Mary from Minneapolis Has Been Defeated. And She's Not Alone.

Where I go to graduate school, the senior faculty members have an abysmal publishing record, yet advise the graduate students to ‘publish or perish.’ They take a year’s worth of sabbaticals, while graduate students teach three first year composition classes and attempt to write a dissertation in their ‘spare time.’ My alcoholic dissertation advisor lives in another state, and I've been left without any sort of faculty mentorship.

The reality is this: perhaps at other Universities, graduate students are brought in to actually be trained as scholars. However, my people (the defeated, the disillusioned) know that we are cheap labor, period, doing the jobs no one else wants to do. I’d be far less defeated if I felt I received an actual education: just one-quarter of what I give to my students.

At my University, the course selection is narrow, the faculty is unavailable to confer and rarely leave comments on our exams and projects, and professional development is unheard of. This is because we’re not being trained as scholars, and we’re defeated because we know this. We signed on to receive an education, and instead we received 60 first year students. Without any training, we waltz into classrooms and attempt to teach these oftentimes difficult freshmen, for a pay rate of less than five dollars an hour (but you’ve heard this story before; I won’t go on).

In our free time, we field criticism from the faculty, such as ‘you’re teaching too much content’ and ‘you’re not getting through the program fast enough.’ Graduate school, at least in my experience, is not about the quality of one’s research: it’s about efficiency. I was even advised, in one of those rare moments in which I received something that vaguely approximated mentorship, that I should switch my dissertation to multicultural studies because it’s 'hot right now.'

We are defeated because we came in the door, with the love of our discipline fully intact. We are then told to ‘give up the individuality thing and package yourself, because it’s a corporate world, baby.’ It’s the corporate world and we graduate students are the bottom feeders. In my discipline, there are very few jobs available and in all likelihood, I will be working at Sears next year. I’m defeated, because I’m a devoted, good teacher. I’m defeated because I see faculty members with twenty-times my income spend a year on sabbatical, while I write countless letters of recommendation on behalf of my students. I ask one student, “why aren’t you asking an actual PhD for this recommendation to law school,” to which he responds: “I don’t know them, they don’t know my name, they’re never around.”

These same faculty members shoot off emails, telling the graduate students to ‘hurry up and get out,' because we’re an abstraction, and there’s a whole line of new students ready and eager to replace us.

We leave graduate school defeated because we’ve been force fed the corporate model of higher education. We leave graduate school defeated because we realize there’s no such thing as professional integrity. Our faculty members bicker and wage war on other faculty members, and in term, all the graduate students with Stockholm Syndrome start cutting each other’s throats to incur the favor of distant, unappreciative faculty members.

It's Only One Student Apology, But We're Grateful For It. We Will Alert You When We Get Another. For Now, We Will Bathe In This One.

Please know that there are students out here who agree with you, who hate the lazy, grade-grubbing, plagiarizing, Daddy-dialing little bastards who populate our classes.

We want to learn. We want to be good students. We want to be respected as intellectuals. Heck, we want to do good work and want you to like us. When all of those things happen your job is a little less hellish and our grade just might be shinier. And, in the process, we sometimes inadvertently get an education!

I apologize for the kids who plagiarize and then act like they don't know what that means. Isn't that an eight-grade vocabulary word? I apologize for the guy in the front row who asks pompous tangential questions in a painfully loud voice just to prove How Smart He Is to his peers. I apologize for the Little Grade Grubbers who ask why they got a 58 instead of a 90 on their exam, or the PreMed Grade Grubbers who gulp and sob over a 98. I especially apologize for the Beastly Grade Grubbers who call in Mommy, Daddy, the Dean, Daddy the Dean, or all of the above, in an attempt to prove to you, by a sheer display of Other Grown-Ups, that you're being So Unfair.

I can't really apologize for the kids who forget their pencils, their paper, or their pants, or who answer their cell phones during class, as this level of rudeness really is beyond my comprehension. I simply wish for your sakes that they disappear.

I apologize for department chairs who base your worth on the evaluations of bitter D students who just wish you'd inflate their grades a little more because "really, who does it hurt?" I apologize for the favoritism shown to professors who can't teach for crap but hand out A's (and evaluation-day candy) at the drop of a hat. I apologize for any persons in power who treat a university like a business and think that "the customer is always right" when in fact "the customer" is a spoiled dumbass who thinks that his tuition is seriously paying your salary.

