"The Regulars." Smackdown, Smackdown, Where's the Smackdown? Oh, Okay, Here Comes Athena To Go Grecian On Some Asses.

So I'm sitting here thinking about composing a nice little essay about my Snowflakes and their general cluelessness and their sense of entitlement and their parents and...what the heck, let's just have a little smackdown.

Pleading Paula: You started your email with, "Dr. Athena, I know the syllabus says that there are no makeups on the exams after the rest of the class have taken them, but..." You could have left off the but. You forgot we had an exam and didn't show up. Your scholarship status is irrelevant to this conversation. Put on your big girl panties and deal with your zero.

Longshot Louie: Your wording isn't quite right. You don't need a C to get into your professional program. You need a C to be eligible to apply to your professional program. Given the number of your peers who will be applying to the same program after earning As and Bs in this class, which is a much larger number than the number of slots available, you're not getting in anyway.

Makeup Mitchie: No, there are no opportunities for extra credit. Even if I didn't think it would be horribly unfair to the students who actually learned the material, I don't get paid enough to spend my time inventing and grading worky-work projects for you (and 40 other whiners) to do so that you can earn a passing grade, in a class where you haven't learned enough to go on. You'd just fail the second half of the course next Spring anyway. I've spent about 100 hours this semester preparing, administering and grading opportunities for credit. They're called "exams." Oh, and they have an expiration date, and it's way past.

Casual Carla: How sweet that you want to go home early and surprise your parents. (Won't they be surprised, you missing three extra days of classes to extend your break.) And how thoughtful of you to let me know that you will therefore be missing both the Monday before *and* the Monday after Thanksgiving. Mmm, no, I don't really feel like taking the time to email back with a list of what you will be missing. If you miss class, then it's your responsibility to get notes from a classmate. School is in session, I have to be here, I'm teaching the class once and that's it. Have a nice trip.

Tits McGee: Pull up your goddamn pants. We're tired of your buttcrack. Actually, come to think, we're tired of your boobs and your midriff too.

Dr. Schadenfrau Breaks the Bank With Today's List of Excuses.

I call myself Dr. Schadenfrau; if we believe the description from "Oh Dear Lord…" on November 21, I’m just another emasculating shrew in an English department. I also can’t imagine why anyone would swing a cat in order to knock over the maladapted members of my ranks. I have five cats—several of which are so fat the impact would be equivalent to that of a Nerf toy. Pointless exercise, I say. Now, if you want to discuss swinging portable hard drives by their USB cables as if they were nunchucks—Xena-like whooping included—we’ll talk.

Anyway, as Thanksgiving approaches so do the students at my office door. Actually, I don’t even get to the office; they’re on me like leeches in the halls, on the stairwells, and in the bathroom that one time I errantly used the facility in the classroom wing. Most of the students choosing to corner me are "Houdini Students". You know what I mean—they disappeared, then re-appeared mysteriously without a word of explanation or even a weak query about what they missed. If you’re reading this, you also know there’s never been any documentation either.

So, I’m one of those professors who has an absence limit set for the class; any more than 2 and you lose 5% of your grade for each absence. The members of "Team Houdini" are usually requesting modifications to the spacetime continuum and almost always on the "time" end of things. Why me? Isn’t the Physics Department better suited for that?

Generally speaking, they want me to make policies into arbitrary statements, forgive them their trespasses and dick with events in the past by just obliterating absences. Not happening! I may look like a tool to them but I see just a little glimmer of "I’m not a gullible tool" when I look in the mirror.

Anyhoo, the withering excuses usually involve their mandatory responsibility for countless people and events. Here’s the list, so far, of requests followed by what I think as I tell them "No!":

Aaron: I couldn’t come to class, Dr. Schadenfrau; I had to take my girlfriend to the doctor that Monday.

Dr. S: Oh yes, I fully understand! That was certainly a priority for missing yet another class, Aaron. She can’t drive herself? Did you somehow manage to blind her on Friday night as the two of you attempted an off-label version of "Grey’s Anatomy" in a single dorm bed? Your mother was right; don’t point that thing at people, someone can lose an eye, or maybe both.

--

Mel: Dr. Schadenfrau, I couldn’t be in class that week. My dad had surgery and I had to go home.

Dr. S: Why, Mel, of course you needed to go home for at least a week. Were you donating a kidney or, better yet, did you perform the surgery yourself? The way you execute a comma splice, I know you’re the woman to, at the very least, re-section a bowel.

--

Chris: I had to go home for a couple of weeks, Dr. Schadenfrau; several people in the family died suddenly.

Dr. S: Several, you say? Suddenly, too? Has "Typhoid Mary" been in your hometown or are you from Bon Temps, LA? Oh wait, I know, you went home to embalm all of them, dig the graves, build the caskets, perform the service AND make the little sandwiches and punch for the wake? Of course, then you needed to go home for quite an extended period of time.

--

Terry: I’m sorry I haven’t been in class for 2 weeks or contacted you, Dr. Schadenfrau; my 21 year-old sister was busted on an international flight with 60 grams of heroin and I’ve been trying to talk to officials and get her out of jail on a bond.

Dr. S: Oh, let me see now, you’re 18 and you’ve been personally calling in favors with people you know in the FBI and various law enforcement agencies worldwide? No doubt your name will be required on the bond documents because you are, at 18, the only signatory for the family finances. And, of course, you’re legally responsible for your adult sibling. If she was dating Aaron, you’d be off the hook; he’d drive her to court and probably post bail--and during my class too! But, since you are, at 18, the legal guardian of someone in their 20’s, and you’ve got "clout" way high up in government, then of course, Jason Bourne….er, Terry…I’ll excuse your absences. Let me just call the CIA to see your clearance levels while I’m at it.

--

Jessica: Dr. Schadenfrau, I couldn’t come to class that day. Work was really busy and I needed to be there to help out.

Dr. S: Right, I fully understand, Jess, that you’re curing cancer—or was that splitting the atom?—for $6.50/hour. I know, what with the significance of the work you’re performing, that it would be utterly impossible to have said, "Sorry, I have class…" to your employer. I wouldn’t want to tell the Sloane-Kettering Center that either. It’s so not team centered.

Oh, Baby, When You Call A Regular Out, You Know What Happens? Uh, Nothing, Actually. Milo's Big. His Heart Is As Big As Jupiter. Abilene Al Says...

Oh Milo. I had such high hopes for you and your little essay explaining how high school teachers fuck up your students.

I kind of enjoyed the rambling two-paragraph prequel. Sadly, my joy ended when I reached the essay’s core—a thesis statement which essentially asks and answers a question: “Why can’t my students write well? Because their high school teachers were a bunch of bone-headed fuckers who make stupid assumptions about writing.”

And how does Milo support this brilliant thesis? He uses three coordinate-sequence supporting paragraphs which support the thesis without examining it in detail, and then a fourth body paragraph which is so far out of parallel with the other three that it may as well have been taken from another essay. Call me Tony Stark, because I’m seeing some Irony, man.

OK, a little bit about me. Like Milo, I teach college composition and literature to the walking wounded. Like Milo, I often wonder why the writing I see in my classes is so unimaginative and trite. However, I’m not going to simply pass the buck, throw in the towel and cry into my beer. I’m going to what Milo wants his students to do—ask some questions.

Why is the writing of my students formulaic and trite? Like Milo, I could assume that their high school teachers teach them to be unimaginative and trite. Or I could whip out Occam’s Razor and substitute a simpler solution—most of my students are unimaginative and trite human beings.

Shit, Milo. Think back to when you were 18 years old. You were either unimaginative and trite, or a super keener. Need I guess which? We go to class with the students we’ve got, and if you’re looking for a reason why their writing doesn’t reflect really deep thought, there’s no need to go searching for a corrupting factor. They’re always already unimaginative and trite.

Question number two: Why do high school teachers insist that students follow certain restrictive rules? Again, I could assume that all high school English teachers are stupid assholes who don’t know how to teach. But what happens when you take away the rules those teachers insist on? Bear in mind, I’m not talking about some coddled little AP darling. I’m talking about the average high school student, and I’m talking about the rules that will best help that student to succeed.

Why rule out the “first person”? Because high school students can wallow in it page after page, and they can’t be taught to use it in moderation UNTIL THEY HIT COLLEGE.

Why rule out questions? Because if allowed to do so, the average high school student would cling to the comfort of those questions like a prune-fed toddler in a three-day-old warm diaper, never ever getting to the goddamned point. Most students don’t know how to take stances on their own UNTIL THEY HIT COLLEGE.

Why three body paragraphs? Because if you told them to pick their own number, they’d pick ONE. They can’t be expected to understand what it means to plan an essay which has a structure suited to the unique argumentative or descriptive task they have chosen UNTIL THEY HIT COLLEGE.

People come into this world fucked up. They go through elementary and secondary school fucked up. They’re fucked up when they hit college. Looking for who fucked them up is a pointless endeavor, since at the end of the day they’re still fucked up. The proper question isn’t “why?” The question is, “what are you going to do about it?”

A Haiku For Wayne.

it arrives in mail

on stormy day

but nothing storms

quite like the photo

on the cup

i feel its heft

and fill it up

place it on the counter

it looks out at us

my daughter and me

until she says

"daddy,

why does wayne weep?"

"for all of us, i say...

for every one of us..."

CLICK HERE
Available For a Limited Time.

Alice from Admissions Wants Us (And Athena From Allentown) to Know that She's Gotta Let 'Em In.

Please don't start getting annoyed at administration for enrolling too many students. I work on the other side of the great academic divide: I'm one of those admission officers that have to admit and register as many kids as we can. Yep, we sometimes enroll more students than we should, but it's because we have to meet quotas for funding state and federal funding. And we've got to make sure we get tuition enough to pay for infrastructure, salaries, and financial aid packages. And we have to account for attrition each year.

We live in the cubicle farms on your campus, and we try our best. When those students can't register in classes, they start calling us first. Oh, yes. They do. THEN they start emailing you and every faculty advisor they can. We'd love to see larger waitlists. If the dreaded online system you run is the same one that we we run, you CAN increase the waitlist with a system override. Or you could decide not to waitlist at all, and then you could overload your students in as you wanted to OR give departmental access to the overload list and let them take care of it for you. You could adjust the system to give priority to year one students, based on credit counts, and then open the access to the course closer to the start of classes for the upper class. You could do that for one section of the class - froshies only - and leave the other section as a free for all.

Or you could talk to your faculty about increasing the number of sections in the course. Or talk to the Registrar's Office to see what they recommend to help with your enrollment management. Or offer large lecture sections during the summer. Or you try to have your faculty council figure out why a single course is prerequisite to all kinds of upper level study, and see if an alternative course can be substituted or if your course could be a corequisite instead of a prerequisite. Or offer a block section of the course that runs for a week (8:30-5pm) before classes with assignments to be submitted later in the semester (for your upper year students - froshies can't handle that kind of load). You could offer an online section of the course to increase access, and if you wanted to, you could restrict THAT to upper year students only and leave the classroom section for your froshies.

Trust me. The admissions team doesn't like over-enrolling because we get flak from parents and students all summer long when they're trying to register. Over-enrollment isn't the only reason your waitlists are all jammed up. The Registrar's Office can help more than you think. There are other ways to address the problem, and your friendly neighborhood cubicle farmers would like to help.

Flexible Fifi Comes to Sledgehammer Steve's Rescue...Like He Needs It?!?!

What's wrong with you people? I realize that Sledgehammer Steve asked a question, which is bound to solicit advice, but the holier-than-thou responses made me dive for my drinks cabinet. STEVE'S ego needs checking? What about you people who believe that Your Way of class discipline is The Way? The Holy Way to Students' Hearts and Minds? Get over yourselves.

First of all, there is nothing that says that different instructors can't have different ways of being in a classroom. Students are going to encounter all sorts of people in their personal and professional lives, and it's best they figure out that THEY, not everybody has, has to occasionally take on the burden of figuring out how to behave without having mummy or daddy spell it out. Believe it or not, it's actually ok for students to say "OMG, WTF?" because in asking WTF they learn something about other people, which is a subject they need sorely. So students who get their coddled fannies thrown out of Steve's learn a hard lesson; you want to play in here, you're going to called out. Steve doesn't put up with what other people do.

Steve is doing something many of the rest of us don't have the balls to do: he's maintaining the classroom as a place for *work* in the here and now. Think about it. How many of our students treat every spot in the campus like their roving dorm rooms? The library is a picnic zone; your class is a lounge where they come in wearing pajama bottoms, bedroom slippers, and thinking they can have little side conversations with their friends, text messaging, Solitaire, daydreams. Steve says nope. You want to do those things, you do them somewhere else. Here, you pay attention to what other people are saying. In here, you stay present rather than engaging in electronic masturbation. I know, I know, paying attention when you'd rather not is torture, simply torture--the worst thing ever! But as somebody who watched my Dean dress down one of the faculty who was clicking away on his Blackberry during the last faculty meeting, I'd say learning to look like you are paying attention even when you are not, as the context dictates, is a very good thing.

There's value in having places set aside for certain things, like the room in your Grandma's house that she didn't let you take food into because the carpet was too nice. Remember that room? It had a special feel to it. Most activities were carried out in the kitchen or the family room, but when people sat in the special room, there was a different feel to the interaction.Twenty years on, the carpet is still nice, if terrifying out of fashion. Or how about the formal dining room you only use for special occasions? Doesn't the fact you only use the dining room for special occasions make the special occasions even more special? Maybe we should just put a toilet in every room if space and cultural practice don't matter and we should all just do whatever we want wherever we want and whenever we want. Go ahead and text message when you are driving the train, Mr. Metrolink driver. We wouldn't want you getting bored or anything, even though you have hundreds of lives in your hands. It could be an important text after all.

Rock on, Steve. The fact you stopped short of the sledgehammer is all you need. I may try kicking them out myself one day. As it is, I usually stop the lecture and stare at the person and tell them to put it away, which they hate and I hate and prompts them to write "She's a total bitch" on that other, unmentionable site, but it gets the job done.

"The Regulars." Weepy Wayne Celebrates Paleolithic Pete.

Let's return to the first day of Writing Skillz IV: The Final Conflict. I called attendance and you grunted a two-octave "Huh?" I distinctly remember thinking, “Sweet Merciful Adjunct Jesus. Is this semester over yet?” What gives, my little cro-mag? Startled by the sound of your name called in college classroom? You’re not alone. Yet for a brief while during those heady September days, your progress seemed real. Against all odds, you discovered your own opposable thumbs. Before your classmates could say, "Holy Homo erectus!” you were busily fashioning crude tools at your desk, flirting with the wonders of the Bronze Age. And the day you stalked a wooly Trapper Keeper across the classroom and thrust a sharpened #2 into its soft, white lined underbelly? Well, that would have given even Charles Darwin the spins.

But alas, that feral facsimile of writing ensnared in your first essay – three weeks late and, by all accounts, seemingly handwritten – was, well, alarming. My eyeballs whirred and pinwheeled like a chameleon's, mercilessly rope-a-doped by your brute approximation of the Queen's English. Somewhere on page three, it all ended abruptly. I felt as if I was mercifully spit out of a chute, freed from a twisted trainwreck of gnarled syntax and profligate punctuation. The room spun. I felt dizzy -- like my already wobbly IQ had somehow suffered a direct hit.

I brought your Dead C- Scroll to those livewires in the Archeology Dept. They busted out their little whisk brooms and secret spyglasses and pored over that spiral notebook fringed parchment of yours for a week. Two tossed up their hands and blamed everything on their TAs. One took sabbatical, because she could. And one theorized that this ‘writing sample’ belonged to a long lost tribe that worshiped a beneficent god the natives called ‘Spicoli.’ Apparently, this lollygagging cluster of failed hunter gatherers huddled in their cavedorm each morning and paid willing obeisance to a tall clear blue plastic obelisk, where offerings were dutifully set aflame “b4 my 9 oclock mafth clas.”

Apparently, someone's favorite Neanderthal had discovered fire long before he made his way to my classroom.

You know, it’s always the same with you people. When it's time for a paper topic, what pressing issue invariably gets dialed up? Appendages scattered across Iraq? Investment bankers turning Wall Street into Chernobyl? Polar Bears incinerated at the North Pole? Nope, H.R. Puffenstuff’s gonna throw a four-page hissyfit about why at 18 he can't gargle mass-produced beaver piss with the losers at McGuire’s tap or why those big mean L7's won’t let him suck on a bong till his brainstem shrivels to the size of a hazelnut. For some people, evolution hits the brakes at the Persuasion Paper.

Look dude, I’m no prude. But there’s a time and place for everything. I mean, who doesn't enjoy an 80 proof stiff arm from a paper bag in the morning parking lot? Who doesn't look forward to three blissfully lost months of jab and nod after the fall semester? No? Anyway. As my pals in the Anthropology Department will tell you, for certain cultural ceremonies, achieving an altered state is not simply advisable, it is necessary. Native American Peyote ceremonies. Pink Floyd lightshows (lasers for losers) at the palladium. Holiday potlatch with the Department Chair. But firing up a gorilla finger for Paragraphs for Palookas? Really? Isn’t that how we got here in the first place?

Phelps the Philosopher Knows a Little About Fashion, And He Offers It Below.

I started out as a Math and Computer Science double major, took some time off from school, returned and graduated as an English-Philosophy double with a Sociology/Anthropology minor, and eventually wound up in the Philosophy Department, plus, I used to date a lot of Art majors... so I've been around. I've seen ever form of geekery known to academia, I think, and a few I'll imagine even your most wild-eyed readers never imagined. I think I have something to say about geeks.

It's pretty obvious to even the casual observer that the Art Department gets a pass. They're all weirdos, sure, but they have style; even the ones who don't are thought to, merely because they're "creative." Anthropology escapes the stigma, as well. For some reason, in my experience, Anthropology attracts all the tattooed-and-pierced sandal-wearing vegans, so to the extent that you think hemp pants and a fair-trade tie-dye tee shirt counts as evidence of not being able to dress oneself, one would probably be inclined to think that the Anthro geeks are the geekiest, but I don't believe that to be the case. Anthro people - students and faculty - are generally libertine at best and debauched at worst (or is that the other way around?), so it's hard to really tar them with the "geek" label in the sense of being social awkward/unacceptable.

English majors may be soft-headed, but they're rarely geeks. Indeed, they're rarely intellectual at all - even the most ardent of them are usually either aspiring teachers or aspiring writers (I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine the extent to which the latter collapses into the former). Call them what you will: innumerate rubes, pretentious twits, or wastes of University resources, but geeks they are not. After all, English department people all see too much of Hemingway, Parker, and Miller in themselves to be true geeks. Prats, sure; geeks, no.

It would be a gimme, you might think, to call it for the Computer or Math guys, and there is a whole lot of irony-free Sansabelt-wearing in those departments. However, mere lack of attention to one's wardrobe (real life - these guys know every item, down to the socks, worn by their World of Warcraft characters) isn't enough for me, anymore. No, I gotta give it to the Sociology department. In Math and Computer Science, I met a lot of people who were merely unreflective about their personal hygiene, mode of dress, and habits of interaction - is it any wonder they were a bit odd? In Sociology, however, everyone I met was intensely concerned with people, with social exchange, with status signalling and the significance of mores and custom... and they're still dweebs, freaks, and basket cases to the last.

Seriously, I have never seen such collections of ill-managed male ponytails, frumpy "funky" women's pantsuits, tacky lens frames for both genders, and sandals worn with socks than I have in the Sociology departments of three campuses. Beware of Sociologists who dress reasonably well, too, because, for reasons passing my understanding, they're even more likely to be utter prats. I'm telling you, I have become convinced that Sociology, as a discipline, must yield recondite truths about human interaction, because piecing together some coherent set of motives for dressing the way that Sociologists do would require potent and occult knowledge.

A Big Thirsty About the Kid Who Just Won't Go Away.

Q: What do you do about that pain-in-the-neck, dumb student who disrupts class every day he attends when he always walks in late and always spends all the time he's in class talking and distracting other students? You know the kind: eleven weeks into the semester he still makes conspicuous "putting-away noises" five minutes before the end of every class, even though I'd weeded out the others who did that by the end of the third week of class.

Pointing out to him that I don't take attendance and that if he doesn't want to be here he doesn't have to be has not worked: for some bizarre reason, he still comes to class. I really wish he wouldn't, if all he's going to do is distract other students. What do I have to do, throw him out of class, the way one might tell a 2nd grader to go stand in the hall?

A: Send replies here.

"The Regulars." Mildred from Medicine Hat Bitches about Everything.

Bitching about Administration:
Today my chair tells me that the calendar committee has rejected my rewrite of a course description for the calendar because it "included questions." Well, yes. I thought "Why are we here?" would grab a little more student interest than "The student will examine various philosophical perspectives on the nature of being." And use fewer words, too. But no, apparently question marks won't do.

Oh, and the other problem with my course description? Complete sentences. I can't have those either. In the interests of saving space I have to butcher my grammar. They suggested, in place of my 3 short, pithy and eloquent complete sentences (one with a question mark) , a 4 line sentence fragment which not only makes no bloody sense, it actually takes up more space than what I submitted. But they refuse to back down.

Quite aside from every other question this raises (We're a UNIVERSITY. If we don't use complete sentences, who will?), I can't believe how much time they're wasting on this. Every member of that committee is an academic just like me. Have they no papers to grade? Lectures to write? Homes to go to?

