What she has done is called a False Dilemma Formal Fallacy. Here is an example:
Angela: "You cannot have a tattoo and be included in a society."
What Angela has done is given us only two choices: Get a tattoo and be excluded, or do not get a tattoo and be included. This leads to a dilemma as to choose one or the other. It is a false dilemma because there are more options which are not listed. Particularly you can not get a tattoo and not be included, or you can get a tattoo and be included. The notion that the world must be black and white is not true, proven by then existence of outliers.
Logical Fallacy #2 - Informal Fallacy of Distribution. Example:
Angela: "Because most Aborigines get a tattoo for this reason, all people with tattoo must have the same reason."
Angela has not recognized the existence of a distribution of reasons that an Aborigine would get a tattoo; she has attributed the number average to be equivalent to the variable. This is not true as multimodal averages can have a numerical average equivalent but a distribution that describes a different conclusion.
Logical Fallacy #3 - Informal Historian's Fallacy.
Angela: "Because persons of the past made this choice for this reason, present people must make the same choice for the same reasons."
Thus, people of the present cannot have chosen to get a tattoo for any other reason than the choice made by those before them.
Logical Fallacy #4 - Formal Package-Deal Fallacy
Angela: "Criminals have tattoos and are social outcasts. You have a tattoo and therefore are a socially outcasted criminal."
The idea that the there are no overlapping circles in a venn diagram is logically a false conclusion.
With these concepts explained, you may now be less burdened both by racism, ageism, or tattooism. Nihilism still stands, however.
A Pierced Proffie Wants a Piece of Angela.
Gee, Angela, for someone who finds a way to slip teaching about body modification into every single class, you sure sound like a bourgeois asshole.Tina the tattooed was complaining that in academia she feels marginalized -- not as part of a subgroup with its own identity, but excluded and stereotyped. As what? I don't know; different people have different stereotypes about tattoos and piercings (on drugs? a criminal? part of a gang? punk rocker? someone who doesn’t take school seriously?).
Although you find tattoos or piercings on people in the above groups, you will also find them on straight-A students, under the suits of Wall Street execs, on cosmetologists, daycare workers, insurance agents, and on faculty. There is not a common subgroup or identity that each of them is trying to fit into, and yes, standing apart from the mainstream is probably the goal for many or even most.
We are notorious at attempting to express our individuality (even if we do it the same way others do--that's for the sociologists or psychologists to figure out). People in the US use body modification for all kinds of reasons and retrying to express themselves in different ways -- but I would wager that only a very few actually do so to be seen and treated as a freak.
You're the one who sounds like a hypocrite, with your "you wanna be different? Fine, then you should expect to be treated differently and if that means exclusion, or suspicion and stereotyping, too bad for you, because you asked for it!"
I understand the Tina's point of view-- academia pretends to be open-minded and accepting, willing to give every person willing to think and do the work the same access and fairness(hell, we even encourage creativity in some disciplines!) -- but when your profs or the admin judge you for your tattoo rather than your attitude, then that's bullshit.
Get off your high horse.
Pierced (and tattooed) Proffie
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
"Bugger Off." An Eloquent Request from Bruce From Buffalo That Students Cease, Desist, and "Bite Me."
Every time we publish something from a student, we get a good deal of mail from folks angry about it. We understand the feeling, but have always felt that we'd like the site to be representative of the mail we get and the readers we have. And that includes a fair amount of students. This week we thought we'd publish one of the complaints, partly out of fairness, and partly because we love the phrases "bugger off" and "bite me." They're earthy and immediate. And they make us giggle.
---
Note to students reading this blog: BUGGER OFF!This blog is not for you and, whether you believe it or not, is not even about you. This is for those of us who have passed courses in areas we didn’t fully understand, or sometimes like; those of us who worked to put ourselves through school but never asked for an extension; those of us who earned a poor grade and used it as a learning tool; those of us who worked, studied and raised children at the same time.