Bitching about Teaching:
I teach a class of 100 students. Their single major assignment, worth 40% of their grade, was due on Friday. They've had 6 weeks to work on it. It's tricky and I have spent 2 whole classes going over how to approach it, and complete instructions are up on the web for them.

Some of them will hand it in late. Some of them will not get how it's done or what I expected or how it will be graded, even though they have tried, even though I've gone over all of that exhaustively and put all that information up on the web too. I can deal with that.

What I find hard to deal with, and it comes up every year, and astonishes me every single time, is the number of students who come up to me ON FRIDAY to say "Is there an assignment due today? Uh, can I come talk to you about how to do it?"

Why, no, I don't have office hours today and I do have other things scheduled, I am sorry. Have you read the instructions on the class website? Why, yes, there are instructions up there; the ones I spent a good six hours putting together. The ones I showed you in class and went over twice. You might want to take a look.

And then of course there's the final pass, the whole point in fact, delivered in a shamefaced rush as I get my hand on my office door, preparing to whisk inside and lock it: "canIhaveanextensionIhad4otherpapersduethisweek?"

They never seem to have an answer to my response: "Tell me, why is my paper less important than the other four? Why am I the one you're asking for an extension?"

Besides the fact that I look like a sweet, plump, middle-aged motherly type who might give you one, I mean. Guess again, kid. I mean, true, I am a sweet plump middle-aged mother, but I didn't give birth to YOU.

Bitching about Research:
Sorry. I vaguely remember I was working on something, once. I can't remember which of about 4 stalled projects I'm supposed to be feeling particularly guilty about just at the moment. Maybe it will come to me after the end of term.

Grad School Gracie With some Old School Smackdown.

Senior grad student: You think that just because you are one of two second-year students in the MA program and are in fact graduating this semester, that you have a closer relationship to our professors and therefore treat our classes as your personal tutorial time. It is not. Although most of your questions do show that you know what you are talking about, you are wasting valuable class time by taking the professors on needless tangents. If you are so close with the professors, talk to them outside of class. Oh and also, the professors don't like you as much as you think they do.

Useless second-year: You are just a dumbass. Seriously, I don't know how you are passing your classes. Also, stop complaining about your students. It's not them, it's you. You are teaching the throw-away class in the department because you are a terrible teacher and got very, very close to being fired over the summer. Every time you open your mouth, nothing but shit comes out. I know this not only from just being more intelligent than you (because let's face it, everyone in the program is smarter than you), but also by the way the professors treat you whenever you speak.

Too cool for school: Did you know that at the beginning of the year, you were up for the same favored position which I now hold? Of course that was only for about the first week, until the power-that-be realized that you, while actually being quite smart, don't actually do any work. Also, I realize that you thought that since I was the only woman in the program, I would give you free sexual access. I'm not exactly sure how that logic worked in your head, but I do know that once I made it clear that no, I do not want to have sex with you, you stopped talking to me. Period. I hope your daily masturbation appointments are treating you well, because I know that you haven't succeeded with anyone else, either.

Social impeccable: Okay, you actually are a fairly decent and genuinely nice guy. Most of your problems stem from just being completely socially inept. Also, you must have been the smartest one in your group of friends, because you treat the rest of us like children. Yes, you are smart. Yes, you know what you are talking about. But guess what? So do I. That's why I'm in the same program as you. So stop trying to give me advice on everything related to school and stop complimenting me condescendingly. I don't need validation from you. I have validation from people who are much more important from you. Also, as someone who has her cubicle right across from yours in a crowded TA office, could you please shower regularly? And wear deodorant? Did you know that people don't invite you to hang out with them on the weekends not because your social skills are lacking (because to your credit they could be worse) but because you smell?

The two dead-weights: To be honest, neither of you are bad guys - I enjoy chatting with you before classes and such - but it really pisses me off when you don't get your work done. Because when only two of the eight people in the class do get their work done (one of them always being me) we have to do the work of three people in class. While it makes the two of us look really good, it is also very tiring. It's getting near the semester and it would be nice if someone else could pick up the slack for a while, thanks. I'm tired of carrying you all through class.

The one I like: Actually, I think I love you. You help me shoulder the burden of class because you are the only other person who does their work. You too were up for "promotion" after "too-cool" proved useless, and to be honest the only reason they didn't pick you is because they aren't sure that you have the drive to stay in grad school. Please, please, please stay. I think I may kill myself if the only other person with a decent work ethic leaves. I will do anything to keep you here, even things I patently refused to do for "too-cool." I'm not even kidding.

Penny the Parent? Now a Pinata!

We've never had an outpouring of mail like this. We're over 800 pieces of mail in less than 8 hours, and it's not slowing up. Penny the Parent has certainly touched off some issues, and we only regret that our reduced moderator staff will make it impossible for us to do our normal editing and cleaning up. Below are the "best" items we've seen, and we've only had a small chance to go through what is still piling up in the sand outside the compound's door. (See, the mythology still lives.) Penny the Parent? Here you go. Oh, and one extra delicious detail. It's a TUESDAY afternoon class this week that's causing these problems.

• Let’s replace Thanksgiving with a Pity Party for poor Penny the Pissed-Off Parent. The folks who pay my salary are hassling me to have their kids learn less? To let them skip class? Hassling me to fall down on the job by blithely canceling class when it conflicts with their offspring’s delayed process of differentiation from their own over-protective psyches? Bwah hah hah hah. You jest, surely. It’s the registrar that schedules the class sessions, not me. I am required to be there. You’re worried about your truant teenager’s grade? I am punished salary-wise if I miss that afternoon class. If I don’t require – really require – attendance on that last day before Thanksgiving, they will not show up, and I will be left lecturing to an empty hall. Not a cozy holiday feeling, let me tell you. Apropos of which, I’d like to get out of state to visit my parents on Turkey Day too. They are getting on in years, you know. Do you know how I make your slacker spawn show up? By making the essays due in class that day. Oh, cruelty! Oh, wait: that means they’ve been freed for the holiday from the Term Paper of Damocles while I brace myself for the massive impact of 80 idiotic incarnations of "X and Y are similar, yet different ... different, yet similar". He’ll sleep on the bus; I’m grading on the plane.
  
  


• If Penny Parent got wind that any prof was regularly cancelling classes, arriving late, skipping out early, taking vacations during the semester, she'd want that prof's hide. 'How dare that prof not respect the fact that I pay his salary? I want what I'm paying for - classes for Kiddo!' Penny reveals what she really wants -- puppetmastery. Profs should only cancel classes or suspend attendance policies when it makes sense for family planning (I mean, employer planning, oops).
  
  


• When your child picks a college, look at the schedule before sending your deposit. If the college is open that day, the professor has the obligation to have classes. End of story. Since when is a fascist someone who has class on a scheduled class day? Geez, mom. Every frigging day I think of the tax payers that are paying my salary. Every day. I make sure my students meet the course objectives. I flunk them when they don’t. My colleagues and I are educational bargains as state employees. Our salaries divided by the number of hours we work each week is a great deal. I think every day about the current and future tax payers my students will be serving as nurses, teachers, engineers. I want these future employees to to be educated. That is my job and I do it well and proudly. Students can’t learn if they go home early to give thanks. Wake up and take responsibility. You should have seen this coming. My son wasn’t home for 4 college Turkey days. We knew Thanksgiving wouldn’t be an option when he chose that school. I missed him so much it hurt. I gave him an extra hug at Christmas and cherished the time together even more.



• Get over yourself, would you? It is very clear that you believe your child's life revolves around you. Are you really concerned that they won't have a good Thanksgiving because it's going to take some time for them to get home? Maybe you need to ask yourself the question, "Why did my child want to go to college so far away from me?" The answer is staring you in the face. Attendance is part of going to college. Going to class is not optional. First, you complain that we're going to make them come to class and not waste your money. Then, you complain that they can't come home early enough to spend as little time with you as possible, find their high school friends to hang out with, get drunk and then go back to college to complain about you. And, by the way, our salaries come from a variety of sources: endowments,grants, and tuition (which is often subsidized by sizable financial aid packages including scholarships, grants, loans, etc.). In other words, any actual amount of YOUR money that lands in MY pocket is minimal. If you don't like our "product," go elsewhere.
  
  


• You mean—class is scheduled and the professor actually wants your student to COME? Or there will be CONSEQUENCES???? OMFG! Call out the marines! Get a clue, lady. It’s on the calendar the university/college/whatever publishes long before the beginning of each academic year—heck, my college publishes its calendar long before I get one from my “real” job that tells me what holidays I get off if I’m lucky. Speaking of which—will you be freaking out if your little one gets a job out of state and has to work the days before and after Thanksgiving—or *gasp* on Thanksgiving itself? Try looking at the calendars and planning your lives accordingly, then get a clue.



• If there is a place on God's green earth where what you have to say--you Pissy, Privileged, Poor-ass excuse of a Parent--"may actually make a difference," then I hereby resign from said green earth. Where the fuck do you get off? Yes, I teach to support my _______________ habit. You got me. With all this dough rolling in, I can afford _____________ up the wazoo, as long as ______________ refers to tap water, white bread, or dented cans of soup. I want to work extra, not blow off class, and stare at the sleep-smeared face of your obtuse offspring because...oh, wait. If I were doing this only to support a ______________habit, I would probably just not give a fuck, and your student could go spend his day with his fam at the "crossroads of America" (isn't that Indiana, by the way?) where he would never have to learn one god-forsaken thing. (But if he didn't have hot, fascist professors, you might have to start blaming yourself for that snotty, self-absorbed little attitude of his - and who wants that?) So maybe, just maybe, your logic is a little flawed. Maybe we care more about your precious progeny's future than you do. Maybe we don't want him to grow up to use commas in his contractions. Maybe we want him to be able to sustain a logical argument. And maybe we are trying too, too hard to keep him from becoming a frightfully self-absorbed atrocity of a human being. So sorry if this ruins your day of thanks. I, for one, am thankful that despite my students' many flaws this term, I haven't heard one sound as disrespectful and ungrateful as you.
  



• You're right. Your kid is not getting your money's worth. But not for the reasons you think. Your kid is not getting your money's worth because you are bent on passing on the idea that education is something that someone is supposed to ladle into her little brain while she sits around passively accepting it -- and when it is convenient for her to sit there passively accepting it. And you can't get an education that way. You get an education by fighting for it. You claw at the books to get everything you can out of them, and you sit up front so you can hear everything the lecturer has to say, and you do problem after problem in the skills classes and write essay after essay in the theory classes, and not because these things are assigned but because that's how you learn. And that's even before you consider the many people who have to work 40 or 80 hours a week to be able to afford to go to school in the first place, before you consider the many people who cannot go to school at all and spend hours searching through sites like MIT's OpenCourseWare to figure out what books are within their intellectual grasp but will extend their reach.



• You ask whether we at state schools think about our "employers." I assure you we do. We are paid to show up and teach a class session on the day before the break begins. Good taxpayer money funds our salaries as well as the support services needed to keep those buildings open and running. You paid tuition for a set number of contact hours designed to achieve measurable learning outcomes. How can we possibly be good stewards of the public's funds if we don't do our jobs on the days we are scheduled to work? If I'm scheduled to be there to teach, Snotley is scheduled to show up to learn. Did you ever for a minute think that some profs might want that day off for travel to visit OUR families but won't take it because we take our responsibilities seriously?



• Since my Dean has said on more than one occasion that there is no correlation between increased enrollment and faculty compensation, I have a hard time believing that Penny's ilk essentially pays my salary. Even if you buy into the consumer model of higher education, why are you insisting on getting LESS for your money? Speaking of the Dean, if Penny is looking for a special outlet for her bitching, why doesn't she join in with the rest of the PTA and call him/her? She seems to have a cursory knowledge of the workings of academia, I thought she'd have thought of that. In the meantime, she and her snowflake-in-waiting can suck it up and honor their end of the academic agreement. While the professors and the mass transit authority seem to be conspiring against you, Penny, it could be a lot worse. There are plenty of folks who DON'T get to take 5 days off this week.



• I must say that after inflation (mainly in her opinion of herself) Penny's two cents (or sense as the case may be) are not worth much. Bad puns aside, I can't imagine what hell she and her brat create for the profs, but I've had similar little bastards who are the spawn of similarly deranged helicopter parents (seriously, referring to yourself as "the parent" over and over?). If I understand it correctly, momma's little snowflake wants to duck out early, get wasted, and take the typical snowflake schedule (i.e., wake up at 1, arrive late to classes from 1-3, leave early to take nap 2-6, drink thereafter...), and momma both bemoans the teachers for not teaching and for wanting her brat around to teach. There's a reason no one picks up a Penny off the street anymore--they're worthless. University positions are not the "service" industries you believe. Only half of my time is contractually bound to teaching. The other half is to research--with a third of my total time to service too (we know it doesn't add up, but quacks like Penny who sat on advisory boards somehow made 50% + 50% + 30% = 100%). Guess what the most important part is and what I actually get evaluated/promoted on? Here's a hint: it's not dealing with you or your high-school grade inflated B student (who's failing now by the way). At any rate, the truly insane part of your post is that by all accounts the teaching is up to snuff. You're not complaining that the teaching is bad...you're actually complaining that they're trying to give you what you, yourself, bitch about paying for? Wow, just wow.



• Thanks for teaching your little bastard snowflake to take revenge and throw a tantrum when one of us actually does our job and teaches. Good values you're imparting. I'm guessing that whole hit them in the "$$ book" comment is indicative of both how you taught momma's angel to spell and write and also how to fill out evals if you don't get to skip class. By the way, we know your snowflake is not a "rocket scientist," we were just hoping "the student" could at least master hygiene--next class we teach tying shoe laces. I guess "the student" will miss that one to ride the bus--at least you can give it a bath when you see it.



• We of the faculty are so sorry that your special little snowflake will come home surly because THEY HAD TO GO TO FUCKING CLASS LIKE THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO! Oh boo fucking hoo! It is parents like you that make “Intractable (but hot, according to RMP) fascists” like us want to jam dull butterknives into our ears so we don’t have to listen to shit like this. As for some of the “points” you bring up I will answer in kind. “Maybe the Professors would like to ponder this. Do you ever think about the folks who essentially pay your salaries?” The college or university where I am employed pays my salary NOT you. That is unless you are the president of KissyFace U. and it is your lovely signature I see on my paycheck. “Do you have any feelings for your "employers" and their offspring (besides contempt ?) I mean, do you like being a College Professor ? (I admit it, I read just some of the blog...)”. To reiterate, I am employed by my college or university. My students and/or their parents ARE NOT my employers. Get a dictionary or just talk to someone in higher ed to find out these simple facts. Maybe the hippie school of “Love, Peace, and Unicorns that shit Skittles” that gave you a degree (I’m making a big assumption here because I usually type the contraction for the words do not as don’t) let you run the show but that isn’t (notice the proper contraction usage) what it is like now. By the way, I LOVE my job but I HATE hearing from parents who think they know what should go on at all levels of a college so that their special water molecule (note the snowflake has melted because of the big, bad fascists have made it gain some surliness and in the process it melted) can show up all happy and shiny with tales about their 3.5 GPA that they may or may not have really earned. Since you only read some of the blog, try some more and then maybe you’ll get an idea of what it is like for those of us “teaching” right now. If you STILL don’t (damn, got it right again) get it, watch Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy” and then come back and read some more. And last but not least, “Can you honestly tell me that we are getting our money's worth, or do you teach to support your_______________ habit ? “ My “habit” seems to be a concoction of eating, sleeping, teaching, preparing for classes and labs, grading absolute shit that single-celled organisms think is pathetic, and occasionally seeing my spouse and our pets. I lead a pretty fucking boring life because of my “teaching” habit. I think that I speak for almost everyone who teaches on this site when I say that, “Yes, you are getting your money’s worth”. The bigger question that you have to ask yourself is does my precious water molecule own up to the dumb shit that they do? It is always around this time of the semester that terms like “extra credit” and “bonus points” start to grate on me but I’m sure your drip isn’t one of those now are they?

"The Regulars." Beaker Ben Imagines a Thanksgiving Unlike No Other.

What will Thanksgiving be like if my Chemistry 101 students are in charge of cooking?

Based on my typical course dropout rate, 20% will walk out of the kitchen before we are halfway through warming up the oven.

I’ll have a mountain of pointless INS and Homeland Security forms to fill out just so my foreign students can use a potato peeler.

Given the rampant cheating on campus, many of the future chefs will copy each other’s recipes, resulting in mashed turkey stuffed with green bean casserole, sprinkled with cinnamon and marshmallows. Others will sneak out, buy a roasted chicken and side dishes at Boston Market and try to pass it off as their own.

A few dopes will forget what holiday it was and bring Halloween candy.

Since the turkey has to cook at 325 degrees for 4 hours, somebody will try to turn the oven to 1300 and then complain, “math is so hard!”

Half a dozen engineering students will show up with the most high-tech meat thermometers but not know how to use them.

After burning the rolls, a student will explain, “but that’s how my high school home ec teacher told us to do it.”

They will complain to the Dean that the dessert recipe is too hard. I will be told I must allow students to substitute a carton of Wal Mart brand ice cream for homemade pumpkin pie.

After receiving failing grades for their work, they will ask if they could bake some Christmas cookies for extra credit.

Of course, supervising the students will be handled by a graduate student who learned to run a kitchen during a one-hour orientation workshop at the beginning of the year and doesn’t speak English. I’ll be on the couch watching the Cowboys game, and for that I am very thankful.

Happy Thanksgiving,
Beaker Ben!

If 12,000 Proffies Typed For 12,000 Years, We Could Never Come Up With this Shit. Penny the Parent Sends a "Boo Fucking Hoo."

Is there a site where parent's can rate their student's teachers and colleges ? I feel cheated... my kid can rate You on RateMyProfessor ... you can rate my kid on RYS ... where can I go?

Once upon a time, in the Way Dark Ages of the 70's... I served as a student appointee on a Re-appointment, Promotions and Tenure Committee. I don,t know if they do that any more, and I was at an "alternative college," but if Administrations don,'t, they should. Now that was rating, right in the $$ book. I hope they still do it, but naturally, I'd want a say too...

I appreciate that my child might not be a rocket scientist, may think morning is 1 PM, etc. But College child got Out of High School with an 89 average and No Micro management on the Parent's part. We wrote nary an essay, filled out no application... so the Student is where the Student should be on the Student's merits...

But this parent is worried. The Student has one of those Unfortunate schedules and one of those Intractable (but hot, according to RMP) fascists, I mean teachers who is making that Thanksgiving getaway darned near impossible. The only way for the Student to get out of Uni town is Greyhound... the Student will arrive at the Crossroads of America (NY Port Authority) at Midnight, because hot teacher INSISTS ALL Students attend afternoon class or be penalized grade wise. The Student is worried.... The Parent ? The Parent is mighty pissed.

So, can you good folks send me to a place where I can vent ? Where what I have to say may actually make a difference? Because I know that the Student is going to be miserable for the short time the Student is home. And so, really, the Parent wonders if having a day of Thanks is really appropriate, when the Student will still be recovering from the trip home and will be resentful in that surly vacant way that students are these days... The Parent is even beginning to wonder about the wisdom of letting the Student attend an Out of State Instituion. Maybe the Parent should have said... "No Way.." Our State or No State... One would think State Schools would be Overjoyed to have Out of State Students and that they would care if these $$$$$ machines are happy...

Maybe the Professors would like to ponder this. Do you ever think about the folks who essentially pay your salaries? Do you have any feelings for your "employers" and their offspring (besides contempt ?) I mean, do you like being a College Professor ? (I admit it, I read just some of the blog...) Can you honestly tell me that we are getting our money's worth, or do you teach to support your_______________ habit ?

Just curious...

Here's hoping you get that well deserved rest you need over the Thanksgiving break...

The Not Happy Parent...

In What's Either Terrific News For Everyone, Or a Harbinger Of This Page's Ultimate Demise...

Dear Meatheads,

I'm out. I was under the impression that my articles would be featured for a 5 week span on your pages, and I discover instead you're giving as much or more space to a group of crazzies as well.

Milo? Milo sounds like someone who's got ninety-eleven cats living in and around his bulging bookshelves. Wayne? Come on. I used to kick the shit out of a kid named Wayne. Is this the same one? Does he have a lazy eye and a lifetime bruise on his right shoulder? Mildred, Athena? Cat-lovers, clearly. Beaker Ben sounds like a guy who might be able to hang with me, he being a scientist and all.

But shit, this is not what I signed on for. What do I do know with all of these articles I've been penning? I've been putting the undergrad class in the hands of Shlomo, my top grad student, and I've been creating pathways to excellence for the bullshit profession of ours.

And now you're not getting any of it.

You didn't even make me a fucking cup!

Later,

Walt

"The Regulars." Milo Wonders Why High School English Teachers Have to Fuck Everybody Up.

What is it with high school English teachers? Is there a facility somewhere in the Midwest that breeds them for their ability to fit comfortably into the factory farm model of education? That instills in their docile minds a few basic (and wrong) rules about writing? Because my students are showing up in my freshman writing classes with a set of assumptions about writing that are not merely unproductive, but just plain dumb.