In short, this blog is for those who represent everything that you do not. You don’t like what a poster has to say or the art work that appears on this page? Did I ask for your opinion? I bet you talk back to the judge and tell the cop that busted you to go catch the real criminals.
You don’t care for the connections being made between dress, attitude, and your grades? Bite me. Self respect starts with appearance and overlaps behavior. Why do think business students are often under direction to wear ties to class?
You have your little sites where you can pass comment on me. You have the student evaluations where can complain to your little heart’s content. This site is for something else and someone else. So, if you are a student, and have managed to get this far without finding big words you don’t know: BUGGER OFF!
Angela the Anthropoligist Goes Off on Tattooed Tina - And All the Unique Darlings Just Like Her.
As an anthropologist (and yes, we do have all the sex) I have studied and teach body modification -- it's one of my favorite subjects -- in just about every class (I manage to slip it in somehow). And I can tell you that in most of the rest of the world, body modification is used to signal group membership or social status (like getting scarification when you enter adulthood, piercing and stretching your lip in preparation for marriage, getting a facial tattoo to show you are of the chiefly lineage, etc.).
So when I see Westerners with all kinds of tattoos, piercings, stretchings, scarification, brightly colored hair, my assessment is that person is displaying their social status and group membership just like any other culture. Except, what they are saying is "I am an outsider, I am a social outcast, this is how I separate myself from the rest of society, this is how I try to intimidate the society that I perceive has somehow kept me down, I embrace my freakishness!" So, that said, it always pisses me off when folks like yon tattooed Tina, make statements like, "And there are times when the less mainstream of us feel marginalized or stereotyped, even in academia..." Uh, duh! Isn't that what you were going for when you CHOSE to modify your body?! To set yourself apart (read: marginalize) yourself from the rest (read: mainstream) society?! You're a hypocrite.
Seriously, get over yourself. You can't choose to look like a freak and then expect to NOT be treated like one.
Olé!
I'm wondering about that tattoo....
Math major: pi? Physics: E=mc2?
English: "Grammar Rules"?
Psychology: Mommy?
Oh wait, wait--Tina says she has a nose ring!
AHA! Spanish major!!
Tuesday, March 04, 2008
"Oh, Madge." Vishna from Vermont Vants to Vent.
I have to say, I’m sometimes tempted to think like Madge. I’ve even sent in a few snide responses to folks who seemed needlessly hard on their students. But seriously—what’s the point? Isn’t it a bit like the simpletons who used to write letters to CBS asking that they have Archie Bunker be nicer to his wife and son-in-law? Isn’t it something like prosecuting a person for having sexual fantasies that aren’t in keeping with our legal codes?
We’re blowing off steam! Why would anyone think that what is written to this blog is anything but evidence of how much we care, how high our hopes are, and how frustrated we get in trying to achieve our goals? If I step into a nicely insulated closet and scream about how stupid my neighbor is, it’s only so that I can continue to get along with him in public and refrain from shouting at him. There’s a world of difference between what a person will think or say as “Phyllis from Philomath” and what he will think or say as “Professor Phunderbunk.” This site is devoted to the former. I tend to think of RYS as a place where teachers can quietly emit the noxious gasses that build up inside of us as a result of the normal process of digestion.
We’re here to vent. Some classes provoke more flatulence than others, often resulting in our being negligent in giving proper due to the nurturing and fortifying effects of the work we do. And yes, it usually stinks. If you don’t like it, you can always read the uplifting and inspirational articles in the “Chronicle of Higher Education.”
Body Modification ≠ Idiocy. Tattooed Tina Takes Us to Task For Funnin' On the Body Mod Crowd.
As a student and not a professor, I don't feel especially comfortable contributing anything to RYS, but I thought I'd voice my disapproval (or perhaps just my lack of a sense of humor) regarding one minor detail.
Accompanying the post entitled "Phyllis Philosophy from Philomath," was a Venn diagram showing the overlap between students with tattoos and those with piercings, as well as the (lack of) overlap between those students and those who read the book.As someone with both a tattoo (and one related to my major besides) and a nose ring, and as a serious student who attempts to do the majority of her reading at a (perhaps overly) rigorous liberal arts college, I'd just like to object to that sentiment.
I didn't think it was especially funny, nor was it particularly relevant to the post it accompanied. Smart people, dedicated academics, and relevant thinkers come from all regions of the social map. And there are times when the less mainstream of us feel marginalized or stereotyped, even in academia, which is seemingly a safe haven for the nerdy and/or different, and I'd like to voice my discontent.
Thanks for reading. And continue rocking out, both with the serious and the sarcastic posts.
Madge From Moose Jaw Makes Mincemeat of Us All. More Perspective When We Least Expected It.
Just like there are excellent, mediocre, and flabbergastingly horrible students, there are excellent, mediocre, and flabbergastingly horrible instructors, and excellent, mediocre, and flabbergastingly horrible researchers. And just like there are innately motivated students, there are innately motivated proffies. You may be a good researcher, or a good teacher, and hell knows, I've even heard them whisper of some who are both... but rest assured, most of you are just average. And that's by definition.Ever get annoyed at your grammar Nazi colleague/editor who constantly tells you that sentences shouldn't end in prepositions, or that you're using the passive voice too much, or that your sentences are too long? Or maybe at your tech support person telling you that the way you handle your email inbox will make the server crash? Or maybe at the auto mechanic who tells you that you really must have your oil changed more regularly if you don't want it to break down again?
I bet your response is to nod politely, inwardly roll your eyes, and go about your ways. Clearly, these people are crazy for expecting you to invest so much energy into submitting yourself to their expertise! You have more important things to do and worry about... much like the "snowflakes" who roll their eyes at you when you correct their subject-verb agreement, or their misconceptions about the locations of the Hypothalamus, Grenada, and spell checkers.
It's not that I think that these kids should be making scholars' lives hell - on the contrary. These students should be elsewhere. Let me assure you - all these kids are good at something. It might not be something you and I value, but they are. And as a society, we are failing big time trying to connect our young to what they're good at.
Sadly, we live in a world where everyone is expected to be the same, and certain abilities are not valued. The poor chaps who, unlike you and me, do no have an excess of analytical and verbal intelligence, have been drilled their whole lives to be something they're not. A few of the braver ones disobey and try to make a living playing in a band or being social justice activists, but the meeker ones have been told so much to go to med school or become a lawyer that they may not even *know* that what they're really good at is baking pastries, or writing poems, or designing board games.
We provide safe, parent-approved paths into post-secondary education for over-parented middle-class kids, and tell them that they can either pick one of 12 options, or face parental disapproval, disdaining looks from relatives, and financial insecurity. For a change, just imagine being transported into a universe where football and dancing are required skills for all respectably-paying positions in society. Imagine taking a (required!) course in ballet, because if you followed your dreams to be a biomedical researcher, you'd have to wait tables and do it for free in your spare time, and your parents would disown you.
How long before you would roll your eyes at Ballerina Proffie?
Bitch out.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Apparently, While Those Who Can't Do, Teach, Those Who Can't Teach Just Go Skiing.
Dear Education Students,
I've been marking your essays all weekend, and gotta say: You are making me lose my faith in humanity. I've had it with you one-dimensional, uncritical zombies from privileged backgrounds who can't imagine a world beyond the tip of your nose, or worse, that exists in your mind for the exclusive proposition of kissing and making comfy your (mostly) lily white asses.
I worry for a generation of students who will be put into your socially arrogant and pedagogically incapable hands. I am concerned, because, for the most part, many of you are not as bright as the children you will be teaching.
I cringe when male pre-service teachers write things like "I like teaching girls. They aim to please and don't talk back," without blinking an eye, or even drawing enough of a critical breath to make a nostril hair quiver. The Grrrrrl Power pink haired, zine-producing anarchist of my disenfranchised youth wants to bitch slap you for such a dangerous and stupid remark. I might yet.