My students are not stupid. Many of them are passing calculus and physics, but their grasp of basic manuscript mechanics and standard academic usage is, to be charitable, very weak. Still, that’s stuff I can teach – it’s not very high level, but reasonably intelligent students can grasp such things pretty quickly. Even disabused of error, however, my students for the most part do not understand what an essay actually is, or does. They have been taught, near as I can tell, that an essay is a form that must be filled out neatly, or that it is some pretty thing to please a teacher with its fidelity to a diagram in an elementary rhetoric handbook. That is has anything to do with fidelity to their own thought has not occurred to the vast majority of the students in my writing classes.

For this, I blame their bovine high school English teachers. No doubt Edgy Eric will be coming after me with his red pen, but someone out there in teacherland is not doing his or her job even if Eric is. Oh, I’m sure there are some decent teachers like Eric out there in the high schools – years ago I was lucky enough to come under the tutelage of a couple of them myself – but these days, near as I can tell, the system mostly produces drones and time-servers. What’s worse, the drones and time servers obviously are not writers. And, no, I don’t expect high school teachers to be publishing in the Atlantic Monthly, but no one who took the time to craft an occasional letter to the editor of the local paper could possible believe the things many of my students tell me they have been taught in high school:

1) Never use the first person in an essay. The choice of point of view is fundamental to fulfilling the purpose of a piece of writing. Telling students they can only write in the third person is like telling a soldier he can have boots but not a gun when he goes into battle.

2) Never ask a question in an essay. Essays are about posing and answering questions. What sort of nimrod doesn’t know that? How can you pose and answer questions without, you know, writing them out?

3) Always have three body paragraphs. This leads to intellectual absurdities so grotesque they give me nightmares. This third absurdity also leads to thesis statements that assert the obvious and result in flat organization: “There are several examples of children learning moral lessons in the novels we have read,” followed by three random examples that do not have any particular relation to each other, that could be presented in any order, that do not, in short, amount to anything approaching an argument.

4) Reading for comprehension: just because a novelist describes something – genetic engineering gone haywire, pornography, violence against kitty cats – does not mean the writer approves of the practice or is recommending it; but many students arrive thinking this is true. Many students read in isolated fragments and appear unable to see relationships between ideas. Actually, I can’t blame high school teacher for this exclusively – I think a lot of it has to do with the sort of narrative entertainment available to teenagers. In most video games and TV shows there is no critical point of view, only the wash of images designed to stimulate the limbic system. There is a sense in which any verbal or visual representation is, for many of my students, “pornographic.”

I won’t even try to list the simple things my students’ high school teachers apparently have not told them – like it’s a good idea to put a title on your work other than “Essay Two.” Actually, a title like that exactly reflects the attitude my students bring to writing essays: that it is a work product, not the record of a process of thought – first you do one, then you do the second, and so on. Factory work.

I’ll conclude with a story: The other day, Sincere Sophie stops by for office hours with her second essay in hand. I’d asked her to rewrite it because she thought that an essayist who described a particular idea about the nature of the self was advocating for that idea instead of holding it up as an over-simplification, which he then went on to make more complex. (See No. 4 above.)

Sophie always comes to class and it’s clear she’s been doing the reading by the comments she makes in discussion. Sophie is intelligent and willing, but as we were discussing here essay, she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world,

“Oh, I don’t actually believe any of what I wrote in the essay – I just found something I could find examples for.”

After recovering my equanimity, I said, “That must have been a painful experience, writing an essay that way.”

“Yeah, I hate writing essays,” she replied. Well, naturally you do, my dear, I whispered to myself. “What questions would you like to answer about Conrad’s portrayal of the self?” I asked her.

“You mean I can ask a question? In high school we were told to never ask a question in an essay.”
“Well,” I replied, “the thesis statement should be a declarative statement, but there is no reason you can’t ask questions that your thesis then attempts to answer.”

“Oh.”

So we talked about what it would be like to write what she actually believed about the subject and she agreed that that would probably be more fun and more useful. I suggested we make a deal – she could rewrite her essay using questions and forgetting any other rules she had learned in high school and I would guarantee her a grade of 75 or higher. I wanted to give her a safety net. As I was talking I noticed something amazing: the dead mask dropped from her face and her posture went from slouched to alert. She left my office with what appeared to be real enthusiasm for the task of rewriting. I’m looking forward to reading that essay.

Clete from Cleveland Sends Some Quenching Thoughts to Sledgehammer Steve, He of the Texting Troubles.

Did you honestly throw not one but three people out of your classes for texting? Seriously? What the hell is wrong with you, Steve? You're upset with students for only paying half-attention to your lecture, so your response is to ask them to leave? I'm not sure I follow your logic. No, wait, I do. And it blows.

Following the same train of thought, you should also throw out anyone who mutters something quietly to their classmate, passes a note or – God forbid – daydreams. You're right. Fuck 'em. Unless you've got their undivided attention, they don't deserve to be in the same room with you.

But to be fair, you did ask for advice, so I'll indulge you.

Let them send text messages. Let them sleep. Let them fritter away their time in your class so long as it doesn't distract anyone else. I tell my students this. I tell them that they are welcome to pay attention or not, that they've paid for the class and may do with the time as they please, as long as it doesn't interfere with my teaching and others learning.

You want to talk to a classmate? That's distracting to me and the people around you. Pass a note. It's silent. Texting? Sure, I don't have to hear it. Sleep? By all means, go ahead, but don't snore or I will ask the class to point and laugh at you until you wake up.

But I warn them – they can still be called on, and they're still responsible for the material they've ignored. I tell them on the first day that if they've missed information because of their inattention, they should ask someone else because I'm not going to repeat myself.

And it works. Yes, some students text in my classes. I've had a sleeper or two. Do I worry about it? No. I openly mock them for it. Most of them get the idea pretty quickly. The ones that don't, I really don't care about. They're not making things difficult for anyone but themselves.

So I'll ask again – What the hell is wrong with you? You've won a teaching award. You've got tenure. This shouldn't be an issue.

Several Quenching Replies on Texting.

• Chizzill, Steve-a-rino. Sure, I’ve had – and still have – students texting in class all the time. Know what I do? I let the little bastards text away, as long as they aren’t bothering other students. For the smart kiddies, it’s really no worse than doodling in their notebooks, just like you and I used to do in boring-ass lecture classes before cell phones existed. Hell, I drag out my old Sociology 100 notes every now and then just to see the picture I drew of Dr. Knob being hanged, along with the caption DIE KNOB DIE. For the dumb kiddies, it’s their own fault if they don’t pay attention and then flunk out/lose their academic eligibility / disappoint their grandmothers. My job in the classroom is to present the material and help the kids make sense of it all; it’s Susie Snowflake’s job to choose between paying attention and exercising her thumbs.



• Did you talk about this on the first day? I have a section in my syllabus that states that the use of electronics in class for non-class-related purposes is rude to me and disruptive to the other students' ability to concentrate. I cheerfully go over the policy on the first day of class, then I enforce the policy consistently. Think of it like working with three-year-olds. It doesn't matter whether they feel guilty or not; if they violate the rules, they suffer the consequences of not being in class. I'm often tempted to give an assignment right after throwing a student out, since the syllabus also states that in-class assignments cannot be made up under any circumstances. Throw 'em out, don't give 'em the notes, and show no pity for their tearful little eyes when they fail the exam.



• I teach one of those 100-student things, but since I don't take attendance and my detailed PowerPoint lectures are all on-line, the crowd is cut down to about 70. Still, big enough for texters to be anonymous. So, what do I do about texting? Precisely nothing. If someone wants to smirk or scowl intently into their lap, well, that's their business. Of course I appreciate Sledgehammer's colorful rage, but different things elicit these feelings from me. What bothers me about students is their "do I haftoo" expectation. Especially: "Do we haftoo read the whole chapter?"This can get me near exploding: Do I have a gun to your head? You're an adult. You chose to enroll in this class. You don't have to do anything.
  Of course what they're getting at is that I do have a gun to their heads because I control grades and thus (they think) their future. But that's just an excuse so they don't have to make any decisions -- don't have to think about whether they want to read the whole chapter. I thus refuse to play the "haftoo" game. Grades are the thing that makes teaching a chore for all of us. Let's get away from focusing on grades and conduct our interactions as if the students are attending this lecture for the same reason that I attend campus talks and conferences: out of interest. If I'm not going to be an authoritarian about reading the whole chapter, then I sure as hell can't be a police man about texting. Students, you are invited to behave in my class as I would behave when I'm seated in a large auditorium, which may involve quietly typing up my to do list on my laptop when I've gotten enough of what I need from the lecture.



• I clearly state in my syllabus that use of cell phones, laptops, Ipods, or any other electronic gadgets is simply not allowed in class; the college has a policy against cell phone use in the classroom. These kids have no excuse for using them. If I catch students using them in class (I teach film studies so they seem to think I can't see the ridiculous bright colored light during screenings in a dark room), I yell at them to put it away. I had a student one night continue to use his phone after telling him 3 times to stop. Same student only got a 30 on his mid-term because he didn't read the directions completely. Same student left after the break last week and didn't come back for the screening. I wish these kids knew a world in which these infernal gadgets did not exist, but mostly they don't. Even more, I wish they didn't think that being in touch with their friends or whoever 24/7 was more important than paying attention in class for a few hours.



• Steve needs to set his ego aside. From the sounds of it, the students aren't being disruptive and his only issue here is with their lack of attention span, which he is interpreting as a lack respect. Well guess what, Steve-o: Not every since student in your class is actually going to care about what you have to say, and there's nothing you or I can do about it. You need to instead focus on the students who actually want to be there and actually appreciate having the shot at a good education. And if you really care about it this much, you need to outline proper class behaviour and the consequences for violating proper behaviour during the first class, not start snatching people's personal property halfway through the semester. I can already imagine what your evaluations are going to look like.



• I don't do anything about students texting in class. First, I teach small classes (20-30 students in most of my classes), and I don't see it happening all the time. If it were happening a lot, I'd ask them to stop. I do not think though that I would get angry. Why waste my time and energy getting angry with them? I could argue that if students are texting during a class they most likely are doing so because they are bored. I imagine that few texts are true emergencies. I could say that if the class were more engaging they would be less likely to be texting. And while that may be true, it doesn't excuse them from texting in class if they are bored. That behavior is rude. But in the end, they are only hurting themselves. They aren't really hurting you, me, or anyone else. So why waste time and energy getting angry?

Sledgehammer Steve Breaks Our Sunday Siesta With An Extra Thirsty on Texting.

So I'm wondering what others do about students texting in class. This problem is getting worse all the time. I've caught students texting in my classes three times this semester. And I'm not teaching any giant mass lecture courses, either.

The first time was in my 35-person intro class. This girl is sitting in the second row and starts texting about 3 minutes before the end of class (I, obviously, am still lecturing). I walk up to her, snatch the stupid phone out of her hands and throw it on my desk at the front of the room, declaring loudly that if she ever does that in my class again, don't come back. Then without pause I resume the end of the lecture.

The second time was in my 20-person mid-level course. I see a girl sitting in the back, studiously looking at her lap."Mary," I say, "What are you doing?" I had a good guess.

She replies, in all seriousness, "I have to send a really important text."

Now I'm seeing red and imagining throwing her phone out of the window.

"Please leave."

I wait until the door closes behind her before getting back to the lecture, knowing full well that my lecture isn't nearly as important as whatever empty and vapid text message she desperately needed to send.

The third time was in the same intro class as the first example. Different girl. In the front row! I'm convinced the students think we are on TV -- they can see us, but we can't see them. I often have the sense that when I address them directly, the students have this sense of wonderment like, "Hey, the dude on TV is talking to ME!" But anyway, I give this girl my mean look and tell her to leave the class. She gives me the "I-know-I'm-busted-but-I'm-still-not-embarrassed" look.

Maybe I'm just the most boring lecturer in the world. I did win the university teaching award, so I'm guessing I don't suck harder than average. But I am giving real thought to bringing my double-faced sledgehammer to class and putting on the syllabus that anyone using a cell phone in class in any manner will get their phone smashed into atoms. The provost will probably take my award back. Screw him, I have tenure.

What do other people do?

The Return of Job Finder!

Tenure Track Faculty Position

Department of Ennui

The Department of Ennui at Bufkegpt College, a residential, liberal arts college located just about as far from anywhere you’d really want to live as possible, is seeking applicants for a full-time (except we only pay you for 9 months – you have your summers “free”), tenure-track position that begins immediately before you’re expected to start teaching 3 brand-new courses for which you haven’t prepared.

Rank and salary will be commensurate with the AAUP average for an equivalent position at small, liberal arts colleges, minus 30%. Applicants should demonstrate a commitment to teaching at the most dumbed-down, undemanding undergraduate level imaginable, and will be expected to completely rewrite the mind-numbingly dull, 30-year-old lecture and laboratory courses in the introductory ennui sequence in their first semester.

The chosen candidate will also be expected to provide other courses in their area of expertise, which will be hated by the students because they will probably require real work, unappreciated by your colleagues because you won’t also have time to teach freshman remedial ennui, and ignored by the administration because they will be too specialized to count for any core or departmental requirement.

The successful candidate will be dedicated to finding another position within 3 years, enthusiastic about offering courses which they are unqualified to teach but are desperately needed to fulfill essential requirements that half the senior class needs to graduate, and develop a progressively more moribund research program that incorporates bright and enthusiastic undergraduates who will eventually burn out upon realizing that the college has no intention of really supporting an undergraduate research program.

Interested applicants should submit their CV, cover letter, statements of teaching and research philosophy, and a list of all medications they are currently taking to last year’s new hire who is currently expected to take on all the shit jobs in the department, including chairing search committees.

Review of applications begin whenever we can all get together in the same place without someone saying “I can only stay for 15 minutes!” and will continue until the departmental infighting and backstabbing reach a fever pitch, at which point the Dean will pull the line until next year. Then all this crap will start over again.

Bufkegpt College is an Equal Opportunity Employer

committed to Puffing-Up its Own Marginal Reputation

While Spending as Little as Possible and

Blowing Smoke Up Prospective Students’ Asses.

We Finish Week One of "The Regulars" With Athena From Allentown, Already Swatting Students Reaching to Her From Spring 2009.

Our Spring term doesn't officially begin until mid-January, but for me, the next semester lurched into gear a couple weeks ago, when I first started getting emails from students begging to get into closed sections of my classes.

I teach a course that is prerequisite for one of the health professions programs on our campus. There are two sections each semester and (usually) one in the summer (which I don't teach); for the regular fall and spring terms, I'm the only game in town. Space is tight on our campus, and it's hard to get a big room and harder to change. These classes are pretty big--generally 100/section in the spring term, and up to 200/section in the fall. Oh, and I have no control at all over registration; the online system keeps a waiting list of up to 5 people, but I frequently have many more students than that waiting to get in.

So I've started getting the emails, as I do every semester, this time a total of 9 weeks before the start of classes: students REALLY REALLY need the class this spring or they'll have to wait a year to get into their programs, their lives will be over, their scholarships will be lost, their gerbils will die. It's dire. And they'll REALLY appreciate it if I can find a way to get them into the class.

Where do they get the idea that spaces in intro-level classes are awarded based on need? Registration is first come, first served. I have no control over this. And I'm not about to sign someone in ahead of 5 people on the waiting list. Those 5 might need the class just as badly, but they're going through the system to get it. Apparently that idea doesn't occur to some of these people.

I also have students who offer to sit on the floor if I'll just let them in, or who inform me that they've counted the number of seats in the listed classroom and there is plenty of space available. But just as we don't award spaces based on need, we don't set enrollment limits based solely on the number of chairs available--even if we could assume that all the seats and desks in a fixed-seating lecture hall actually work, which in my experience is never the case. It's very hard, in a class of 100-200 or more people, to deter cheating on exams, and I'm just unwilling to have every seat filled during an exam. I can't always manage to arrange them with every other seat empty during an exam, but I try to have at least one in three columns empty, just to make it easier to watch for wandering eyes. It's not perfect, but it's better than having them sit cheek-by-jowl.

This fall, the current semester, I increased the registration limit from 60 to 100 for the evening class (and it filled). For most of our students, even 60 would have been their biggest class ever; being in a class of 100 allows them to feel anonymous, insignificant, lost in the shuffle. For many of my students, my course is the first of their college career; many are first-generation college students, and many are returning college students in their thirties and forties, or older. I could serve them much better if there were fewer of them. Or more of me. I could have higher retention rates, more students passing. An evening class with 100 people--well, it just seems obscene, somehow, much worse than a day class of 200.

Maybe instead of my being annoyed at the students for their sense of entitlement, and their being annoyed at me for not setting #butts = # chairs, we should all just be annoyed at the system that isn't serving any of us--the system that admits more students to the university than there are spaces in classes (then brags about increasing enrollments); that keeps students on a treadmill toward graduation, often leaving 100-level general-education courses until year 4 or 5, because they can't get in sooner; that is unwilling to pay more people to teach more sections, so that students can have a better learning experience. Maybe it's the administration we should be annoyed with, or the state legislature.

But what good would that do?

Where Paula from Pulliam Speaks For A Shitload of Others When She Says, "Bunnies, SHUDDAFUKUP!"

The mail on the "poor bunnies" post is pouring in, and the thing's only been up a couple of hours. The note below captures the general "mood" of our readers. Enjoy the flava:

Where the hell did these idiots do their grad work, and what in the world do they think working for a living entails, uni prof or not? This made me want to puke--their respective precious day-to-day jobs wearing them down as they have to actually do the relatively well-paid work for which they were educated, and for which they apprenticed in grad school. What do they think the rest of the world does in the morning when they wake up and roll over and contemplate what they have to do that day?

"Committee meetings"? "Grading papers"? "Moving across the country"? "Finding a new home"? "The awful existential freedom of having to be"? "Navigating the political and social terrain of the university?"

Well, bust my heart--what a horrible life. How can we make it up to you--you who got a PhD without apparently being aware of the whole generally privileged universe of which that is a part? If the worst part of your life is that you have a to-do list that includes the essentials of your job description, your life is pretty damn good. Just read what you wrote, you fools; consider the literally millions of folks [some of them academics] who would kill to have your professional 'problems.' Just what did you think you'd be doing?

And by the way, what did you do during your first year on the job that kept you from understanding what being a grown-up is really about? You can no longer "bask in the glow of being a professor"? So you mean you actually DID bask in the glow of being a professor--you think you're that hot stuff? "Oh," you cry, "But I put in so many long years to get my PhD." Lucky you. Didn't we all. Think of all the freeway fliers who'd just love to have the problem of finding a new house in a new area where they can settle into a relatively secure job [if you do what you're supposed to do], even if they have all that horrible pressure of grading and committee work and publishing.

I'm year-to-year, 4 and 4 [plus those extra directed studies that need doing every semester] and genuinely thrilled to have it: boring committees, snowflake students, course and advising overloads, and all. What I can't abide are you over-privileged whiners, who are--in fact--just like our relatively recent snowflake students, now brandishing your newly minted PhDs and griping about how tough your lives are.

Suck it up. Come the revolution I hope you're the first three to lose your jobs. THEN you'll have something to wake up and worry about.

Poor Bunnies Come Up Against the Will-Shredding Second Year.

I know y'all are enamored of your big sisters over there at the Cramp-icle of Higher Education, but a very recent "First Person" article has just proven to me again what whiners there are coming into the profession.

Three second year proffies have found that the honeymoon is over and that there's WORK to be done. Poor bunnies. Here are some relevant and revealing quotes:

• In my second year on the tenure track, I am finding that I am less and less excited about it all...it's not easy to just sit back and bask in the glow of being a professor anymore.


• What I once fondly viewed as a beautiful lifestyle and culture has become a long list of tasks, failures, and accomplishments.


• I spend my time sitting in committee meetings, grading endless papers, and navigating the political and social terrain of the university. Is the glow gone?


• Through the chaos of learning a new job, moving across the country, and finding a new home, I realize now, I lost part of my self, the part of me that loves education.


• As we move through our second year, we are finding that the rigors of the professoriate are beginning to weigh heavily.

Oh dear, and it's only year 2. If this is indicative of second year proffies around the country, I have a feeling the job market is going to open a lot wider when these puffs start to fall by the wayside.

Seriously, are we preparing grad students so poorly that THIS is what we get? "Ohhh, it's so hard."

Oh Dear Lord, Why Did We Do This? Big Thirsty Replies, and We're Just Going to Turn The Computer Off Until Everyone's Done Hating Everyone Else.

• Computer Science profs have to be the geekiest. When I went to graduate school in mathematics I thought I'd be surrounded by nothing but geeks, but I was pleasantly surprised--the faculty and grad students were pretty normal. Then I discovered where all the geeks I knew in college went--the CS department. All they can talk about--all they think about--are algorithms. Just like so many narcissists who always redirect any conversation to focus on themselves, CS junkies can turn any discussion to the topic of algorithms. Enough already!
  
• Only the genuinely and hopelessly uncool care if they are cool. Philosophy professors care if they are cool. Therefore, philosophy professors are among the uncool.
  
• Have you ever walked down the hallway of the English department? It's the saddest place in the world. Bookish eunuchs and emasculating shrews. You can't swing a cat around without knocking over a dozen maladapted and uncool humans.
  
• I would like to put forward engineering profs (including my dad) as the geekiest. They can't dress themselves, for starters. After many years of struggling, my father has finally settled on only buying blue shirts, and thus always knowing that he matches. Once before he came to this conclusion, I saw him leave the house in two different plaids. When I look around the engineering department on campus, I see many other profs in blue shirts, usually accompanied by an ill-fitting suit and mis-matched socks. And a beard (yes, even the ladies).
  
• I did an undergraduate minor in philosophy, back when I was flirting with the idea of getting paid to sit on my ass all day and wax poetic about esoteric nonsense in lieu of doing real work. During that time, I never in my life met more socially retarded people who are completely unaware of their handicap. I mean, philosophy nerds have it all - poor dress, poor hygeine, poor social skills, you name it. Honestly, have you ever tried to actually talk to these people? You can't get a word in edgewise without "Descartes this" and "Nietzsche that" - or hearing a disjointed rant about determinism or social constructivism. Yeah, reciting that garbage has gotten a TON of people laid.
  
• Who's the biggest nerd? Philosophers! And I *am* a philosopher, and therefore ought to know. Go to our biggest conference, the Eastern Division meeting of the American Philosophical Association and look around at the evening "smoker." Jesus H. Christ. First of all, there's something like a 5:1 male:female ratio in our profession. And half the females are cat-loving, euro-eyeglasses-wearing, flat-chested little vegans. The half dozen good-looking women at the APA smoker are surrounded by hordes of nerdy guys trying to hit them up. It's just plain embarrassing. And the guys-- if you like soft-looking, bearded, bald-pated guys in nondescript tweed, you're in the right place. And the APA is what passes for formal wear in philosophy. And come on, who are the stars in philosophy? One of the most famous guys in the philosophy of mind has long shaggy blond hair, a pot belly, and wears tie-dies, like an over-the-hill rocker. The most famous living logician is practically autistic and probably needs people to dress him, feed him, and lead him to the lectern. Still we worship him. We are pathetic.
  
• At my university we have a whole school – not just one department – that takes the nerdiness prize. Without a doubt, the School of Engineering is the winner. The real competition would be which department within Engineering has the nerdiest of the nerds. I don’t spend a lot of time roaming the halls of the Engineering buildings on campus, but I’d have to say that the software engineers are the nerdiest of all. Faculty in the School of Business, by the way, think they’re very natty, not nerdy, but they have their own kind of nerdiness with their blazers and gray slacks. It is really only we humanists who know how to dress.
  
• The History department! No contest. We could win with half of us on the DL. How about the professor who walks around campus in the winter wearing a thin coat and a GIANT fur Cossack hat? No? We also have a Brown PhD who once delivered a 45-minute lecture with his fly waaay open. And a women's historian who went through an anti-bathing phase. But here's our closer: the skinny Cornell PhD who scurries across campus bent over looking at his feet. He will never make eye contact with anyone, ever. His publications are numerous and well-respected, but halfway through the semester he still gets lost on his way to his thrice-weekly lecture, in a giant classroom building a mere 100 yards away from the History offices.

"The Regulars!" Weepy Wayne Does His Best to Update Some Fogies on the Modern Classroom And Its Hordes of "Cell Phone Accessorized Mannequins."

Leave it to Weepy Wayne to take a crack at someone who actually LIKES RYS. Wayne has been working his way through the November archives looking for dolts to skewer, and he's settled on Polite Phillip. So, if you please, enjoy the flava below:

My Liege,

"Alarmed" by the virtual spectacle of “professionals (who) treat their jobs or their students with quite so much distaste and condescension”?

I fear your smartly knotted ascot may be choking off blood to grandpa’s attic. If I may, permit me to go Socratic on the gilded soap bubble you call home. Instead of getting higher and mightier than you apparently are, consider instead, “Why does this situation exist?” Even better, Glauc-on Glauc-off, ask yourself: “Am I somehow responsible?”

Straight up. When was the last time you set foot in a classroom? Not the PowerPoint Potemkin Village propped up by tenure-chasing toadies and your bowing and scraping grad students. I’m talking about that cramped cinderblock chamber of horrors across campus where I work. You know, the place where Chaucer goes to die.

You see, in the classroom, there’s no catered buffet. No glossy photo-ops. Only those revenue-enhancers the rest of us call students. Try not to suffer vertigo while standing proximate to the pitiless revolving door of failure that is College Writing I. Now grab a fistful of red pens and grade this sterile lump of essays masquerading as college writing. Feast your aching retinas on a mobius strip of platitudes, clichés, and bromides, all served on a wrinkly bed of faded toner, garnished with drab Wiki entries and incongruous cut-n-pastes wrenched from slapasspapers4hire.com, all riddled with wor7rds spelt like thiz, and served cold, at least a week after the due date.

Now, go back to the classroom. Wave your arms in desperation and attempt to warn a somnolent roomful of cell-phone accessorized mannequins that they’re walking headlong into a globalized, free-market meatgrinder. Insist that language holds value beyond the suffocating swells of advertising copy they are awash in and how technology is not a life preserver, but a cinderblock. Keep calm when they yawn and take a call, on their way out the door, in the middle of your class.

Safe behind administrative lines, these shrieking insults and flaming epithets hurled through still cyberspace might chatter your china and bother the flame of your candelabra. But those distant echoes you hear are the direct hits we’re taking on the front lines. We slink back to our office. Dash off a caustic post. Exhale. Then march back to the trenches because we love teaching and want to be there for those who make this worthwhile.

You don’t understand this because you probably haven’t taught since dot-matrix printing was all the rage. The classroom you remember no longer exists. Bureaucrats obliterated the quaint construct of town v. gown years ago. The barbarians are no longer at the gate. They’re snoring in the back row. You like Ike because he’s a sweet old relic. Together, you can wax nostalgic for the Taft Administration and the days when a long-lost University-funded dental plan sprang for that set of Dutch Elm choppers. But does Ike have anything for that special magic binder you might keep for an army of adjuncts racing in and out of the parking lot?

Who swung open the gates to this campus? Was it you? Who deals with the consequences?

But you’re right, “I suppose that's neither here nor there.”

Oh Sweet Jesus, Here Comes Another Bright-Eyed Proffie, Courage, Integrity...Oh, Dear. Call Us When You Need Some Scotch.

Let me just say how much I love this site. I started reading in a couple of years ago, when I was a senior in college and was starting to seriously consider going to grad school, with the ultimate goal of being a college professor. While reading your site (in combination with reading PhD Comics) was not enough to dissuade me from pursuing grad school, it did make me much more prepared for what I would be facing. I did not enter grad school with blissful naivete, and although I am still appalled at the behavior of some students, I am not shocked, nor is my will broken. So thank you for that.

I also want to thank you for giving me an appreciation for how great my department has been thus far. Only two months into my first year in my MA program, I caught my first cheaters. I won't bore you with the details, we've all seen cheating before, but I will say that this was about as cut-and-dried case of cheating that you will ever see. At first my instructor (who is a recent graduate of the MA program I'm in, and therefore not especially experienced in these matters, although he too had caught cheaters as a TA) and I were rather giddy. "Take that you dirty rotten cheaters. You are so totally failing this test." But as we were faced with the reality that the students were not going to accept the 0 on the test but were going to persist in lying, that enthusiasm for upholding the standards of academia quickly faded. We had to meet with the administrative head of the department, then with the administrative head and the cheaters individually, blah, blah, blah, more lies, more lies. And threats. I can't forget the threats. One day after class, one of the miscreants approached the instructor to inform him that he didn't want to take this any farther, but "oh by the way, I'm going to see the chancellor after this, who happens to be a friend of mine." Oh really? Is he now? Well you know what? You just went from being an idiot cheating, lying student to being a complete asshole. Good job.

I don't know how you all do it. The instructor and I had the complete backing of the head of our department and the administrative head, which from reading RYS I gather is rather unusual, but I still felt like if it were up to me, I would have given up the whole process and just let the kids pass the class, regardless of how they did for the rest of the semester. I can't imagine having to go through all of that, without any support, only to have the decision replaced by some bleeding heart administrator. No one should have to deal with that crap, but you have to do it all the time. I can only hope that by the time such decisions are mine, I will have the courage to stand up for the integrity of my classes.

But even now, my situation isn't closed. Both students are still in the class and one in particular, the "friend" of the chancellor, has been particularly vocal the past few classes. All benign and encouraging comments, unless you know what's behind them. The instructor will be out of town in a couple of weeks and I will have the class to myself, and I have to tell you, I'm dreading how he will act then.

How Retarded Is This?

Conversation cops step in to school students
by CARLY WEEKS
Toronto Globe and Mail
November 19, 2008

Your friend's new fuchsia fedora might be hideous. But don't call it gay, or you might get a language lesson from the conversation cops.

Students at Queen's University who sprinkle their dialogue with an assortment of "homo" or "retarded" could find out the hard way that not everyone finds their remarks acceptable.

The Kingston university has hired student facilitators to step in when they overhear homophobic slurs, remarks bashing women or racially tinged insults, along with an array of other language that could be deemed offensive.

The rest of the story.

And some reactions.

And some more.

Falafel Felix Finds Food Court Pedagogy.

Every year students and their parents wait for a national survey of post-secondary schools. This survey contains the information they will use to make the decision of where to spend those shrinking dollars for tuition.

Today I learned that my school had done it. We had earned a top spot on the survey. Not for graduate studies or research; not for library services; not for published professors. None of that matters. We are number one for food services.

That's right...food services. So take your publications, your windowed offices, and your touch tone telephones and shove them up your Wicked Walter. Our food court is the best in the land.

You can go to the Japanese counter and get rice with your choice of beef or chicken. Maybe go to the Chinese counter and get noodles with beef or chicken, or, for a change, go to Greek counter and get a salad with your choice of beef or chicken.

It's no wonder students are fucked up when a nationally recognized rating service even includes issues like the food court when they rate the schools. Somewhere out there a school is looking at a lower rating because, in spite of excellent faculty and students, their A&W is not as big as ours.

My new class motto is Come For The Lecture, Stay For The Falafel.

"The Regulars!" Milo From Manchester On Student Invisibility & Passivity.

On some Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I feel as if I’ve had a stroke. This semester I have a freshman Comp class that, through some mysterious process of self-sorting, has arranged itself in the room so that on my left are ten or so ordinary students who behave in ordinary ways and on the right are ten others who, well, simply are not there at all. Like I said, it’s as if I’ve had a stroke that has wiped out half my visual field. Except that I can see them, of course – it’s just that they are practicing to be invisible. And getting pretty good at it, I must say – by the second week of the term I had, as usual, worked my aging brain hard to memorize their names, but I look at them now at mid-semester and draw a blank. They have erased themselves from my mental roll sheet.

There are always students who sit passively through class, but they don’t usually sort themselves out quite so starkly as this lot. Practically speaking, it’s not much of a problem: I just conduct the class standing in front of the responsive group, though this gives me pause, a little, as if I am somehow responsible for the invisibility of the right-hand group, the ghosts. They have worked hard to be invisible – why should disturb them? Recently, however, I decided to do a little investigating, run a couple of experiments. At first, I just sidled over to the right side of the room as I spoke. Sure enough, they were still working at being invisible, flickering in and out of existence, looking, looking down at their desks, fiddling with their pens, though made a little nervous, it seemed, by my proximity.

I decided – in the interest of science, you understand – to try calling on a couple of them. Just to see what would happen. We were in the midst of a discussion of the opening chapters of The Quiet American and a number of the visible students had given their general reactions to the two main characters, Fowler and Pyle. At an early stage of a discussion like this not much is really required to participate – all you need is a reaction, however superficial. So, digging deep into my memory banks, I came up with a name:

“Nancy, what do you think?”

“Uh, sorry. What was the question?”

“Never mind. Jim, what do you think about Fowler?”

“Who?”

With that, I walked back over to the other side of the room – from the land of the dead to that of the living. It bothers me to think that fifty percent of this class has chosen invisibility so early in their academic careers. Wouldn’t it be pretty to imagine that they are live wires in their Chemistry or History classes, but one suspects they are practicing invisibility in those places too.

When I first began teaching I would have taken this great passive silent invisibility to heart. I would have stewed about it at home and worried at it with colleagues in the corridor. These days, I let it go. As a practical matter, there is not much I can do about their passivity. (The reader may insert here the obligatory RYS refrain: I’m a good teacher, I’m prepared, I show enthusiasm, etc. etc.) These students have made choices – or have had choices made for them – that I have little access to. For many of them, I think, a year or two of national service, as proposed by president-elect Obama, might serve to wake them up – some, though, are always going to be time-servers at best, reactionary voters at worst.

I’m basically an existentialist (You should see my collection of berets!) and it’s pretty clear, as noted, that these students have made some kind of choice. And even if they are in my class against their will, they have choices open to them. They could get up and leave, or never show up. I’d have more respect for them this way and they might have more respect for themselves. Or, they could wake up and participate. Ideally, they would make interesting trouble because that’s what being a student, as opposed to a time-server, is all about. Anything would be better – for the ghosts, for the class – than this willful stupidity. Well, willful stupidity is a choice too, come to think of it. I’m sorry for them, but I have choices to make as well. I have a class to teach, with at least ten living students who deserve my attention.

"Okay, Okay, Okay. We're All Nerds. But Who Takes the Cake?" This Week's Big Thirsty Plumbs Our Deepest Fears.

So, all proffies are nerds, right, sorta? I mean how can we not be? All those years of school have sucked out so much of our ability to simply look cool in a car or to wear our pants at the right height.

But surely there's one department where the truly heinous geeks go to die. (I'll confess I'm a Philosophy proffie, and therefore, at one extreme end of the coolness scale...meaning, the COOL end. Nobody swings it like us!)

Q: But, who are the geekiest of all? Which department takes the cake for being the flat-out-can't-dress-and-has-never-gotten-laid geekiest of all? Oh, and prove it with a description of your favorite colleague, the standard bearer for the whole geeky mess.

A: Send replies here.

"The Regulars." Beaker Ben from Bethany Beach Tries to Sneak Some Cat-Blogging Past Us.

It’s an honor for me to be a regular here at RYS. (It’s borderline lunacy on their part.) So I can really write anything I want?

6:30 am
Today, I woke up with my kitty, Mr. Winkles, meowing at me for some milk. Now, Mr. Winkles knows that he only gets milk on Caturdays - I mean, Saturdays. ; ) SILLY Mr. Winkles!!! But he was SO CUTE that I decided to ...

Oh, I can write about anything but that. Fine, I won’t waste my catblogging talents on you people.

Let’s talk about my chemistry students.

IM Irene: Put away your cell phone during an exam. Yes, I know that it has a calculator feature. It has another feature that lets you text your roommate to look up and answer and send the exam questions to students in my afternoon class. Buy something else with a calculator feature, like a calculator.

Deluded Derik: You told me, “I’ve seen all this in high school, so I figure I don’t have to study.” That’s odd. I saw Star Wars but it didn’t make me a Jedi. You’ll be pleased to learn that your beloved advanced placement IB super-high school chemistry course is helping you get the same grade as ...

Larry the lump: I don’t mean to pick on you, Larry. One or two lumps ooze into my class every year. On the one hand, lumps already know that they are going to fail my class even before they look at the syllabus, so at least they aren’t disappointed. You guys also pay as much tuition as any other student and God knows we need more of that coming in these days. You don’t disturb the class once you realize that a lot of the students actually understand this stuff. Actually, I can think of a lot of worse students than lumps. Yay lumps!

Brian the Brainiac: You – I like you. You’ll go places, hopefully into my lab and do a kickass undergraduate research thesis. Just stop lecturing me about what went wrong when the chemical reaction I’m demonstrating to your class got a little too, er, energetic. This shit’s hard to do. I just make it look easy. Now come up to the front of the classroom and help me put out this fire.

What Should Mildred Do?

We thought we'd opened up the wrong mailbag this morning, dozens of friendly and supportive emails about Medicine Hat Mildred. Oh, sure, there were a few crackpots who wanted her not to whine and a few longtimers who reminded us that we're supposed to be rating students, but all in all it was pretty nice. There were some dissenting thoughts that we thought had some merit, so we chose a couple of pieces to represent what folks were buzzing about, Mildred-wise at least:

What should Mildred do? Quit trying; there are only so many hours in the day. Decide which she likes best: teaching, research, or parenting. Commit to making that a priority and save the energy squandered on moping about the other two pursuits for the one to which she committed. Clearly right now, it's parenting, followed by teaching, with research a distant third. This is sensible; she's tenured and she can teach and research even after she's old, frail, blind, and deaf but there's no such thing as putting off the parenting until a more convenient time. Mildred should stop kidding herself that she might somehow find the time to do all she wants to do. There is a physical limit - before I got this cushy gig, I was a wage slave and my hands would shake with exhaustion when I woke up in the morning, but I knew that if I called in sick, I'd lose 20% of my weekly paycheck. I found the time to go to work because I had to. I found the time to volunteer after work because I wanted to. I found the time to sleep - once a week on Sundays. It's not like finding your lost car keys. If it's important enough, Mildred will find the time to do what she wants or needs to on an almost unconscious level, just like she found the time to cook Rice Krispie treats and sterilize the kitchen.

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Much as I'm pleased to see Canadian content on RYS (Medicine Hat! Hoowee!) I found Mildred's post on life/work balance quite painful. Yes, it's difficult to balance life and work, and yes, women have it harder because the burden of parenting still lands primarily on us. This applies across all occupations, and I would argue that the relative flexibility of academic life (vs, the cashier's job at Walmart that Mildred has avoided by obtaining tenure) allows faculty more time to spend with children than most other folks. Work/life balance in academe means learning how to say no (eg. to becoming a regular poster for RYS if you're having trouble finding time to do your research), and avoiding perfectionism: you can buy Rice Krispie squares and hire somebody to clean your kitchen. Oh, and stop beating yourself up about not publishing, it will come.

Beulah from Boise Tells the Empty Office Proffie To Quit Being So Damn Creepy!

What the fuck is up with the lonely "empty office" proffie, so desperately looking for students to come to her office hours that she has regressed back to high school with her unresolved popularity/acceptance issues?

First, stop trying so damn hard. Like dogs, students -- and your colleagues -- can smell desperation, and it stinks like old man fart in a public toilet. You want to know why students are hanging out with Prof. Dull-As-Ditchwater and Dr. Mousy at all hours of the afternoon? Because those guys and gals own their dullness and mousy-ness and don't give a hot damn if people like them or not -- they not only let their freak flag fly but probably burned it in protest. Hence, students don't feel like their being used to gratify some over-educated, adolescent ego. They also might have ditched the instructor-student power relationship and are hanging out with their (one or two mildly developed) students as adults. You're acting like you're fifteen. Turn off the "soft music" and stop staring pensively out the sliver of a window. Get a life -- turn on network television, go watch a movie, make friends offline, and have a joke in your pocket so you have something normal to talk about.

Second, give students something to come to you about outside of class. I disagree with the assholes who think more, harder assignments will have them lined up in the halls. Those are the same jerk-offs who want an audience for another two hours while they masturbate to the sound of their own voice. Rather, engage kids with things they know they won't be tested over. You'll keep the morons at bay while those one or two who are genuinely interested in your discipline might want to stop by and "shoot the breeze" because you gave them something to think about. Students don't "drape" themselves on office furniture to talk about their research paper, but they will kick back if they feel like their grade doesn't depend on it. Lighten up and give their brains a little breathing room -- at least, the few who aren't brain dead already.

Finally, if your school is anything like mine, most student organizations need a faculty advisor. Get involved in a campus activity. Don't be the freak who's at every soccer game and music recital, but have an activity where students can see you outside of the academic environment at least once a semester. The chair for my master's thesis was also advisor to our department's honor society; we used to make fun of him because he was such a tight ass until the group went out for pancakes one Saturday morning and he regaled us with tales of a crazy ass internship he had one summer. Suddenly, he was cool because he got us. Getting off campus makes you a human being, unless you're going for that whole Elijah complex and want them to think you ascend into heaven after every class period.

But most of all, stop lurking and listening to other people's conversations in the hallway. It's creepy.

Edgy Eric from Erie Puts a Pentel Hit Out on Vince from Vermont.

Vince from Vermont’s recent post makes me want to stab him with my red pen. So, you think you’ve some insight into every Snowflake’s high school English classroom? After Carrie’s description, does it suddenly become clear to you why one wittle workshop meeting went awry?

While I do not represent every English teacher across the nation, I can certainly speak for myself and my colleagues. Step into one of our classrooms and you will see writing conferences and group discussions … on a regular basis.

I am angered and offended by Vince’s generalization that we high school teachers fail to churn out responsible students. During the course of one school year, I teach freshmen nine novels, two plays (including Romeo and Juliet), grammar, writing, a myriad of short stories, and a freakishly large selection of poetry. I require students to think critically about the materials I present in class. I make them write, rewrite, and rewrite again until their papers are up to my department’s standards. This may not seem like much to you big-time proffies, but I would like to highlight one important fact that turns what I can accomplish in one school year into an honest-to-goodness miracle: I do not get to work with students who have jumped through the high school hoops and have been accepted into higher academia. Some of my students have fourth grade reading levels and sometimes forget how to spell their own names – you know, the ones who will most likely never sit at a desk in Vince’s classroom.