And you double-x chromosome types who argue that "gender discrimination doesn't exist and I wish those hairy feminists would stop whining about it." While I could point out that women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar that men make, it would be lost on you. In your last essay you used "chateau" as a verb (as in, "My family chateaus in France every summer."). In this one, you said that you considered your social location as being "low income" because you only work occasionally during the summer and are too busy skiing in the winter to worry much about grades or poor people. Good thing that the homeless covered in snow make awesome bumps to snowboard over, it's very considerate of them, really.
For the few of you who can make some critical connections, and write a paper with a flash of insight, (or even occasionally brilliance), I'd like to say *thank you.* I think our schools need more educators like you, and will do everything I can to encourage you and support your work. I think you'll be great teachers. Hopefully you won't get too burnt out trying to spend your career undoing the damage your ignorant, obnoxious and ill-informed zombie peers are inflicting on classrooms. Who knows? Maybe while relaxing post-ski at the Chalet of Meritocracy they'll choke to death on their foie gras and spare us all. One can only hope.
I've been marking your essays all weekend, and gotta say: You are making me lose my faith in humanity. I've had it with you one-dimensional, uncritical zombies from privileged backgrounds who can't imagine a world beyond the tip of your nose, or worse, that exists in your mind for the exclusive proposition of kissing and making comfy your (mostly) lily white asses.
I worry for a generation of students who will be put into your socially arrogant and pedagogically incapable hands. I am concerned, because, for the most part, many of you are not as bright as the children you will be teaching.
I cringe when male pre-service teachers write things like "I like teaching girls. They aim to please and don't talk back," without blinking an eye, or even drawing enough of a critical breath to make a nostril hair quiver. The Grrrrrl Power pink haired, zine-producing anarchist of my disenfranchised youth wants to bitch slap you for such a dangerous and stupid remark. I might yet.And you double-x chromosome types who argue that "gender discrimination doesn't exist and I wish those hairy feminists would stop whining about it." While I could point out that women still earn only 77 cents for every dollar that men make, it would be lost on you. In your last essay you used "chateau" as a verb (as in, "My family chateaus in France every summer."). In this one, you said that you considered your social location as being "low income" because you only work occasionally during the summer and are too busy skiing in the winter to worry much about grades or poor people. Good thing that the homeless covered in snow make awesome bumps to snowboard over, it's very considerate of them, really.
For the few of you who can make some critical connections, and write a paper with a flash of insight, (or even occasionally brilliance), I'd like to say *thank you.* I think our schools need more educators like you, and will do everything I can to encourage you and support your work. I think you'll be great teachers. Hopefully you won't get too burnt out trying to spend your career undoing the damage your ignorant, obnoxious and ill-informed zombie peers are inflicting on classrooms. Who knows? Maybe while relaxing post-ski at the Chalet of Meritocracy they'll choke to death on their foie gras and spare us all. One can only hope.
“Superkeeners Are Probably Annoying, But I Wouldn't Know."
Put yourself in my place. Here at Dante’s Ninth Circle Junior College, I get the students who couldn’t get into your schools. The ones who can’t even spell SAT. Yessir, abandon hope all ye who enter here expecting anything but silence.
Around here it’s like the Saturday Night Live sketch where Jerry Seinfeld plays a high school history teacher trying to start a discussion: “Okay, who were we fighting in World War II? [Silence.] C’mon, remember Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Who was he fighting? And don’t say ‘the snakes!’” One student pulls down his upraised hand.
It’s like that without Chris Farley. Or the sense of satire.
Every few semesters, I blow up without the benefit of catharsis. Last semester, an entire class sat and stared at me with bovine simplicity after I asked an idiotic low-level question, like, “Does this essay have a thesis?” I screamed, “Take out your goddamned textbook, open it to the essay, and at least try to find out instead of staring at me like a caged animal.” So one asshole gets up, marches right to the dean’s office, and complains. Fuckhead. I hope he’s a prison bitch now.