While no self-respecting teacher can boast a 100% pass rate, I can say with confidence that those students who do make it through (and even some who don't) leave this high school English teacher’s classroom with a sense of responsibility that did not come about from an overdose of worksheets. And when they finish with my class, I pass them on to colleagues who share my philosophy and continue to assist students in their development as critical readers, writers, and thinkers.

I’m putting my red pen away for now, Vince, but consider yourself warned.

Say Howdy to Mildred From Medicine Hat, Another "Regular." (Those Looking for Walt's 2nd of 30 Promised Posts Will Have to Wait...and Wait.)

I have pondered long and hard on what to write about in my first post as an RYS "Regular." (Deeply honoured, etc etc.)

There are the students, but y'all have that subject so nicely covered already that I have very little to say there. I visit this site every day for my daily dose of smackdown. It makes my whole day. I get from RYS the same kind of satisfaction we all get from watching Nanny 9-1-1 - however bad your children are they are never within an order of magnitude as bad as the little monsters on that show. And no matter how bad my students get, they are never (so far, knock wood) nearly as bad as the weasels I read about here.

I teach in a public institution, and we don't get many rich entitled brats whose Daddy built the west wing of the library. We don't have a medical school so we're missing most of the rotten little cheaters, too. The Dean will back me up all the way if I nail a plagiarist to the wall or fail some slacker's sorry ass. And the students don't complain about it. If they don't do the work, they expect to fail. It's an agreement we have.

So I come to this site for relief. No matter how bad my day has been, I can guarantee that some correspondent on RYS has had a far, far worse one. Sure, my students are frequently lazy little swine with sloppy citation habits. Compared to what I read about here? Big effing deal.

And there's another way I can't complain. I have tenure. If I have a bad class or a journal bounces an article or (to be frank) the article bogs down and never actually gets out the door in the first place, it gets me down, but it doesn't get me a job at Wal-Mart. I don't lie awake at night terrified, the way, you know, I did, before the faculty voted to keep me on. I don't have the rash covering 3/4 of my body that I had for six months before that vote. I don't live in my stress counsellor's office anymore, though I still see her every month on general principles.

So what do I have to complain about? Well, here's the subject I want to raise to RYS. Can we have a career and a life both or am I just kidding myself? And is it harder for female academics? Should I just quit trying?

A friend of mine quit her TT job a few years back. Like me, she had 2 small children, and was juggling the teaching and the research and the book-writing and the committees and the child care and home-making and sure, she had a very supportive husband and all that. But she finally decided she'd had it. Her explanation was simple. Teaching is a full-time job; research is a full-time job; and motherhood his a full-time job. And she could handle two full-time jobs but she couldn't handle three.

I tried to talk her out of it. She ignored me and I think she was probably right. I had tenure by then and the picture was different for me. But ...

But my friend is right. Teaching is a full-time job. Parenting is a full-time job. Research is a full-time job. And I can't handle three full-time jobs either.

I teach 3 x 2 and I have 2 primary-school-aged children. My husband is out of the country this week and so far this weekend I've produced 6 meals, done 5 loads of laundry, arranged for the plumber to come to fix various essential fixtures in the only 45-minute period I can manage to be home to let him in tomorrow, escorted children to three events not counting the 2 hours I spent sitting in a medical clinic with one of them, gotten partway through sending the invitations for a birthday party next weekend, overseen their piano practicing and spelling drills, dragged a mutinous 8-year-old through math homework, an exhausting 90-minute effort, made sure they had everything together for school tomorrow, chased them into bed, packed 2 lunches, made a pan of rice krispie treats and morosely ate about half of them myself, and cleaned the kitchen again (and again and again). It wasn't until 11:00 at night that I could look at my to-do list for tomorrow.

The to-do list for tomorrow includes grading 150 quizzes, 20 papers, preparing a graduate seminar, 8 or 9 emails from students with drafts of papers (I'm assuming) that I'm avoiding opening, hell, everyone here can fill in this part; we're all slogging in the same trenches and it's the same point in term for us all. But I have no idea how I can get any of it done.

To say nothing of the research I'm not doing.

Since I had my second child, I have not published anything new at all. A couple of new things have come out, but they were things I'd done the research for and in fact drafted before I went into labour the second time. I've done nothing new. And yes, I could. I could somehow find the time.

But you know, I'm so exhausted I can barely think at all. It's hard for me to believe I've got anything worth saying, about anything.

On my worst days I wonder if I should quit so the university can hire someone who's actually willing to do the work I'm getting paid for and not producing. Two things stop me. My department might not get to replace my position, or not immediately. And I'm not a bad teacher. I'm often a pretty good one. My students are getting something out of my being there. Though they would get more if I were doing any research at all, a small voice reminds me.

Now of course I'm not going to quit. I haven't won any lotteries lately. But has anyone got any ideas how to manage this mythical life/work balance? Or this life/teaching/research balance?

Me, I'm going to ignore the papers and quizzes and go to bed, again. Selfishly putting my desire for sleep ahead of my student's need for feedback, I know. But my eyes are practically crossing with fatigue and there is an actual, physical, limit.

I'm not exactly a poster child for "hire a mother" I know. But what the hell am I supposed to do?

On Walt and the Regulars.

• I'm guessing the email exchange with Walt was about 50% hyperbolic, am I right?


• "Regulars"? You mean you give more space to people who are on the site all the time anyway?


• Walt, darling, you have got to up the medication.


• There is only one true original. And Walt is not it.


• That's a nice fridge, Walt brags about. I wonder if it's as dirty inside as Walt's soul is.


• New feature? Didn't we beat the features down earlier when we made you stop doing JobFinder?


• Are you REALLY trying to kill the page, because "the Regulars" will do it.


• Wait, you mean to say the "Irregulars," right?


• I'm over Walter. Could you please give us more Weepy Wayne?


• I'm betting Walt is pissed at you guys.


• Whoa, so nobody cares about the cartoons on my door and if I don't have a window, I'm a loser? That's all Walter's got?


• Walter is a nut, okay, we all see that, but his thoughts on Deans are right on. Oh, and on cats. And offices. And students.


• That Walter sleeps in his office comes as no surprise to me.


• Of all the features this year, this one has the most potential. Don't fuck it up.


• Seriously, who does these graphics. If that's really Walter, I'd say you've captured him. If not, then I'd imagine you'll have a lawsuit on your hands. Slander, libel, whatever applies.


• Uh, I haven't got my invite to become a regular yet. What does it take? I've been called a frequent correspondent twice. What kind of a boy's club is this anyway?


• Oh, God, please don't post another 29 posts from Texas Dipshit, okay?


• I would pay real Texas money to get access to whatever blog Walter is planning. Ted Nugent as a spokesmen? Sponsored by Browning rifles? I'm just saying.


• I'd buy a Wicked Walter nightshirt.


• Are you seriously out of ideas over there?


• I know Walter, I really do. And he's easier to take online than in person.

Vince From Vermot Does a 1/2 Darren and Learns a Full Lesson.

Perhaps partly emboldened from last week's story about Darren, and the overwhelming response he got from RYS readers, I walked out on a class this morning with substantially better results.

I teach writing full time, and like Darren, I offer up workshop meetings where students are able to bring rough drafts for help. And, it's voluntary. I rarely have a problem with volunteers, but this morning was especially cold, both outside the classroom and in, and my students shuffled in with no enthusiasm, and then stared down at their desks while I waited for volunteers.

I'd gone over some future dates on our calendar, and then reminded them of some essential elements of the essay, and then we waited. I asked for volunteers, and then moved on to a couple of students who almost always bail me out. But nothing was going. I looked at the clock. 12 minutes had passed. I put my pen in my shirt pocket and said, "Last chance. Anyone want help?"

Not a word from anyone so I said, "Okay, well, see you Wednesday and we'll move onto the next paper."

I was out the door and in my office probably before anyone knew what had happened. I know it's not a full Darren, with the $20 bill and so forth, but I think of it as a sort of half-Darren, with a summersault!

Anyway I'd been in my office for about 10 minutes when one of my students came by. She seemed sheepish and unsure if she should come in. "Carrie," I said, "come on in."

She sat down and said, "I wasn't sure. You seemed so mad at us."

"I wasn't mad at all," I said. "It's up to you guys, of course, and I want you to do well, but I'm not going to make you. It's your responsibility."

And her mood lightened up. I asked her about senior English in high school, what they did, what kinds of papers, and she told me. And it was discouraging. No conferences with teachers about writing. No instruction. Just Romeo & Juliet and a research paper due 4 months after it was assigned. The rest was all "worksheets."

"Worksheets?" I asked.

"Yeah, we just did handouts, grammar, worksheets. We never talked. There was never any lecture or anyhing. We filled out worksheets most days."

"You never talked?"

"Oh Gosh, no."

She told me she was going to work hard on finishing her essay and away she went. And I thought about how different my class was from what she described. They had to talk, ask questions, argue, get involved. They seemed reticent, like most frosh, but it must be a hard step to make from worksheets every day to being responsible for your own work.

I'm glad I read about Darren, and I'm glad Carrie clued me in.

"The Regulars," A New Feature At RYS, Designed to Annoy, Begins Today With Who Else!

Dear Walt,

We come at you with hat in hand. As you've been a frequent and well-received correspondent at RYS, we wanted to find out if you might be interested in this new proposal we have. We'd like to offer you guaranteed space on RYS once a week for a trial period of 4 weeks, starting with the week of November 17th, and concluding on the week of December 8th. You'd provide absolutely anything you wanted for those four days, and we'd post it with a standard byline (your choice). We'd ask that you write original material about the life of an academic - oh you know what we like. After those 5 weeks we'd be able to see if this new feature (which would likely include 3-4 other correspondents) is catching on with our readers. We know the last few exchanges we've had have been a little tense, but we couldn't imagine doing this feature without you. You always get the most mail, and we'd love to continue our relationship. We are completely blind about this proposal. We don't know if we're stupid, naive, or both, but a couple of longtime readers suggested it to us as we've muddled through a malaise-y couple of months. What do you think?

Our best,

RYS

-

Dear Fuckers,

You have got to be the crazziest fuckers on the planet. I'm not writing for you assholes ever again. I sent about a dozen things in the past 6 weeks and you barely even acknowledge them. Why on earth would I want to throw in with you when you don't know what you've got.

Eat me,
Walt

-

Dear Walt,

We are sorry for passing on the last few pieces you've sent, but they were awfully graphic and intense, and we really didn't think they'd go over very well. We do our best to offer a representative sample of the mail that comes in, and your material is just a little too far out there, we think. But we're offering to make amends, and this new feature would be a way for you to have a voice on the website again.

RYS

-

RYS,

Uh, let me think it over. No, I'd rather eat glass, you fucking bastards. Listen, why don't you get your REALLY favorite correspondents to do it, that Weepy Wayne guy. He's such a bad imitation of me that I can't help but think one of you guys is probably writing him anyway. And anyway, I'm still thinking of starting my own site, something with guns, porn, American flags, and celebrity news 24/7. I'll sell so many ads you will think you stumbled across PerezHilton or TMZ.

Eat me,
Walt

-

Walt,

Look, we're trying to extend an olive branch here. We always get a ton of mail when we post your stuff, but we've always liked to keep you as a "special guest." Is there anything we can do to convince you to help us out?
RYS

-

RYS,

Oh yeah, well, first of all, I'd want you to send me some schwag. All that shit you sell I could use a little of. I'm a Large if you're wondering, and I'll take a hoodie and a mug, but not a purse. Can you see me swinging that tote bag around Texas? I'd have to shoot myself.

Walt

-

Walt,
So you want a free mug and a hoodie?
RYS

-

RYS,

Yes, and I want to make sure that you don't post anything else on my day. None of those stupid fucking links, or JobFinder or Coolest Students, etc. All of that detracts from the real mission of this place. And no graphics. You guys always cock those up anyway. They're annoying and I liked the site back when it was just text. What kind of bullshit have you guys been feeding us this past year? Hey, how long does it have to be?

Walt

-

Walt,

So, no graphics, no other posts, just your post, and you want a free mug and a hoodie. I guess we can do that. We'd like a minimum of 500 words, probably topping out at 1000.

RYS

-

RYS,

1000? Shit I do that in between classes. I want a guarantee for 5000 words. I'm not going to get into this without a guarantee of unlimited space. And I can't do it for this coming week. I'm going to do it on my timetable or not at all.

Walt

-

Walt,

Well, we're starting the series this week, so there will be 5-6 other people posted this week. Is that okay? Can we expect something from you for the week of the 24th?

RYS

-

RYS,

No fucking way. You're not going to lead off the series with someone else. You've been blowing smoke up my ass all this time, haven't you?

Walt

-

Walt,

Listen, we're happy to have you, but we're committed to starting this week.
RYS

-

RYS,

No go. That next week is Thanksgiving and I've got to take the family down to Houston. Do it without me, but lose my address, too, because you've jerked me around enough.

Walt (retired)

-

Walt,

We understand. Sorry it didn't work out.

RYS

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Wicked Walter's Wise Words. First in a Series of 30 Presentations.

Some of you may know me by the character I play on RYS, Wicked Walter. Well, that's not really me. In real life I'm a pretty moderate science prof at a large research institution in Texas. We grow everything big here, including our universities. My earlier posts on this website [Editors, please insert links to all of my posts here now.] were mere hyperbole, just a cool prairie cat in the wild howling at the moon. I did it that way because one must get himself heard and recognized before he (or she) can really get his voice out there, to make a difference.

But, the point is, the website moderators came to me (hat in hand, I may add) asking me to be their featured correspondent for the next 4 weeks. Each day I will write a few hundred words on academic topics I think are not being covered properly in the mainstream press. I won't pretend that these are all your concerns, because they probably are not. But I will give myself fully to the experience, and I'll press my many years of experience and service into solving them.

I intend to cover tenure, assessment, student retention, colleague annoyance, stupid-ass junior faculty, better coffee in the cafeteria, library and interlibrary loan, the Deans and how they spend money, and all of the other major areas of interest. I will do this without fear because I have tenure, and in fact RYS has given me a sort of tenure, what with their promise to let me write daily for the next 6 weeks. So, much will be taught and much learned over these next days.

I intend to start slow, with a topic that is clearly one of the most interesting and vexing. How to make the most out of office hours, those otherwise dead hours that we all must keep according to various idiotic faculty manuals. This material is essential for faculty young and old, and has never been covered on this or any other academic blog or website.

I will break my comments down into 4 categories: how to enrich your students' experience, ways in which to personalize your office so it's a home away from home, and what the pecking order of offices all mean to a department.

I will start with the last of these. There are a number of components of office hierarchy. Window, no window. That's pretty clear, right? If you have a window, you're a hot shit. I have a window the size of most stadium-seating movie theaters. If you have no window, I'd recommend getting your vita together because you're not getting tenure, and if you're visiting, you won't be visiting for long. Size of office? Well, again, I can play squash in my office, and I don't even have to move much furniture. If you can touch three walls of your office at one time, you're a BIG FUCKING LOSER. Also, if you're in a multi-story building like me, then your office needs to be high up. I'm on 26, and the only floor above me as some old moldy books from the university before I was born. If you're on the first floor, there's no much hope. If you get an office in some building's basement, then you went to the wrong grad school, girlfriend.

Now, I want to talk about personalizing your office. Your office is a representation of your own peculiar makeup, your personality, your "sense." You owe it to your visitors to let them know what they're getting into. Now, you may be surprised to know that I cover my office door with pictures of kitties. Nah, just kidding. That's just a payoff, a comeback, to show I read the site and have seen all the cat-haters getting their cat-hate on lately. So, forget what I said. You know what people should see when they look at your door? Wood. That's it. Maybe a small piece of paper with your hours and name. Anything else is just jerking off. You morons who think that Dilbert and Cathy cartoons are the way to go, why don't you just knit a little tea cozy for all your students. Nobody gives a shit what cartoons you think are funny. You want your political bullshit up there, too, your union minutes, your Sarah Palin propaganda? Save it for your boring dinner parties with other eggheads like you.

But I do believe in personalizing your office so it's a nice place to hide from the department chairperson, the wife, the kids, the colleagues, etc. I have a fridge, and not one of those tiny mini-fridges. I have a 21 cubic foot Haier, and I wouldn't trade it for a new car. Because I'm in the science building, and because my own research labs are on the same floor, I've been able to hook a water line to it, and I have cube ice and cold water running all day. I keep my various smoked meats and cheeses in the thing, and a few other items which we won't mention. Suffice it to say, during Mardi Gras week, we all hang with Prof. Walt!

I also have personalized my office with some nice soft furniture for catching a few Zzzzs. I just fooled one of the staff flunkies in the warehouse into giving me enough furniture for about 3 junior faculty and had the grad students load it in several years ago. I have as much seating as most small town bus stations, and this shit is nice, because I keep it nice. I have some halogen reading lamps, some artwork, including the requisite crayon and disappointment renderings of my children. I have some spare shirts in a tall teak armoire, some extra boots and shoes and socks and underwear. I figure if everything went south with Mrs. Walt, I could live her pretty much year round.

Finally, how to deal with students. Listen, I like to meet with students. I like to stare into their empty eyes and let them know that they're no longer at the community college down the road. And they're not going to some half-asses university, either. We're the big time. Our football team can beat the crap out of anybody - in fact we about murdered some pale and ineffectual prairie kids yesterday! - and everything we do is big and first rate. My labs are the finest in the nation. My degrees are sturdy and well earned. I have skills so far beyond an academic, and I've turned my back on private industry so many times that they've stopped calling. Can you imagine? I scare the shit out of them.

Back to the students. I wear the lab coat most days, and I'm a little imposing. I stare them down, do you hear me? I stare at them across my gigantic wooden desk and I tell them that a pukey sophomore is not going to ever get a right answer in my class, and they're only going to succeed if they shut their fat faces and let me teach them. And forget the fucking TAs. I have the best on campus, but they're still just a bunch of vegans and alternative lifestyle cretins who think Jeff Tweedy is the height of culture, and that making a million dollars for a biotech company is the be all and end all of an advanced degree.

But an office can be a wonderful place. That's the point.

That's it for today. I have many more items to cover, but since I'll be writing every day this week, let me save it up. You should let the moderators know how much you enjoy hearing my side of things. They've offered to give me a bounty of free items from their collection, and I've asked them to make a Wicked Walter nightshirt that they can put up for sale next week, when most of my posts will focus on how to land a big ass job and keep it without selling out to the motherfucking idiots who always end up in administration.

Wicked Walter from Waxahachie
Say it Loud, Say it Proud

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Dear readers,

Walt will NOT be writing every day for several weeks. It's once a week for 5 weeks. We also do not have any Wicked Walter items available, nightshirt or otherwise.

The moderators at RYS

Ophelia from Oberlin On the Obsequious.

I think I've finally found the recipe to defend RYS to my no-fun-allowed colleagues.

Tina the Twit is exactly the evidence I've been looking for. Do you see the contempt in the modern student? Do you see how dumb they think we are? They fawn over us and lavish us with this "Thank you, Professor" bullshit while texting their disgust at the same time.

How many times have I caught them cheating, drunk, whored-out, whatever? And each time they look at me innocently, as if they'd just stepped out of church. "Who me?" they always say.

And so many of my colleagues look the other way, let that shit go, and they do it in one class and the student LEARNS...learns that you can game the system, rub off on the big hind end of education and nobody cares or will stand up to them.

Who's in charge, people? Who are the adults?

I have two students in my sophomore level course who would have flunked my first year course. They're nearly illiterate. I sat down with each early in the semester to make sure they'd taken the other course - like - recently.

"Oh yes, proffie. I gotz a B+ with my skillz."

And I rechecked their work, gave them the benefit of the doubt. I even took both through a remedial week where I covered half of what is in the standard first year curriculum. They didn't know it, hadn't seen it, and it might as well have been Latin.

And so they get bad grades, and hate me, and I have to just say, "You can't keep up because you don't have the foundation." And who's the bad guy to them? Me. Not the idiot who passed them happily along to become someone else's problem. I can see it, almost, because I see how they work me. Oh, they have problems. Their dorm room is too hot or too cold. The food here is bad. They miss Granny. They had something else to do, or a play to watch for another class, or the library suddenly closed, or the printers in the SUB stopped working...ALL of them. And someone bought their shit, smiled, and sent them on to the second year.

And they'll flunk with me, I know it, and I know just as well - because I know my colleagues - that they'll take it next semester with Dr. Slide-On-Through or Prof. Just-Call-Me-Mom. And they'll always remember that bitch who flunked them. The temerity.

But "The Twit" post is going out to my colleagues today to remind them. They think we're gasbags. They may play the polite, honest, hardworking student, but they're out to beat us. And some of us get taken in.

Suckers.

Fab Frank from Fort Collins On Dealing with Slacky Students.

It's all a matter of accepting statistical probability and triaging who's left. That is, statistically, there will ALWAYS be failing students in any class. You can't change this fact. What you CAN change is your attitude and HOW you teach the course. If you teach it well by all rational measures, then you've done your job. It's irrelevant how many students fail if you've done your job and upheld your side of the educational experience. Just do your part and do it well, and then let the chips fall where they may. If a student is failing, give him/her a failing grade. This should be obvious. Always give them what they deserve, based on the quality of their WORK PRODUCTS and their UNDERSTANDING of the material, regardless of how you feel about them personally. Something is supremely fishy when ALL students pass a teacher's class EVERY semester. That's rife with "social promotion," which is just a lie in action.