There’s a lack of human decency in not answering a question. And that wasn’t the worst of it, not by a long shot. I’ve tried everything, from calling on students alphabetically to having them write out responses in class ahead of time to tossing pieces of candy to students who raised their hands. Am I going to complain about a student who dominates discussion (meaning being the only person besides me who says anything)? I don’t think so. My dog and pony show is in its nineteenth season of re-runs, and I’d welcome the chance to sit down.
Around here it’s like the Saturday Night Live sketch where Jerry Seinfeld plays a high school history teacher trying to start a discussion: “Okay, who were we fighting in World War II? [Silence.] C’mon, remember Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Who was he fighting? And don’t say ‘the snakes!’” One student pulls down his upraised hand.It’s like that without Chris Farley. Or the sense of satire.
Every few semesters, I blow up without the benefit of catharsis. Last semester, an entire class sat and stared at me with bovine simplicity after I asked an idiotic low-level question, like, “Does this essay have a thesis?” I screamed, “Take out your goddamned textbook, open it to the essay, and at least try to find out instead of staring at me like a caged animal.” So one asshole gets up, marches right to the dean’s office, and complains. Fuckhead. I hope he’s a prison bitch now.
There’s a lack of human decency in not answering a question. And that wasn’t the worst of it, not by a long shot. I’ve tried everything, from calling on students alphabetically to having them write out responses in class ahead of time to tossing pieces of candy to students who raised their hands. Am I going to complain about a student who dominates discussion (meaning being the only person besides me who says anything)? I don’t think so. My dog and pony show is in its nineteenth season of re-runs, and I’d welcome the chance to sit down.
Phyllis Philosophy from Philomath Wants To Share Some Real World Lessons With Her Students. Because There's Nothing Quite so Awful as a Lesson.
Dear lovelies, I realize that my course on the philosophy of politics is dreadfully dull, boring, and will never help you get that coveted job as immigration officer with the neat-o gun. So, in order to help you out and give you what you so desperately clamor for behind that veil of ignorance known as "teaching evaluations," I offer to you the following 10 "Real World Lessons."
Please do bear in mind, as you undoubtedly will, that I have never left the Ivory tower and can't think beyond the university. Thus, the following lessons are dependent on the historical example and context of your university. These rules are expressed in your own student idiom of text messages.
#1: Stairs = ↕
#2: Flushed toilet = ☺
#3: Venti Starbucks No-foam Skinny Mocha Gingerbread Frappucino Latte in= pee pee out.
#4: Computers turn on and off.
#5: Textbook = ©
#6: Protection from indoor cold and heat ≡ protection from outdoor cold and heat.
#7: Classrooms = awake, Dorms = sleep.
#8: Lectures ≥ the sum of Power point slides.
#9: Essays ≥ the sum of CNTRL C+ CNTRL V
#10: Professors ≠ Mom+ Dad+ Cheerleader+ Confessor
#1: Stairs = ↕
#2: Flushed toilet = ☺
#3: Venti Starbucks No-foam Skinny Mocha Gingerbread Frappucino Latte in= pee pee out.
#4: Computers turn on and off.
#5: Textbook = ©
#6: Protection from indoor cold and heat ≡ protection from outdoor cold and heat.
#7: Classrooms = awake, Dorms = sleep.
#8: Lectures ≥ the sum of Power point slides.
#9: Essays ≥ the sum of CNTRL C+ CNTRL V
#10: Professors ≠ Mom+ Dad+ Cheerleader+ Confessor
Sunday, March 02, 2008
On Gretchen...
- I understand her completely. Any guilt she still has should be set free. What she did is not the desired result for that kind of student, but as someone who's been in the classroom a long time, I know why she did it. Her act - although probably shocking to Gary - probably had no detrimental effect on his march to success. But perhaps it did teach him a thing or two about being an asshole to others.
- I have done what Gretchen did. I don't say it proudly, but it's inconceivable that you can teach and grade and mentor for many years and not come across specimens like Gary.
- Do you feel remorse? I know I would. At the same time, I have never had a student as bad as Gary. I like to think I wouldn't do the same, but perhaps I would.
I predict the outrage on this one will be high. The caterwauling from the better-than-thou proffies will rain down on you and Gretchen like a flood of blood and bile. Don't let it worry you. We all have many faces we show the world, and Gretchen is okay with me on this one. Many will write in to tell you what she should have done. But none of us was there. None of us lived it like her and her students. I believe she acted on behalf of the entire class. What else could she have done? Have security remove him? Drop him? Fail him for behavior? It looks to me - based on the grades - that poor Gary passed the class. He tormented a room full of people for a solid semester, and he still passed. I say Gary got off lucky.- I believe Gretchen when she says that Gary completely ruined her class and her semester. I'm sure he'd drive me up the wall, too. But I still don't believe that it's ethical to give a D to an exemplary paper, and I'm very surprised that she's unremorseful. Yes, it's within her rights and capabilities as a professor to give any grade she wishes, but that doesn't make it right
- Grow the fuck up, Gretchen. You’re the adult in this situation. If the 3rd paper he submitted was that good, you should have held your nose and given him the grade he actually earned. If it’s any consolation, pricks like him piss off authority figures besides professors. How do you think this jerk will fare in real life, where other people observe AND evaluate him? If he had questioned my authority to grade his work, I’d remind him that I was the professor and he was the student. Period. If he didn’t like it, he could drop the course. You should have smacked him down during the semester while the rest of the class had a chance to salvage it.
- I feel bad for Gretchen because I'm the prof who's never done what she's done. I've eaten shit from misbehaving students, put up with ridicule and mockery, and just given my pleasant grades all along. I've never wanted the fight, the misery, the problems of a grade appeal, of an angry face. I just give the grades out as fairly as I can. Had I been in Gretchen's shoes, I would have put an A on the final paper and just been glad I was rid of him. Of course that would have done no good, only reinforced his appalling behavior. Which action is worse?
Sherman the Shrink Returns to Speak to Gretchen.
Hey Gretchen:
Your post definitely wins lots of points (with me, at least) in the honesty and courage department. I doubt few of us would 'fess up to doing anything like what you (claim you) did! But seriously, though, one old rascal to another:
You'd really and truly do this all over again?
You don't say (so I'm wondering) whether or not you tried the tried and true: pulling the student aside (after class or during office hours) and, in no uncertain terms, letting him know how disruptive his behavior was to you and the rest of the class, and asking him to cease and desist at once.
You also don't say what, if anything, you found by way of administrative support at the department or university level before things got ugly. Were there policies or procedures in place to deal with these kinds of situations? Are there now? Could there be? I dunno, so I wonder.
Last but not least, you don't say (and how could you, you were telling your story as you saw fit) whether or not, at any point in your saga, there were colleagues available for anything close to a useful consultation. You know, the kind that might buy you a beer, put an arm around your shoulder (literally or figuratively), and counsel you to do anything, anything, other than use a grade to retaliate.
Absent further information, I say go with your heart and realize this was a pretty crappy thing to do. My guess is that all sorts of people will seize this opportunity to spill their bile on you (and in the process use you as an auxiliary stomach). Some will say you're a disgrace to the profession. Others will pray to the God of their making that you never, ever come near their child or loved one. Still others will call for you to resign or be fired.
Whatever. Like nobody (especially the kind that stops by this watering hole!) has ever done anything like what you did, or is even remotely capable of doing it. Please.
Now if you're telling us you do this kind of thing from time to time and feel some combination of unable or unwilling to stop, then maybe there is some truth to the bile, and maybe you should start looking for another line of work. For your own peace of mind, if nothing else.
But something tells me you're genuinely repentant, or you wouldn't be sharing your story in quite this way (to say nothing of place).
Look, I don't think you're the first (nor will you be the last) teacher or person in power to abuse their power. My suggestion, going forward, is to start planning now for the countless opportunities the future will present for learning from, atoning for (if that's your thing), or otherwise growing from this experience. You know, so it doesn't happen again and add more unnecessary misery to the planet.
And if it's any consolation, please know that you've given us all a head start in mitigating that misery just by sharing your example.