Sure, students seem to be getting more lazy and vapid with every passing year, but in the end, the world keeps turning and the sun will still burn out some day, leaving the Earth frigid and devoid of all life, so does it really matter that Slacky McLazyass didn't turn in his Narrative Essay and missed 6 classes, but is so deluded that he thinks he can still pass the course? No. Rather, you should consider these students to be a source of humor, not frustration. Don't ever sacrifice your happiness or peace of mind for some lazy turd of a student. Save yourself. Take some quiet time each day to go through a litany of your worst students, and laugh, laugh, laugh. Amuse yourself with the absurdity of human behavior. It'll prevent you from getting burnt out, and your improved mood will make you a better teacher.

Do you think that Nature feels remorse when she eliminates a species that can't adapt to its environment? Hardly. The passing students should pass and the failing students should be ousted, with no remorse and no looking back. When you pass failing students, you're being an incompetent and irresponsible teacher, and you sure aren't doing anyone any favors—not the student (who will pass both unprepared and deluded to the next course level), not the next teacher to get that student (who will curse you daily), and not the other students in the next course, either (who will be bogged down by the slacker you gifted to them). You ARE the judge, the jury, and the executioner. It's your JOB. Failing a fail-er is a righteous act of mercy. Do it.

The idea that every student must pass—or that everyone is meant to go to college—is absurd. Is everyone meant to join the military? Is everyone meant to be a parent? Is everyone meant to run marathons? Hell no, and not everyone is meant to be a college student, either. Use your professional judgment to weed them out, because part of your job is to uphold the standards of your college, no matter how the snowflakes feel about it.

You provided a detailed syllabus and told them to read it. You taught the material competently. You informed them of their options if they were to fall behind. Rest easy, with a clear conscience. If they can't hack academia, that's THEIR problem, NEVER YOURS.

District Dave on Student Evaluations.

Earlier in the week we linked to an article about student evaluations in the George Washington Hatchet. Below, one of our readers wanted to follow up:

I teach at GW, and I actually read "The Hatchet" fairly regularly. On the whole, it's actually a decent student newspaper.

That said, it can be a pretty monotonous read because the same damn arguments get made in it over and over again, year after year. "We need better meal options!" "We need evaluations online!" "Professors should always supply their notes to students through Blackboard!" "Fraternities shouldn't be penalized for hazing their "pledges" in public!"

Some of these arguments, particularly the one about dining options, have legs. Others are just plain asinine. What I feel RYS should address is that many students at GW are used to receiving incentives for filling out course evals. Many professors here actually give their students "extra credit" for doing so. (Perhaps I didn't study hard enough when I went to Ph.D. school, but could someone please explain to me the concept of extra credit?)

It's patently ridiculous for so, so, so many reasons for professors to give their students any kinds of incentives, ranging from chocolate to course credit, to complete course evals. But if some of us already do that, how can we get mad at the "Hatchet" writers--and others like them--for expecting the treatment that they've received all along?

The Cool Quenching of a Morning After Big Thirsty. What's An Office For Anyway?

This week's thirsty was all about the office, that delicious little cubby away from the world where we get to pick the music, set the lighting, and display our ... uh ... books. It's like a sexy library and we're naughty naughty Ms. Finklestein. Er, well. We mean, that's not what our offices are like. Ours are sterile, businesslike. Forget what we said. Enjoy the flava below:

• I think you should get on your knees and thank God that you don’t get visitors. I thank Him each and every day. I enjoy teaching and the interaction in class. It’s fun, but really, that’s about as much of some of the dunderheads I can take. I have strategically placed my office hours daily (well, the 4 days I am in) at 7:00 am – 9:00 am in the knowledge that most of them aren’t even out of their jammies by then. So, I get extra time to sip coffee, catch up on journals, and relax… I am sure that this has kept me from burning out after 20 years! What’s really funny is students staying after class to talk to me and I simply tell them that class is over, but that I have lots of office hours indicated on the syllabus and I would love to continue the conversation there. Next morning… the sound of crickets.
  


• You want more students to visit? The answer is simple: make your class harder.
  


• I actually like office hours, and encourage students to come. But when they don't I set up individual conferences during the first 4-5 weeks. I make them come once to pick up a paper or discuss a rough draft. I show them it's not painful or spooky. They see I'm available - which is all I really want - and then the pressure's on them. I see more students toward the end of a semester when the grades start to really loom. But when they're not there, I just enjoy the shit out of the time to myself.
  


• Wow, you have a window?
  


• Assign a big fucking term paper. Make it worth half their grade. Fail everyone on the first draft. Give them back, dripping in red ink (though I use green, so that they don't get too pissed). Sit back and wait for them to line up outside your door.
  


• I don't even have an office, so hearing about yours makes me want to jam a poker up your ass. And what's with this "tiny sliver of a window" bullshit. Is that you being self-effacing or something. Oh, don't lord your window over us, you big fucking phony.
  


• Fact is, most students are pretty intimidated about showing up at your office. Some of that may be irrational while some is probably quite rational. Some professors just don't want students visiting them. Get them in there once, show them it isn't so scary, and at least a few will be back.
  


• Be happy! Your door is open. You get points for being available. The snowflakes do not fall in your office? More time to conduct research, read, and talk to your colleagues.
  


• I'm a grad student/TA in a shared, dark, overheated office (at least I have my own desk). I have long given up the idea of doing work in my office--I do all my work either at home or in the library. I only use my office for storing stuff (books, umbrella, coat, aspirin), meeting students and for holding the bare minimum of departmentally-required office hours.
  


• Based on your sneaking around the hallways, I'd say you have a good deal of colleague envy. You really want some of the fries, right? And you want to huddle with Dr. Mousy? Have you thought of getting a dog, or better yet, a cat?

The Twit.

Tina the Twit is in my 8 am class. She's a relatively bright and diligent student. She's very polite, but not in any sort of ass-kissing way. She works hard, turns in projects on time, and is actually one of my go-to people when discussions get stagnant.

In a recent Powerpoint project she presented information about various social networking avenues that her generation uses, and she finished with a couple of slides specifically on Twitter. It's something I'd heard of but had never checked out.

So, after class I went to her page (the one listed on the project she turned in.) It actually was pretty interesting. The opening several "tweets" were about her presentation itself, notes to her collaborators, a sort of real-time brainstorming session. I was impressed by it.

I kept flipping page to page until I came across this series:

gasbag still going
8:42 am, Monday, Nov 3rd from iPhone

reminds us to take notes. duh!
8:37 am, Monday, Nov 3rd from iPhone

blah blah blah blah
8:32 am, Monday, Nov 3rd from iPhone

everyone in here is so f&*(ing stupid
8:24 am, Monday, Nov 3rd from iPhone

reminds us that the projects are due, like I can't read syllabi
8:17 am, Monday, Nov 3rd from iPhone

another big waste of time class is underway
8:08 am, Monday, Nov 3rd from iPhone

And, I sort of chuckled at the hapless proffie who was the subject of all this until I noticed the time and day of the posts. It's my class. I'm the gasbag.

Foshan Fabiana Finds Her Voice.

I teach overseas in an English medium of instruction institution. Most westerners here don't learn the local language, but as a professor here, I feel compelled for my own self-interest. I want to know what my students are saying about the class without having someone to "translate" (read: sugar coat) it. My language training paid off yesterday during a priceless moment of student-smack.

Canto Claude and his sidekick Mandarin Martin came to appeal their grades three days before the period for grade appeals in my class opened. Claude begs, "why did I get a D? I tried hard and I used all of your notes!" Martin chimes in, "And I got a C- for doing the same thing. I thought you wanted us to use the course material as well as make our own points."

I retort, "Well gentlemen, I asked you a specific question for this essay and neither of you answered it. You gave me a summary of the course so far glued together with a few of your opinions about the complexity of the readings. Claude, you cut and paste from the slides! Martin, you paraphrased the slides. Neither of you cited the slides and neither of you paid attention to the instructions that I wanted you to reference course readings, not the lecture powerpoints. And, neither of you made an argument. We've gone over this many times in class. Do you recall this?"

Brief look of contemplation, then Claude says to Martin (in the idiom of their common language): She's a total bitch.

And, I fire back in what is now a common language between we three: Yes, I am. But you both are no smarter than street-sweeps.

Stunned looks. A true moment of priceless smack-down.

Get Out, Kid.

Poll results: What do you use your office for?

• My own work: 61%
• To get away/recharge: 29%
• Meeeting with students: 28%
• To convene with colleagues: 10%

(multiple answers were possible)

The Office. Sacrosanct Private Proffie Quarters or Educational Clubhouse? This Week's Big Thirsty.

I have to admit that my office is quiet most days. I have my full order of office hours available. I'm actually in there, lights on, waiting, soft music playing. I play games on the computer, read journals, talk on the phone, or just stare out the tiny sliver of a window.

I like my office. I work here many times past office hours. My books are here. The things that make up the academic part of my life are here. It's a great place to rest between classes, to charge myself up for what's next to come. I have a desk, some chairs, and I am waiting.

But my students never come.

Down the hallway I hear my colleagues bantering with their students. It always sounds like fun, lively, like I'm missing something. I walk past open doors sometimes and see sophomores draped over furniture, shooting the breeze easily with Prof. Dull-As-Ditchwater (as far as I can tell). Dr. Mousy has three students huddled at her desk looking at a book. Prof. Life-Of-The-Party is sharing french fries with a student and talking about a movie they both seem to hate.

I go back in my office and stare at two empty chairs across from me.

What am I missing? Am I doing something wrong? Should I want my students to come see me? Does it mean something? Am I unlikeable? Am I doing so well in class that nobody has any questions?

I have been in this office and at the university for 5 years, so I'm not a new kid anymore. I tell my students about office hours, and even tell them in the early weeks what I'm happy to meet with them about.

But it's always a ghost town in here.

Q: What are these offices for, anyway? Am I the lone lonely guy? Are you sharing your office space with students right now, while I play Minesweeper? What's the secret to giving "good office"?

A: Send replies here.

"Work It, Don't Walk." Zenmaster Zeke from Zanesville Offers Deadwood Darren A Different Destiny.

In the past day we've heard some more from folks concerning Deadwood Darren. Our first set of comments fairly represented the overwhelmingly positive mail that we had received. Since then, more folks have wanted to think and talk about Darren's $20 bill crumpling scene a little more seriously, and we've chosen this one email to stand for those. It's a thoughtful piece, and therefore will be mocked mercilessly by readers, and we - your poor moderators - will be taken to task for turning this once great site into yet another academic circle-jerk like the Chronicle. Yet, we persevere? Why? Is it the upcoming movie deal? The cash that comes in plain envelopes from our fans? No, it's this new blender of ours, 9 speeds, an ergonomic dial, and a capacity for 96 ounces.

--

Storming out of class is one thing. Crumpling up twenties and humiliating individual students is another. There are many, many reasons for this, and many things Darren could/should have done differently, but I'll focus on the most obvious failure of pedagogy--Darren's pedagogy--that led to this incident.

It seems from his original post that the reading-drafts-aloud activity is optional, i.e. students are encouraged to volunteer to share their work for feedback, but not technically required to. It's reasonable to expect students to volunteer for something that's good for them--especially if they've volunteered consistently in past semesters--but it is not reasonable to express disgust at their reticence in the face of volunteerism. Dean came to class with the expectation that if he wasn't comfortable sharing a particular draft, he wouldn't have to--hence his repeated, polite refusal when called upon. It's also worth mentioning that there's nothing wrong with calling on students when no one volunteers--but why didn't Darren move on to another student after Dean proved resistant to multiple requests and encouragement?

Students, as I'm sure Darren knows, if he regularly teaches small seminars, even to undergrads, want to please their teachers, and subconsciously invest a great deal in authority figures. There are exceptions to the rule, certainly, but it's not as if Dean told Darren to "Fuck off, old man!" I have a hunch that if Darren had moved on to another "volunteer," he'd have been successful--the embarrassment that builds up in uncomfortable silences tends to be cumulative in my experience. If not the second, the third.

After two or three failed call-ons, I wouldn't fault anyone for ending class prematurely. He should have busted out his "College is Optional" speech, made the lumps in the classroom feel like idiots for wasting their own time and tuition money (the phrase "I get paid either way" appears in my own speech), and dismissed them from the room. I don't know what kind of presence Darren is in his classroom, but when I sit down and say "Dismissed," the room clears. Leaving the room before they do probably evokes all kinds of unnecessary disrespect (I defer to body-language experts), but to me it signifies retreat. Together with the rest of the scene, it suggests incompetence--"I'm not in control of what happens in this room."

Oh, the crumpling of money, the snarky remark, the unwillingness to follow through on letting Dean read his essay... all of that crap is melodramatic, demeaning, and childish, but Darren already knows that. That's why he wrote in to RYS.

The bottom line, to me, is to own your authority. If you ask students to volunteer for something and they don't, revoke their agency. If they won't do it when you ask nicely, and you're not comfortable with the self-imposed cost of their lost opportunity (or you forgot to bring the crossword puzzle), TELL them to do it. Be firm, be patronizing if you must, but don't get hysterical, for this last is a sign of the most exploitable weakness in proffies.

If you don't think this works, try an experiment: next time you're moderating a discussion in a reticent class, ask a question and then stare at a student of your choice. Make eye contact and don't break it. Do not look around the room; do not acknowledge hands that may or may not be raised. Pick a student who never talks. He or she will talk. Professors have vampire-like gaze powers. Work it.

Some Links That One May Voluntarily Click. It's Not Mandatory. We Mean It. Just Turn Away If It's Too Much To Bear.

• My students already eat in class. Is that enough? From the Columbia University Spectator.


• What's the point of haivng a pulpit if I can't bully people from it? From the Collegiate Times.


• Yes, by all means, make sure all the good students skip to another class. From the Daily Princetonian.


• If students can avoid "crotchety" proffies, who's going to take MY class? From the George Washington Hatchet. (We're not kidding.)


• Look, Charlie Brown, it's the Great Naked Pumpkin Race. From the Rocky Mountain News.


• How can they be tired? They get at least an extra hour of sleep in my intro class three days a week! From the Western Washington University Western Front.

Ian the Idiot from Islip.

We don't want to say that the fella whose material appears below is necessarily unstable, but he did make a rather pointed and desperate threat against us, our families, our cats (if any) if we did not print his post exactly as he sent it. He tells us he's sent us "dozens" of brilliant articles that we've not used. He also would like to be called Errorless Ernie from the Empire State. If we comply fully, he says he will not take out his frustration on anyone. So, here goes.

--

I have the answer for all of you lightweights who are unable to stand up for yourselves. I learned it years ago and it has always worked. Merely repeat after me:

I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is. I am not wrong, the world is.

You're welcome.

Darren Deadwood Joins the Ranks of RYS Cult Heroes.

The mailbag last night was jammed with support for Darren Deadwood, he of the crumpled $20 bill. It was nearly a clean sweep as well, with only a dozen or so dissenters. One student wrote, "All he taught those kids was to wait until he takes his wallet out before talking." What can you do? We've chosen a sampling of last night's mail, and we have displayed the flava below:

• I think that what Darren Deadwood did was not only brave, but was also good pedagogy. What better way to get across a sustained failure of a class to meet their end of the classroom bargain than to dramatically exhibit disgust at their lack of preparedness? Whether they knew it or not, they were testing the instructor's boundaries, and ran smack dab into a wall as a result. That he saw neither hide nor hair of them afterwards encourages me. They know he's mad, and they're hiding from them. I'd be more worried if they found Darren outside of class to see if they could get in on some of that sweet $20 action too.
  


• I hope you can get this message to Darren. Don't worry about this Friday. If your students have any sense (well, maybe worry a bit), they'll understand your frustration. My students KNOW they're slackers, KNOW they're avoiding work. They KNOW this, but don't act like it. Why? Because nobody calls them on it. They get passed along like precious gems, teacher to teacher. They are used to being coddled and they like it. (What's not to like?) You've shaken them up. I know it. I've never done anything as dramatic or wonderful as you did - when does an adjunct even HAVE a $20 bill! - but I've called them out on their behavior many times. And what happens? They realize they're in the room with someone who cares. They mind their manners, pull up their pants, take the fucking caps off, and work. They'll do it. Even if we have to ask for it, beg for it, cajole it, or thrum it out of them. They CAN do it. But we have to be tougher than their parents, than Mrs. Parker in senior English, and certainly tougher than the admissions officer who told them, "This is a student-centered college." Fuck. What a business.
  


• Leo Longfellow hit the nail on the head. The RYS Effect is bravery. Hearing Darren's story yesterday changed me. I have been in those classrooms, have felt that impatience and sorrow and madness at a group of students who won't learn, who will REFUSE to learn. What are we supposed to do? Take it? Just sit and eat shit in the classroom between eating shit at the feet of the college president and his minions? No, we - all faculty - have to take some sort of control. Why do I put up with late students, lazy students? I don't want them to NOT LIKE ME, or evaluate me poorly. Why? Shouldn't I have their best interests in mind? Shouldn't I give a shit and let them know the truth? Shouldn't I "say my say"? Indeed. Thank you, Darren. Go back into class next Friday and reap the rewards from shaking them up.
  


• A twenty dollar bill, look at you, look at you. What makes me sad about this story is that his students probably now think he's crazy, he's being unfair, etc. His evals will suffer, students will feel justified in any complaint they had against the class, and so on. But the thing is, I don't think he's really the crazy one. He--and all of us--are just shit out of luck in terms of options. My students are dead inside. Maybe it's not their fault. But it sure as hell isn't mine, either. And what am I supposed to do with those lumps? I find myself able to reach, inspire, or even interact with fewer and fewer each term. I want to yell at them. I want to shake them. I want to crumple up twenty dollar bills, storm out of the room, start throwing things around...do SOMETHING that makes them feel or think ANYTHING at all. I don't know how to do this anymore, and while walking out of the room doesn't sound like a solid pedagogy, I am beginning to wonder if "Extreme Teaching" is a necessary trend. Standing in the front of a blank room day after day is dehumanizing and pointless. Maybe drama is the answer. I wonder, is there any chance that outbursts and oddness are useful in the current classroom climate?
  


• Please tell Darren Deadwood not to feel the least bit bad about crumpling that bill and walking away. That metaphor was more powerful than any lecture or cajoling could have ever been, and it certainly would've shocked my ass into gear as an undergraduate. By refusing to use the opportunity they've *already paid for* in the form of tuition, the students' parents have in effect already done the same thing with their money and student loans anyway. The parties involved just don't know it yet. Better still, DD, walk in this Friday with a clear conscience and an expectation that things will go differently. I'll lay down the next twenty dollars on odds that the scene will be completely changed.
  


• You've earned your retirement, so I won't ask you to stay. But in your remaining weeks, please continue to kick ass. You did exactly what that student needed but that none of us have the nerve to do. You probably made a memorable impression on the rest of the group, too. Carry on, Darren! There's sap in you yet.
  


• Does RYS create heroes or just report on them? I find myself cheering these folks on, even nuts like Wicked Walter, who I bet is meek as they come in real life. But Darren. Darren walked it last Friday and I wish I had the same kind of courage.
  

Study of Student Entitlement. The SHOCKING Results.

'Entitled' students expect good marks
by Shannon Proudfoot

Canwest News Service

Most university students believe that if they're "trying hard," a professor should reconsider their grade. One-third say that if they attend most of the classes for a course, they deserve at least a B, while almost one-quarter "think poorly" of professors who don't reply to e-mails the same day they're sent.

Those are among the revelations in a newly published study examining students' sense of academic entitlement, or the mentality that enrolling in post-secondary education is akin to shopping in a store where the customer is always right.

The study asked approximately 400 undergraduates aged 18 to 25 whether they agreed with these statements:

• If I have explained to my professor that I am trying hard, I think he/she should give me some consideration with respect to my course grade - 66.2 per cent agree


• If I have completed most of the reading for a class, I deserve a B in that course - 40.7 per cent


• If I have attended most of the classes for a course, I deserve at least a grade of B - 34.1 per cent


• Teachers often give me lower grades than I deserve on paper assignments - 31.5 per cent


• Professors who won’t let me take my exams at another time because of my personal plans (e.g. a vacation) are too strict - 29.9 per cent


• A professor should be willing to lend me his/her course notes if I ask for them - 24.8 per cent


• I would think poorly of a professor who didn’t respond the same day to an e-mail I sent - 23.5 per cent


• Professors have no right to be annoyed with me if I tend to come late to class or tend to leave early - 16.8 per cent


• A professor should not be annoyed with me if I receive an important call during class - 16.5 per cent


• A professor should be willing to meet with me at a time that works best for me, even if inconvenient for the professor - 11.2 per cent.

You Haven't Seen Bravery Until You Draw the Short Straw And Have to Clean the Compound's Fridge. Leo Longfellow On the RYS Effect.

I've been putting my moldy brain to RYS and its impact lately. I know I enjoy reading the stories, most of them more horrific than my own boring tales of bothersome students and braindead Deans. But as a social scientist I'm always interested in how shared constructs (like this blog, for example) affect participants, in this case the RYS readers.

The RYS Effect, I'd guess, could be measured if there was some data, even anecdotal, and that seems like a worthwhile enterprise to me.