Hang loose my friend,
Sherman
Your post definitely wins lots of points (with me, at least) in the honesty and courage department. I doubt few of us would 'fess up to doing anything like what you (claim you) did! But seriously, though, one old rascal to another:
You'd really and truly do this all over again?
You don't say (so I'm wondering) whether or not you tried the tried and true: pulling the student aside (after class or during office hours) and, in no uncertain terms, letting him know how disruptive his behavior was to you and the rest of the class, and asking him to cease and desist at once.You also don't say what, if anything, you found by way of administrative support at the department or university level before things got ugly. Were there policies or procedures in place to deal with these kinds of situations? Are there now? Could there be? I dunno, so I wonder.
Last but not least, you don't say (and how could you, you were telling your story as you saw fit) whether or not, at any point in your saga, there were colleagues available for anything close to a useful consultation. You know, the kind that might buy you a beer, put an arm around your shoulder (literally or figuratively), and counsel you to do anything, anything, other than use a grade to retaliate.
Absent further information, I say go with your heart and realize this was a pretty crappy thing to do. My guess is that all sorts of people will seize this opportunity to spill their bile on you (and in the process use you as an auxiliary stomach). Some will say you're a disgrace to the profession. Others will pray to the God of their making that you never, ever come near their child or loved one. Still others will call for you to resign or be fired.
Whatever. Like nobody (especially the kind that stops by this watering hole!) has ever done anything like what you did, or is even remotely capable of doing it. Please.
Now if you're telling us you do this kind of thing from time to time and feel some combination of unable or unwilling to stop, then maybe there is some truth to the bile, and maybe you should start looking for another line of work. For your own peace of mind, if nothing else.
But something tells me you're genuinely repentant, or you wouldn't be sharing your story in quite this way (to say nothing of place).
Look, I don't think you're the first (nor will you be the last) teacher or person in power to abuse their power. My suggestion, going forward, is to start planning now for the countless opportunities the future will present for learning from, atoning for (if that's your thing), or otherwise growing from this experience. You know, so it doesn't happen again and add more unnecessary misery to the planet.
And if it's any consolation, please know that you've given us all a head start in mitigating that misery just by sharing your example.
Hang loose my friend,
Sherman
Saturday, March 01, 2008
Gretchen from Georgia Confesses the Grading of Gary.
I hate to even think about this question. My professional self tells me that I'd never use grades against students, but in my heart I know it's wrong. Let me take you back a few years.Gary was a prize ass of a student, always a problem, always talking when he should be listening, sullen when he should be active, and dismissive of my advice and the advice of others in class. He treated me with disdain, but what bugged me more was the casual rudeness with which he treated everyone else in class.
His first paper was strong, and I gave him an A-. The paroxysms of dismay he went through in my office after that were comical and sad. He went on at length about how graduate school lay ahead for him, and not at a small state school like ours, but at a big time school, in the east, a long way from the pedestrian paths the rest of us were treading. I gave him my best advice, showed him that he'd merely missed one element of the assignment, thus the grade. He slumped out dejected.
In class, his behavior became worse. He would tell other students that their work wasn't worth being discussed, that they needed to open their minds in order to really learn. "College," he said, "is for sheep."
His second paper earned a B, and that was a stretch. He ignored the assignment entirely, writing on a topic outside of our discussions. This time when he arrived in my office his aim was solely on me. Surely I couldn't be trusted to grade his essay, after all, where did I go to college? What would I know about the high level treatment of his subject, given that I was merely a visiting professor? I sat through it, looked the paper over again and slid it back. It was the right grade. He stormed out.
Gary disrupted the last few weeks of the semester by mocking the material we covered, minimizing the views of the other students still trying to have normal discussions despite his guffaws and sighs. Twice I had to ask him to be quiet, to allow students to finish their thoughts. Each time he crossed his arms and stared out the window until class was over. In the last week he simply stood up 10 minutes into each class and left.