What happens to us when we hear horror stories of terrible students? I know that the first few pieces I read on RYS made me thankful for my own job, my relatively peaceful existence, and my students, who - for the most part - have never made me crazy enough to want to write to you about them.

But as I've read more and more, I've discovered a sort of power in RYS that I'd not imagined.

I think the RYS effect is bravery. The pieces that resonate the most with me, the ones that stick to my soul - if you will - are ones like this morning's Deadwood Darren. I found it thrilling. It was a piece of real theater, and I've been in enough classrooms to know that he did the right thing, but still a brave thing. I am at least 90% sure that I'd not done the same, nor would I have even thought of it. But when he threw that bill down AND walked out, I learned something, and I cheered him like nobody else I can think of in quite some time.

When I was a boy, my mother and aunt both were teachers, and on long summer weekends they'd pull me out of the alley or off the baseball field and teach me things I did not want to know. My aunt read to me, and to this day I remember sitting in the attic of our house, no air conditioning, my head out the window finding the only breeze I could find, and hearing her voice read Longfellow. I don't remember much from that, but I remember a line about bravery. (I've had to look it up, sorry Auntie.)

There's a brave fellow! There's a man of pluck! A man who's not afraid to say his say, Though a whole town's against him. (from "John Endicott")

"Not afraid to say his say," indeed. That's the RYS Effect, for those willing to feel it, to accept it.

Darren Deadwood, don't beat yourself up. Those of us who are listening are with you, and one day we will be brave enough to join you.

Darren Deadwood from Des Plaines Finds the Secret to Student Motivation. (And the Pathway to This Confession.)

Confessions? You take those, still, right?

I'm deadwood to most of you, 36 years in the career, careening toward retirement in 20 more teaching weeks. It can't come soon enough.

I admit freely that I no longer have the ambition I had once. Tenured forever, etc. Hate me. Hate my pretty office. I can't control any of that.

I teach in a fairly static field, where my "longevity" is not as harmful as it might be in a quickly-evolving field. That has likely saved me some.

As a sop to the Vice-President, in addition to my grad courses, I teach one freshman level course a year, a writing intensive version of our basic intro course. I've done it for 20 years now and it's always been a bit of a kick. Students get to study something I love AND they get to write about it, feeling their way, sorting out their own ideas alongside classical ideas from the field.

Usually it's a kick.

This semester I've come up against a brick wall, and I have to confess I handled things horribly.

We meet on Friday afternoons to discuss rough drafts of papers-in-progress. It's 90 minutes for me and my charges and in past years it's been the best meeting of the week. They bring drafts, read them aloud, we take them apart, celebrate the good stuff, weed out the bad. Usually we're still there 95 minutes in and I have to make them leave. Their papers get better, they get smarter, and I know from experience that they go into the sophomore course more able to contend with the workload.

Not this semester, though. I've been unable to get them to understand that this time is for them. Friday is the one day I walk into class with nothing, no notes, no books, no pen. We sit in a circle, a trick I learned years ago from a kindly composition instructor who - despite being 20 years my junior - mentored me skillfully.

Each Friday this term has been a trial. I wait for volunteers. Nobody bites, not even the better students. I call on some folks and they beg off - they have a right, I think. We've had a couple of 45 minute Fridays and it started to irk me.

This past Friday was the breaking point.

After ten minutes of near silence, a few requests on my part, nothing was happening. I could see some folks had drafts, and finally I said to Dean, a very good student, "Would you mind reading yours?"

"Uh, I'd rather not. It's not ready."

"Well, that's fine," I said. "I'm sure it's not ready to be turned in, but this is rough draft day, and I'm sure we could help you some. I know you could help some of the rest of us."

Dean pulled his paper out, looked at it for what seemed like minutes, and then said, "No, I don't think so. I'm going to pass." And then he folded his paper and put it in the bookbag at his feet.

Whatever it's been that's been bugging me about these scenes just got the better of me.

"What if I gave you 20 bucks," I said. "Would you read it then?"

And there was an alert glowing of eyes around the room. Dean contemplated the offer. I kept looking at him, my face - I hoped - still and serene.

When nothing happened I pulled my billfold out and brought out a 20, putting it on desktop. "I'm dead serious. Would you let me and the rest help you if I paid you 20 bucks?"

"Okay," he said, and he reached for his bookbag.

I stood up, quicker than I wished I had. I balled the 20 in my fist and dropped it, crumpled and obscene on his desktop. "Good luck with the paper. I've already heard enough."

And I walked out.

I sat in my office for an hour after that, just playing it over in my head and hating myself and hating the whole scene.

I didn't see any of my freshmen the rest of that day, and not today on campus either. I don't have the foggiest idea what I'm going to do this coming Friday. I have a sick feeling in my gut that I can't get rid of.

Darren's a hero!

Darren messed up.

We'll Bet You a Million Dollars You'll Never Guess What Most Folks Thought About Patty. Oh, No, That's Silly.

Pretty Programming Patty, you stood at the crossroads and chose cash. Thanks for hollering across the barren fields to all of us who obviously chose paralyzing poverty and gut-wrenching torture at the hands of mindless snowflakes. I hope you can hear me, screaming from the other side because I don't want you to miss this: KEEP YOUR FINGERS CROSSED THAT LIFE DOESN'T FUCK UP YOUR SIMPLE, YET ELABORATE, PLAN!

What you envision is at the mercy of all you survey. I can say this because five years ago I crawled across the expanse towards my dream because I had been de-railed. The 401K I was going to use to retire into a PhD dwindled and disappeared as I pulled funds to first pay off debt and then simply to survive as I found myself without the job I was going to surf on until I could dance into teaching and researching. Poor choice on my part, I hear you smirking from atop your Planned Pillar of Prettydom. This job will last forever. Really? I thought so, too. Who knew deregulated banking would lead to mass buy-outs and piles of lost jobs, especially when I had a specialty area that would be so hard to replace. No drone could do what I did, but, alas, thanks to computerization, a trend I had embraced, someone on the other side of the country could.

That trip across the expanse between Planned Cash to Dream Job was a horrid one, Patty, but I made it. Few of my friends did. I watched as they turned and slithered back to the security laden road, knowing they would never feel the smile of satisfaction. When we meet now, they say "I always thought I wanted to XYZ. Who thought I'd end up loving ABC so much I'd sacrifice my dream."

I was lucky to find this teaching job where I banter with students, hope the negotiations with admin produces a little bit of a raise, and pray that the stupidity that is my state government doesn't cut so deeply into the education budget that I have to buy their books myself. The best part is I can look at my students and say: Don't fool yourself into thinking that you can put off your dreams.

So while the very comfortable job you are enjoying is one of the most rapidly growing fields, if the writing on the wall of past plans holds true, the consolidation will start as the masses join you, and you will find yourself fighting the wave of toddlers whose programming supports the daycare center where their parents drop them off as they head off to satisfy that addiction to food and shelter none of us seem to be able to beat.

I feel safer now than I've ever felt before, Programming Patty, because change is the way of the world and the only way people can prevail is to go back to school and learn something. As long as they can prop me up at the front of the classroom, I'll be able to provide the populace with something they need to run towards the newest cash cow while their dreams gather dust. I hope they don't knock you down when you start PhDing your way into a legendary dream.

Hope College Closed Because of Virus.

From the Grand Rapids Press:


Hope College estimates 400 students, staff struck by norovirus-like illness
by Kym Reinstadler

Hope College looked like a ghost town on Sunday -- day four of a contagious noroviris-like outbreak which caused Ottawa County Health Department officials to order the campus to close Friday.

Hope College officials say since Friday, more than 400 staff and students have come down with symptoms of the nasty flu that has been knocking down people like bowling pins.

The small liberal arts college is now unlikely to open before Wednesday, according to the college.
Earlier Sunday, the college said the number of reported cases of the flu-like illness causing vomiting and diarrhea for 24 to 48 hours climbed to 180, but many students felt those numbers self-reported to the health department are low.

"About half my friends have gotten sick and several didn't go to a clinic because it's a viral illness and doctors can't really do anything for you, anyway," said Katie Opatik-Duff, a freshman.
She created a Facebook page for the campus community called "Hope College: The Great Plague of 2008," because she wanted to find out how many people the brief but miserable illness laid low.

About one third of the 3,200 campus community had registered at the site Sunday, 14 percent of whom said they are sick or had been.

"It's a pretty good representative sample, and based on it my estimate is that 400 people got sick," said Duff, who returned home to Middleville on Friday to try to avoid getting sick. She lives in Dykstra Hall, which was hard-hit by the virus.

Update:
Hope College News Release: Monday Night.

The Year 4 Primer, and a Call For Your Posts.

Blah, blah, blah. Year 4 is underway.

Oh, there are some changes coming. We've lined up some of the more popular "correspondents" and have asked them to provide their particular brand of snark, smackdown, and polarizing paralysis. Those folks will appear once a week for a period of four weeks.

You'll recognize some names, of course, though we're recently had a snitty fight with Walter so we're unsure if he'll be joining the new feature or not. Regardless, it's just a trial, just a floaty little balloon. We're trying it. What did mama say? "How can you know you don't like it if you don't try it?" Ugh. Spinach. Or maybe not. Maybe it'll be huckleberry pie and we'll all be off to the races.

But, as always, we welcome your posts. We love it when new folks arrive, because they're so much fun to skewer when they make a mistake. No, we didn't mean that. New blood, though, keeps the enterprise pumping and fresh. Just because you haven't gotten on the page yet, don't give up on us. We're actively looking for new names in year 4, and we promise to spread the posts around to the largest group of writers we can corral.

What is it that we want? Well, there are certain things we cover here at RYS, some obvious and some not so. So, use this quick guide to help you decide what you want to slave over:

• Well, the staple is the "smackdown." We tee up some unsuspecting snowflakes and beat them up with our wit, our elan, our razor sharp teeth. It's rate your students, after all, right?


• There's the "post complaint." Somebody gets all excited and unhappy about what someone else thinks or feels or writes about. And then wants to let everyone know what a big fucking baby he is. So, if you see something you don't like, and have the energy, you can bitch about it. Of course when that happens, remember you've now taken the risk of becoming pinata-bait. Like the post below.


• Oh, RYS readers love it when someone tries to thin the herd. They often rise up en masse and give a shit kicking to the perpetrator. We call this the "payback." Don't come into our house and make fun of the carpet, mister!


• One of the most obvious post categories is simply the "Big Thirsty," the Thursday question that always comes from a reader. A lot of newcomers like to try their hand at this because on Friday or Saturday we throw up the "Big Thirsty replies," which cover a wide range of thought, from ridiculous to sublime, and usually back to ridiculous.


• We have a real affection for a post that we often call "the quitter." Someone has reached the end of the academic tether, and decides to let us know that they're on the way out. We never know what to do. Tell them to get lost? Cheer them in their new endeavor? Or join them, those lucky saps!


• We have a whole series of "student emails," these darling missives that make us wonder if there's any reason to continue teaching the damn dolts.


• "Meet the Dean," is a post where an unsuspecting faculty member experiences an encounter with one of the goons in administration.


• There's nothing that probably feels so good as writing the "this site sucks" post. It takes a certain skill to insult the page AND get on the page at the same time. Of course it's Wicked Walter who's mastered the form, but there are others who are brave enough to try their hand. Caution. We used to think this was cute.


• Like it or not, and many readers tend to NOT, we get reports from "the job market" fairly often. These are usually too much like the Chronicle for us to use, but we occasionally feature one if it's got something especially tasty in it.


• There is, of course, the "faculty wars" posts that reached their peak (or nadir, we suppose) during the "Bright Gumpdrop Unicorn" battles of last fall. These posts nearly always line up the codgers versus the kids in a death match between the deadwood senior faculty and the "always looking elsewhere" junior faculty. Ooooh, it's delicious.


• As a sort of twin set of insanity, we have the folks who get all juiced up about academic bloggers who aren't exactly like them. These are usually folks who either hate cats or Buffy the Vampire Slayer (who appear on LOTS of academic blogs for reasons we can't fathom.) Beware of hating on the cats though, or insulting someone else's treasured blogger, because someone like Carla will come along, and we really can't take more than one of those a year.

Oh, and there are other categories, but that should keep you busy for a while. Also, it's late Sunday night and we still haven't watched "Ghost Whisperer" on the Tivo. We always wait till it's dark here at the compound because that damn show makes us cry like babies.

Welcome to year 4, everyone. We hope you like the new fonts, colors, and design. (That's a joke, of course, because there's a whole other category of posts when people just write to us to complain about what the damn page LOOKS like!!!!)

As always, we solicit your thoughts, ideas, posts, queries, complaints, and pure, pure beauty. Send what you have, what you are, what is deep inside, what is unsaid, what is truest, what is a big fucking lie, etc. to Rate Your Students. We promise to make a hideous graphic to go with it.

Kisses,
Compound Clark & Compound Christy

Programming Patty Pisses On the PhD. Let's See What a Million Bucks Buys in 2040, Freeze Dried Muffin?

I love your site and read it devotedly. It never fails to validate my decision to become a Web programmer instead of getting a PhD in English Lit and trying to hack it as a college professor.

In the go-go '90s, I learned HTML because writing jobs dried up, my MA was useless, but I lucked out when I discovered that I have a knack for the math and logic used in computing, despite my lack of arithmetic skills, and that I kick ass at abstract algebra.

I've never been without a job since I took that six-week course to learn HTML ten years ago. I've been a Web programmer for my alma mater for the last five years. I make 50K a year and have all kinds of cushy benefits. During summers and winter breaks, I frequently double-dip and freelance at my desk, and no-one's the wiser. I work hard sometimes but only in comparison to all the slackers this university employs.

My more idealistic classmates are still polishing their PhD theses, having been forced to move to the boondocks to get adjunct positions, or else they live with their parents while adjuncting at three different community colleges to make their monthly loan payments.

My faculty friends from my undergraduate days are increasingly bitter at all the back-biting and treachery and politics of the ivory tower, which you describe so eloquently on your site. Meanwhile I'm looking forward to my retirement in thirty years, because by that time, I'll have over a million dollars in my 403b, in addition to whatever Social Security benefits haven't been Ponzi-schemed away and a modest Roth IRA fund.

At which point I intend to earn a PhD in Arthurian Literature and spend my golden years pottering around with old manuscripts as I had originally intended.

Polite Phillip from the Provost's Office Disapproves Generally, But Likes Ike.

I confess I'd not heard of this site until quite recently, and for the most part I'm alarmed at it. I don't think professionals should treat their jobs or their students with quite so much distaste and condescension.

But, I suppose that's neither here nor there.

I did want to say, however, that your "Ike the Insider" writer - for all of his/her bluster - is right on the money in almost everything he/she says. I counsel grad student across an entire division of our university, and while I wouldn't use the same language, what I do say is nearly exactly what is contained in his/her October 10th article.

I have taken the following paragraph, blown it up, and added it to a binder I give our departing graduates. Well done on Ike for writing what needs to be said, and well done on you for publishing it:

Regardless of the hoops that Human Resources and the Dean's Office puts in front of applicants, we're really just looking for someone who'll be a good member of the community. Someone who loves doing the job. Someone who's interested in learning from the rest of us. Someone we want to hang with. Someone who comes off as a regular person, free of insecurity, ego, greed, and pretension. Have you ever spent any time with a group of academics? It's a wonder anyone gets hired at all.

A New RYS-er Brings Some Old School Smackdown. Otto from Omaha, You Have the Floor. Let the Bitchslap Begin.

Miss Hotness:

Why in the name of God do you show up for a nine a.m. class dressed like you're about to go out for a night of drinks at the club? I realize you're still a freshman, and maybe you like to look good or whatever - anyone who's seen the way I dress knows I can't throw stones. But seriously, is this an attempt to sway me? The quivery lip and the doe eyes when you came to complain about the grade on your first paper made me wonder. However, I quickly came to realization that the spectacular decolletage on display that day wasn't just for me so much as for anyone who cares to look. That's fine, honey, if that's your deal, but see if you can tear yourself away from the wardrobe and makeup mirror long enough to, I don't know, implement ANY of the NUMEROUS suggestions I made on your draft, even some of which might have moved your grades up out of the nearly-failing range to something respectable.

Dipshit Jones:

You came to class twice during the semester, failed to turn in one of three papers on which almost your whole grade is based, and missed the midterm. Why the fuck would you get up to go to an eight a.m. final? What possible purpose could it serve? Especially when you "finished" the whole test in twenty minutes, on precisely one page of the blue book. You scored in the single digits... on a percentile scale. Congratulations. On the other hand, your arrival did provide one of the funniest moments of the semester. Remember, just before the final started, when you asked for a blue book and one of the other (good) students volunteered to give you one. She started to dig into her bag, then looked at you quizzically and asked, "Are you even IN this class?" It was all I could do to not die laughing right there. So, yeah, actually, thank you for your bottomless stupidity. I wouldn't have had that moment without it.

Douchebag Nontrad:

If you tell me one more time how you make more than I do already, and how that somehow means that my subject is irrelevant to you and that you don't feel, therefore, you should have to do any of the assignments, I swear by all that's holy I'll find a way to make SURE you fail the course. Thankfully, you're saving me a whole lot of work by skirting the edge of flunkdom already.

Hipster Scum:

I am not your fucking friend. I do not want to grab coffee and talk shop. I do not want to do these things because you are eighteen and think, having read a book or two and come to my class sporadically for two weeks, that you have some insights to share. You don't. Go grab whatever horrible torment your kind has inflicted on coffee this week with some of your text messaging, iPod wearing friends and share your inane observations with them. I'm sure they'll reciprocate. If we grabbed a drink together and tried to talk shop, it would turn into private tutoring for Intro, and that's not what I do to relax, believe it or not. The people I enjoy talking about my discipline with are the people I consider colleagues - professors, graduate students, and even some bright and well read upperclassmen majors who hang out in the lounge from time to time. If you want me to care about anything you have to say on the subject, show me you know something about it... something your first paper failed at, miserably.

Why Do We Grade? We Mean Besides Our Paltry Paychecks Hanging in the Balance. Replies to This Week's Thirsty.

We had an especially healthy set of replies to Abigail's query about grading. We've done our best to choose some that represent the mob. Oh, and despite all evidence to the contrary, we've got nothing to do with that nut at the bottom from the pen industry. We don't encourage you to buy pens at all. If you can't get a lifetime supply out of the department's supply closet, you're not trying hard enough. Please to enjoy:

• I have one rule: grade only for assessment. Never grade to punish, to cajole, or to reward. Grade only to assess learning. That means I grade only after students have had abundant chance to learn something (often, I have no final official grades until the end of the course). I never use grades to get students to do something. If they don't want to learn, I don't want the role of taskmaster. Surprisingly, most students still do the work, whether it's graded or not. Obviously, I'm a big hippie, but of all the stresses of my job (like the assistant dean who refuses to give me a good evaluation even when I rock the observation), grading isn't one of them anymore.
  




• Oh, this may not be the most politic thing to admit, but I do punish with grades. I see it all as one narrative. Student misunderstands assignment, dock it. Student makes class a chore for everyone, dock it. I don't care what it sounds like. Dock it. Play the game as it's designed, precious beauties, and you'll succeed. Disrespect me, the process, and the class, dock it.
  




• I find grading not so bad once you know exactly what you want to see, and tell the kiddies. Gotta check their ability to communicate understanding, and so on. A trick I've used this term: every lab report has to include a haiku. This gives me a little something extra to look forward to in each paper besides sad data fit to a sorry line. I have to repeat myself a bit to make sure they know I'm serious, but after they see the colleagues who did write a haiku get a sticker, they join the party.
  




• We grade because we're required to grade. They tried to get rid of grades in the 1960s, right around the time they did institute anonymous student evaluations of teaching, but didn't succeed. I'm glad they didn't: I always do my best to award grades that show how much the student learned. For students who can't or won't learn, whether or not grades are involved, grades can serve as a warning to prospective employers. This should ensure the value of the degrees we confer. If you wonder whether you grade to prove that you read their work, you're too easy: raise your standards. You should grade to assess the student's performance in your class, not a student's effort or "value," whatever that means. Sometimes students learn from the grades they earn: all too often they don't, but you can't help those, no matter what you do.
  




• I grade because it’s part of my job and while it is “just a letter or a number,” it lets the students know the relative quality of their work. Speaking as a former student, there’s nothing worse than working hard on a paper only to get it back and see that the first page has never even been turned over. Worse still, is having that same paper marked with an “A” only to re-read it and find blatant errors that you missed during proofreading and that the professor was too lazy to read and mark. If that’s an “A,” what the hell is it two years later when your writing and analytical skills have improved? I realize that many students don’t belong in college and don’t give a shit about being there, but for the ones who genuinely want to learn from subject matter experts, you owe it to them to spend the time to give them enough feedback so that they can improve. Since you often don’t know who cares and who doesn’t, you need to give them all the same amount of feedback. What they do with it is up to them.




• I grade my students' work because they need to know if they are getting the material. I need to know if they are getting the material. The programs my students apply to need to know if the students got the material. As an anatomy/physiology instructor my job is to both teach and screen. There are WAY TOO MANY students out there trying to be nurses and FAR TOO FEW that actually have the intelligence, drive, and reasonable expectations to be a nurse. The waiting list for nursing schools in my area is 3-4 years for the CC track for an RN (registered nurse degree) and highly competitive if you want to bypass the CC and get a BSN (bachelor's in the science of nursing) at the local university. Some students really want to be nurses, but don't have "it." I won't let sloppily assigned grades be a crutch for some to student hobbling his or her way through prerequisites. If a student is failing my course that is a clear sign that destiny has another path in store for the student. I don't want idiot nurses. Do you?




• I think we grade to try to measure how well the students grasp what we teach them. I don’t think it validates effort. Some people don’t do much work but are bright and do well. Others work hard and don’t do as well. It hurts when I have to give the latter students a lower grade. You don’t need to validate your effort. You prepare for class, see students in office hours and do other things that generally prove you give a shit. If they don’t see it, that’s their problem. Grading can help give you guidance on what you’re doing well and areas where you might improve. It does the same for the students. If the student doesn’t take comments you write regarding their work seriously, screw ‘em. We give our full effort to our job. Expect the same from your students. If they don’t deliver, let their grades show it. They should feel that grades send a signal to potential employers and/or graduate schools that they’ve learned the material to a certain level. That’s about it. A grade isn’t a statement about a student’s value. Grades don’t tell others what type of person one is. They just give an indication of what they’ve learned in a given course. It’s not personal. Try not to worry so much. You might almost care too much.




• Our economy is battered, and not in the good egg-flour-breadcrumbs kind of way. Your continued heavy use of Pilot Neo-Gel red pens helps to sustain valuable manufacturing jobs and puts food on the tables of hard working American families. Don’t grade for yourself. Don’t grade for your students. Grade for America! Brought to you by your local Pen and Ink Manufacturers, Processors and Sellers.

Completely Voluntary Hot Links For a Freakishly Busy Friday.

• York U part-timers strike. From the Toronto Star.


• Norovirus strikes 80 Hope College Students. "Don't look at me," geeky proffie says. "I have the Nerdovirus." From MLive.com.


• Many college students go crazy for the vote. Misunderstood term "Pull the lever." From the New York Daily News.


• Ten tips for a better college paper. (Don't forget #11: "Grease the proffie for a higher grade.") From US News & World Report.


• College students go "liberal" in their third year. First 2 years too busy with Red Bull, Wii, and vomiting. From the U of Mizzou Maneater.


• $24 million library fine? Update on a missing Shakespeare collection. From Associated Press.

Abigail from Atlanta is All Aflutter About Grades. A Big Thirsty Kickoff for Year 4.

I have tons of questions, questions that weren't ever answered in grad school, questions which I'd feel stupid asking my colleagues.

But if I don't ask someone, and if I don't find a way to change things for me, I'm going to burn out. I'm only in my 3rd semester of full time teaching (4/4 at a medium sized state uni), and I feel like a Red Bull-injected gazelle on a treadmill.

Grading. Okay? I understand that we evaluate the work our students do. But it taxes me, takes me over, and I never really get the sense that my students are reading what I write. Am I grading to prove I read their work? Am I grading to assess the student's value? Am I grading to validate their effort (or mine)? Am I grading to punish them (or me)? Am I grading to provide incentive for next time? Am I grading to mark their progress? Am I grading as part of my ongoing attempt to educate?

Q: Help me. Why do you grade? What can be accomplished? Is it just a letter or a number, or do we grade for other reasons?

A: Send replies here.

The Sweet, Sweet Smell of Hiatus. (And Guacamole. And Burnt Leather.)

On the occasion of our 3rd anniversary, and the bacchanal that followed (where Yvonne from NBC's "Chuck" kicked the living shit out of Compound Chronos and left him in a ditch 40 miles out in the desert), we're going on hiatus.

Two moderators are taking time off from the site, and a number of folks who've been involved with the site over the past three years are having spirited discussions about the future of RYS. (Spirited means we're all being assholes to each other, acting entitled, being petulant, etc.)

One idea that came from a longtime reader last year - which we've seriously considered for quite a while - is lining up some of the more prolific "correspondents" and giving them regular space on the site once a week, that sort of thing. There is a large group of folks who write to us fairly regularly, and there are some characters who always deliver top notch material that usually is met warmly by readers. So we're thinking about that.

But as always, we're open to your thoughts, and we encourage you to send them to us. We may not be posting or answering mail for a period of time, but at least one moderator is going to monitor comments and help the rest of us sort out what will become of year 4.

In the first 24 hours after the anniversary postings on November 3rd we received 440 emails that covered everything from our apparent "casual misogyny," to where we could stick the empty bottles of absinthe, to (truly) scores of very sweet and supportive notes about the site and its role. We may still not have clear vision - nor are we able to make a fist - but we hear you all.

Our best,
RYS

3 Years. And It Seems the Compound Kids Are Well Into that Second Bottle of Ether Already.

Today we celebrate the 3rd anniversary of Rate Your Students. None of us has been around that long, but we take any excuse for a party, so we've loaded in the fur pelts, the absinthe, and the battery cables. It's going to be a long night at the compound. We've got some special guests coming, so we've had Wicked Walter and Weepy Wayne working all morning getting the blood and mud off of the furniture.

Last year at this time we posted a retrospective that included a brand new note from this site's founder, the more and more elusive "The Professor." We thought we'd check in with him to see if he'd like to say howdy again this year, but he's apparently living up in Forks, Washington with his new family, and passed.

So it's left to us, we suppose.

Three years in a blog's life. It's an eternity, of course. Almost 1700 posts over that time, tens of thousands of emails, and more than 7 million visitors.

And we're not even trying hard.

Actually, many of you have noticed our thinly veiled attempts to kill the site, JobFinder, Coolest. College. Students. Ever. CrimeBeat. The inane hot links.

Every new feature we try is designed to piss people off, annoy them. We love it when the first line of a reader's mail says, "WTF?" Of course we're trying to disappoint you. Of course we get up at 3 or 4 every morning Pacific time (in order to be online when school starts on the east coast) to read mail and post the best stuff just so that you can get all high and righteous and tell us how sucky we're doing our job.

We've been especially successful ruining everyone's fun with our indiscriminate changing of the page design. "The colors, my god, the colors! And what's with that font? And what are those fucking leaves doing on the page? WHY CAN'T YOU MAKE THE PAGE LOOK THE WAY I LIKE IT?" Oh, it's delicious.

Of course we're trying to ruin the site. It's all we dream about. That and pouring honey on that blonde spy on NBC's cool show "Chuck." We Tivo that shit just so we can watch her run around. We have slow-mo. We've got it down to a science. In fact, she's here with us tonight. One of the former moderators taught at a juco in LA and met her when he was working a craft services job. How he got her on a plane and to the compound, we'll never know. But it's not as if she'd be the first person to arrive on site a little woozy and tied with heavy rope.

Anyhow, it's been 3 years. Blah blah blah. Big fucking deal. How many is that in dog years? How far along the tenure clock are we? Oh, who gives a shit. If there's a fourth year - and we're not even going to think about it until every last one of those shrimp gets eaten - we're just going to do what pleases us. We're pretty sure we lost our way this year. After all we have the emails to prove it. But if we return, we're going to all shave our heads, get down to our high school weight, and let the freak flags fly. If it's something you dig, we'll be happy to have you along for the ride, sending in your own screeds, being one of those nifty "chief correspondents." We might even send you one of those great RYS purses.

And, if the site's not for you, just shuffle right on past. We'd recommend you check out another academic blog, something like Highly Emotional Academic with Cats.

Anyway, it's just turned midnight here. Bring us some of that absinthe, and don't be skimpy this year with the portions. Tell Yvonne that we're out of dip, and to get her skinny ass over to the CD player. No more Talking Heads. Put some fucking Kool Moe Dee on there.

Oh, and it's little. Do you hear us? Years ago The Professor made a promise. This world. This fucking academic bullshit. It's little and we're saying it.

You decide what you want to do with that. We'll hit you on the flip.

Our Favorite Birthday Wish of All. We Figure With This Kind of Support We Might Be Able to Kill The Site Off Before Christmas.

Mistah College - he dead.

I’m not gonna lie - I’ve been over it for a while now. Not just RYS, but the whole deal. Congrats on three years, big yippee, but I’m thinking about leaving the professor business and becoming an insurance salesman or a drug dealer. Something fulfilling, something I can be proud of.

The majority of my students are bored silent all the time now, my colleagues are either full of shit or assholes like this hard scientist churning out doctors; thanks for the depth of your vision, by the way, and for ensuring that my physician isn’t also a citizen. (I would love a few minutes with this kid to show him how “pale and wan” the back of my hand is.)

I get that there’s a rhythm associated with the academic year, highs and lows – it isn’t my first donkey ride. (President Kennedy has been shot!) It’s not that I’m some idealist douche bag either, but I’ll give him that many folks around here have that disease.

Worse, they don’t even have the idealism – it’s a fashionable act assumed for a few hours each day on passing through the faculty lounge. Just another lie in the pile.

Grade inflation is now encouraged by our Deans and CEOs, another face of the absurd mendacity in academic culture. Students can’t handle the truth, admin can’t handle the truth. But deceit pays and business is good. So your whiskey I drink, and in shit I sleep.

I can’t in good faith pass even half of my lit class - for their unwillingness to read past the shady Google summaries, for their boredom and indifference, for their incomplete understanding of what it means to earn something. Professor Pussyfoot down the hall, on the other hand, will tell these same students their writing is brilliant, their insight promising.

It’s not just them, honey, it’s the whole fucking machine.

Shit, I wish I could still respect myself and pass out congratulatory grades based on effort and teach to the exam, suck administrative dick with the other side of my mouth and jerk off my colleagues all at the same time. I would save a lot of energy otherwise lost on trying to keep it real. This isn't the same as it ever was.

So for next year could you fuckers just bump up the potency, stop cutting my shit with so much sell-out merchandising and filler? Crack the safe and let your balls come out and play, light up the blender and make RYS honest again, push it back underground.

If not I may be writing into Rate Your Cracker instead - we'll have bags too.

Heidi & Hildi, RYS's favorite Sexy Scholastic Twins, Both Send Congratulatory Notes On Our Big Anniversary. Yet Won't Tell Us Why They Won't Call!

• On anniversaries, it is important to take a moment to mark the passage of time. With that comes the inevitable meandering through our shares memories of days gone by. The stories roll out, we laugh again at those golden moments grown dusty with age. We acknowledge that things have changed. So today, here at RYS, we give a nod to the enormous accomplishment we celebrate with our bantering. Our snowflakes are getting dumber. They fall asleep in class, they don't do their homework, they cheat on tests, they make up excuses. To the unseasoned observer it might appear they are exactly the same from semester to semester across this great land of ours. But listening carefully to their questions, it becomes evident more surprises lie in wait. They ask, "Where was World War 2." They think Saddam Hussein is a Nazi. They can text, but they can't type. They can download anything, but they can't remember their passwords. So, when we are referred to as complainers, whiners, big babies, crotchety old farts, inexperienced idiots, we can stand proud and say we are not just the keepers of knowledge. We are scientists. We are the preservers of records. Long live, RYS. Together we are chronicling the de-evolution of a species.
  



• So, it's been three years has it? Does that qualify you for some interwebs version of tenure? Ah I remember when I stumbled upon RYS the first time so long ago, when I was in my first year of teaching and ready to shoot myself in the face to make it stop. It was the middle of night; I was living in Buttcrack, USA in a department of people who lectured me, in hushed, fearful tones, about my publication record and the need to 'pick it up' for tenure even though I had published more as a grad student than they had...ever. Whipsawed between some jackhole provost who believed that our road to the top 30 could be paved by flogging the junior faculty and the departmental deadwood's insistence that we all meet weekly with our freshman advisees, I had both insomnia and tears rolling down my face. After drowning my sorrows with Midori mixed with Sprite and vodka, I lay, still in tears, with my laptop on my chest surfing the web. In a brief moment of complete honesty, I fired up Google and wrote the following the search box: "My students are complete fucking dolts." The first assortment of links proved unsatisfactory, but one contained a link that led me RYS. It took me hours to read the entire archive. I woke my husband up I was laughing so hard. And, even though it is an angry and bitter compound, I still read every day. Sure, yeah. It's a mess. It's dysfunctional. It's snarky. But just like that first night, it helps to know that I am not alone. The crazed Kool-Aid world of my colleagues is one universe, where I smile like a Stepford wife and gush about the joys of teaching and the brilliance of a central administration whose leadership consists of exhorting us to both fix pancakes for undergraduates and win Nobel Prizes. This RYS is another universe, where there is always salt for my margarita, where there are always some students who are bigger dolts than mine, and where there is some proffie so infinitely more pathetically fracked up than me that she LIKES that her students call her "Mom." Here's to the parallel universes. Now pass me the blender and get out of my way. I've got snowflakes to melt.

Slugger Sue of the Siskiyous Says Thanks.

Rate Your Students prints what they're sent. As such, they are, almost axiomatically, what their readers need them to be. I keep coming here every day because it makes me feel less alone to see my students in everyone else's classes. I can laugh at them in the privacy of my own office, instead of to their vacant faces. I'm glad others are braver than I am; thank you all for the catharsis, and thanks, Compound Crew, for hosting it.

Last spring was possibly the worst semester of my academic career. Morale was low--theirs and mine--and for the first time since I've been teaching, I found it hard to go into the classroom every few hours and just deal with trying to cajole, beg, bully, or trick them into accidentally learning something. It is quite possible that during this time RYS saved my marriage, because my spouse was pretty tired of hearing me bitch...and while I did write sometimes, it was really just reading about everyone else's experiences that made me able to shut up about my own.

I think, by and large, we academics love our jobs and our students. We bitch about the ones who are worth bitching about, the 5% of students who take up 95% of our time and attention. The ones who drain away our emotional and mental energies that could be spent on students who actually give a shit. It's just like a big family where the troubled child takes away the attention from the good kids who can take care of themselves. Except we have a whole new set of sibling rivalries every 4 months, and we usually don't get to find out whether they ever actually turn into productive members of society or not.

RYS is the forum where we get to do that bitching, without ruining our images in the eyes of our colleagues and friends. It's the confessional, the therapist's office, the relief valve. I haven't lost my cool with a student--or, frankly, even really felt like it--since I started coming here. When a conversation starts getting really surreal, when I find myself wanting to email "READ THE GODDAMN FUCKING SYLLABUS!!!" to the fortieth student to ask the same stupid question, I just start mentally composing an email to RYS. I don't always send them, but I'm glad others are braver than I am.

Thank you all for the catharsis, and thanks, Compound Crew, for hosting it.

What We Do When We Can Do Nothing Else.

I must admit I had dreamed about the moment. We're in an enormous seminar room with twenty observers. Kayla is on one side of the table, I'm on the other side with the college's Dean, a representative of counseling, and someone is officially taking notes. It's a proceeding for expulsion.

Flashback to the classroom: Kayla throws a half of a submarine sandwich against the wall with enough drama to win an Academy Award. Everything she says is punctuated with wild hand gestures. She raises her hand in the middle of a truly rocking discussion in an otherwise totally dead class and asks: "What do you think it feels like to have metal skin and the heart of a frog?" after which all breathing stops because we're all just a little bit afraid. And that's a good day.

On a bad day, she picks at her fingernails as though she's trying to pull each one clean out, mumbles and chuckles under her breath, and rolls her eyes when I shush her direction. On a really bad day, the day that brought us to that table moment, she threw her tennis shoe across the room. She screamed that there was water running into little pools in her brain. Her ever shaky demeanor melted. We were more than a little frightened.

Flash Forward: It's an otherwise sunny afternoon. Kayla seems to understand she's been expelled. She recognizes what she did was wrong. She can't make the connection that she's trapped in a repeating cycle of being a little odd and being totally whacked out. There are meds in her purse, we've seen them. It's better when she takes them, but it's never good.

When it's over, there are no victory dances even though there will not be another moment when I have to try to avoid asking probing questions that might just set her off. I will not have to cringe when I watch the other kids laugh at her. I will not have to wonder if this is the day she stands up and takes off her shirt.

It was a day when the downside of open enrollment slapped me in the face. Anyone can sign up and be a college student. Anyone. And when it goes badly, sometimes really badly, no one wins.

Pass the bottle. It was a long, long day.

Not So Pale and Wan After All. An Avowed Humanist Goes Medieval on a Recent Pocket-Protector Dickwad in an "Ice Cream Coat."

Here's one Humanities prof who's got a little 'sweet' science to share with Poindexter the Puffed-up Pocket Protector and his cackling over Cory's situation. It's easy to be dismissive of students when you're separated from that horde of unwashed frosh by a phalanx of toadying TAs and a Scantron machine. Cory may not be cut out for teaching. Riding herd on a 25-headed blob that cares more for ring tones than Rilke is not for the fainthearted. But this much is clear from your pompous post: Squaring the circle between what is culture (humanities) and what is cultivation (teaching) lies far beyond your feeble grasp of what we here know as the "hard" science of teaching.

Let's forget the fact that most sartorially-challenged science profs look as if they've been dressed by their own lab monkeys. Forget that top-tier med schools now mandate some form of humanitarianism (i.e., bedside manners) for the heretofore sociopathic Dr. Poke-n-Slice, so ably trained in the "hard" sciences by fuckwads like you. Forget that none other than Hippocrates himself emerged from the same osmotic wellspring of Greek Philosophy championed by the "thin Philosophy proffie" down the hall. Forget all that. Let's focus instead on what a dick you are.

Humanities profs concern themselves with their students for two reasons. 1) We're not self-righteous pricks in ice-cream coats 2) We engage our students because we're the ones who read their papers. We don't teach them WHAT to think. We teach them HOW to think. We engage them viscerally through poetry or intellectually through philosophy only so that they might cough up something beyond a sputtering cut-n-paste hairball of aimless Googling and/or stillborn Wikipedia entries. The reality that this seldom occurs is why RYS exists. That's why the majority of posts emanate from Humanities profs, Dr. Sherlock Q. Fuck-knuckle. We're the ones in trenches grinding out the entry-level courses. We're the ones imploring these corn-syrup-infused zombies to consider for moment that their minds were never intended to be a Superfund site of corporate sludge. We introduce them to the concept of empathy. Then we send them to you. If you were in charge of that responsibility, this campus would be a fucking ghost town.

Walt Whitman and Wittgenstein leave you cold? Who gives a fuck what you like. Badmouth my side of the sandbox? This "pale and wan English proffie" is going all Cormac McCarthy on your shit.

When It Comes to Underprepared Students, The Buck Stops With Mitzi from Medford.

Ben from Boston has just experienced what I have seen in my classroom for the past few semesters, courtesy of the high school mantra "Every Child Should Go to College," combined with the parental mantra of "Get Out of the House and Do Something Productive or I Won't Pay For Your Car Insurance," coupled occasionally with "Well I Passed High School, so Now I'm in Your Class."

The first two categories will wash out on their own, but the third specifically concerns Mentally Disabled Students, and here's where it gets REALLY tricky. I have a student in my class currently who has (according to my college's Disabled Students Office) a severe case of Asperger's Syndrome. The kid is incredibly bright, cracking jokes over the rest of the students' heads. He is a veritable "Peanuts" Pig Pen character, trailing bits of detritus: papers, pencil stubs, drink bottles so most the students won't sit within two seats of him.

His body language is as interesting as he is. He comes regularly, speaks in groups haltingly (no social skills are a hallmark of this condition). He has not turned in one assignment or one paper, except for the in-class essay. Mostly he surfs the web on his computer (I only allow computers for the Disabled Students) and I tell him to stow that away plenty of times. He's just not equipped to be in a college classroom.

I spend a lot of time at the Disabled Students Office trying to figure out what to do, mostly letting them tell me "He's got to meet college standards." Yeah, okay. Then how did he get in here?

What standards did he pass somewhere that decided he was college-abled? At grade time, I am frustrated beyond belief at having to justify grades that I know are right, but rip me up because I know what they mean. (I'm doing my best to buck up here, so no slanderous comments.)

The other memorable student reminds me of Ben from Boston's guy, only my guy was not brilliant. Just incoherent. And in his research papers he quoted his grandmother, mother, the gas station attendant on their trip to Montana (his paper was about global warming) and one of the people standing next to him when "Old Faithful" went off. (Sample line from the discussion section: "The possibility to prevent air pollution is true, as long if the types of air pollution are not regulated through personal and careful attention to our interactions with Mother Nature.") I still see this student on campus; he shuns me as I gave him a D, effectively ending his chances of succeeding in English 101 on his third time through.

I can only say this here, to RYS, but WHAT are these students doing in my Freshman Comp class? Was it some other teacher who, when confronted with them, didn't have the heart to say, you know, college isn't for everyone and here's your D (or F) and good luck? Is it their parents, who don't know what else to do with these adult children and figure that our campus is their playground? In my book, a loving parent wouldn't like their child to flunk English 3 times in a row.

At the root of this is money, of course. A warm body means money from the state. A group of these warm bodies means federal money for disabled students. (Disclosure: I have had other disabled students in my classes: those with things such as bone diseases, severe learning disabilities and they work hard and earn their grades.)

Like Ben of Boston, I can't figure this out.

But unlike Ben of Boston, the sound you hear at grade time is my anguish over having to give them their grades--I pride myself on running standards equivalent to the Big U down the road.

It's unfortunate that I have to spend my time, efforts, energy on students who clearly should not be here. It seems that I'm where the buck stops.