When final essays came in, his was on top. It was excellent. He had kept up to the reading and unlike the second essay, this one was right on topic. It was well argued, informed, spirited. It was even a little funny and appealing.
I gave it a D.
I wrote enough comments to choke the margins. I invented requirements that didn't exist to show where the paper missed. I used that pen like a baseball bat and took out my frustrations on him. He had absolutely ruined a whole semester of my life and of my students' lives, and I wasn't going to let him get away with it.
Gary never appeared in my office again. He went to the Dean who went to my chair who came to me. I looked at the paper the chair brought in, and told him that I stood behind what I'd done. The paper had missed the mark. Others might view it differently. But that was the grade I gave it, and I was not flexible.
The chair gave word to the Dean, who gave word to Gary, and that was the end of it.
I don't know what became of Gary. Perhaps he soared to great heights. Maybe he's working in retail. I don't really care. I have moments of guilt over it, but if someone like him came along again, I'd do it again.
Smackdown. Er, We Mean Smackdown!!!
I am proud of you for discovering the message priority function of your e-mail handler. But didn't your mother ever read you "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"? The exclamation point is not there for you to flag messages such as "did you read my lab yet?" or "is it ok if I come to your office hours tomorrow?" (While we're on that one, if it wasn't ok for you to come, they wouldn't be "office hours," they'd merely be "hours I expect not yet to be dead").If you think those messages warrant !s in front of them, I'd be really curious to know what you'd deem "normal priority." I already know what you think a "low priority" message is. That would be anything anyone else wants to ask. For instance, when the girls who were three steps ahead of you in lab (because by reading, thinking and listening, they were able to perform two steps of the experiment without crawling up my skirt) had a question, you let us all know that they shouldn’t get the same consideration you expect for yourself. When I responded to your rude interruption that I'd be right with you, you snapped at me, "But they're already ahead of me!" as though that was their “fault” rather than their “accomplishment,” whipped your paper down and stomped away.
I wonder what you do when your kids do that. Your children, the ones you mention every week on your way out after asking when the next lab is due (do you really not recognize the pattern? I realize some students don't catch on to the pattern of weekly reports, that is why I give you a schedule with your syllabus, so could you please stop asking that?) as though the existence of your children might change due dates. It won’t. And yes, tomorrow’s lab will be due the next Friday.
And yes, I will still be answering questions for all of those troublesome pests who aren’t you, even if they don’t throw exclamation points at me.
The Jerks and Morons Can Dance All They Want.
So, my university has this forty-eight hour dance marathon thing every year to raise money for kids with cancer. The primary participants are sorority/fraternity kids, although all kinds of groups get involved. It's a good cause and all, but the people involved tend to use it as license to act like jerks and morons. And the students don't realize that the "extra" in "extracurricular" means "outside of" or "in addition to" the... curriculum. They miss class right and left because of this dance marathon, for weeks leading up to the actual event.After months of buildup, the big event finally took place this weekend. Now, this being her first year here, the instructor for the class that I TA scheduled our first mid-term for tomorrow, the Monday after marathon weekend. Enough students threw a complete bitch fit that she wrote, proctored, and is grading a special makeup exam for twenty or so people. Since it's a school-sponsored event and for a good cause, she caved. (She's much nicer than I would have been, but whatever, it's her class.) The exam was at least slightly harder than the regular exam, and they all had to take it within a four hour window of time last Thursday, before the event. She made several announcements in class about dance marathon participants getting in touch with her, so it wasn't like it was top secret information.
I just received an e-mail in my inbox from a student. He had sent it through the course listserv to the professor, all four TAs, and the entire three hundred something students registered for the class. It read: "Does anyone know about the exam this week? I saw the email about it maybe being tomorrow but i thought it got moved back because of the dance marathon. I think its gonna be pretty lousy if it is tomorrow it has been a long weekend. Please someone let me know if ya can"
BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. Way to be on top of things, kid! I'm taking far too much pleasure in his dilemma, but it's stuff like this that makes me crazy. Even though we go out of the way to accommodate these students, they still find a way to make everything Our Fault.
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