But hey, all this apologizing isn't just because we, the ass-kissing students, want to empathize with you, our beloved professors. We're the self-centered know-it-all spawn of the baby boomers, after all - we apologize because the awful students are our problem too. When Johnny Moneybags the Third needs a two-week extension on his paper draft because his business-major self has had a stressful Greek Week at the frat, it hurts us all. Their 20-bullshit-excuses-per-week dilute the one situation per year that some of us really do need a break on. My idea throughout undergrad was to never EVER ask for an extension unless it was a ridiculous level of emergency, precisely because I figured that when I finally needed help, the professor would know it wasn't "just another excuse."

I eventually realized that most of my professors were not ogres with hearts of stone; they'd look at my past record and help me out if it seemed reasonable. And if they didn't, incredibly, the sun still managed to rise the next day.

Finally, I personally apologize for any time when I might have BEEN that student - emailing you about something I could have answered by looking at the syllabus, writing a grumpy evaluation because I wished I had done better in the class, or maybe asking an annoying question just because I wanted to prove to you that I was Listening, Attentive, and Smart. I hope you took off and bitched about me as you rightfully should have, and I hope that I have learned from my mistakes!

Some Last Day Suggestions From the Center For Touchy-Feelyness.

Like many campuses, ours has a Center whose purpose is to promote teaching and learning. I won't even get into the irony of a college that has to have a special center to promote *teaching and learning*!

But this center does have some events and resources that have been somewhat useful to me in the past. One of the services they provide is sending teaching suggestions periodically through a listserv. Very occasionally these have proved useful to me; most often I read them and delete, as the suggestions are things I already know, or that are not appropriate to my field or my classes. Most of the time, the submissions are not particularly memorable, for good or bad. The most recent one, though, stopped me in my tracks:

The last day of class can be hectic for students as well as instructors. This is a stressful time for all of us, and students may lose their focus just trying to make it to the end of the semester. Many instructors feel compelled to squeeze in those extra gems of knowledge on the last day. There are,however, more productive ways you can spend your time. One suggestion is a last day of class party. Have fun and plan some closing activities.

WTF? A "last day of class party" is a "more productive way you can spend your time"?!? A way to keep students from "los[ing] their focus"? The message goes on to list other variously educational and touchy-feely things we can do to wrap up the semester.

Maybe I'm hopelessly old-fashioned, naive, or pedantic (or maybe all three!) but I just can't believe that the last day of class--at least in a course with some actual content--isn't best spent maybe reviewing that content, or reinforcing concepts, or making connections with the earlier material, or, I don't know, helping students prepare for the final exam. Then again, it seems a lot of classes here (though not those in my department) don't bother to have final exams either.

A lot of my students seem to think that: (1) nothing really happens (should happen) during the first week of classes, (2) nothing really happens (should happen) during the last week of classes, (3) they shouldn't have required assignments or exams during the week before or the week after a holiday or break, (4) final exams are optional, and (5) they shouldn't be tested on anything that wasn't said out loud in class.

In short, a lot of them appear to think themselves entitled to at least a B for showing up in class at least half the time and breathing in and out. They take it as an affront when we actually start presenting material on the first day of classes ("What? You're not going to just pass out the syllabus and let us go?") and meet on the last day ("None of my other classes are meeting that Monday.") I can only assume their other profs are the ones saving the last day for cupcakes, letters to next semester's students, and a big group hug.

Oh, We Get Lots of Lists.

We get a lot of lists sent to us, funny final exam stories, 10 outrageous lies students tell, you probably know the drill. But the one we get all the time is this one, a list of between 10-50 funny things for professors to do on the first day of class. (Our favorite entry is this one: After turning on the overhead projector, clutch your chest and scream "My pacemaker!")

We get that list from someone at least a couple of times a week. We love it, but have read it so often now that it's not nearly as funny as it was the first time.

But last night someone sent us a new version of the list that we've never seen, and while it didn't make us pee our pants, or anything, we were glad to see some new material. Here are the ones that tickled us most. Enjoy the flava.

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Ten Things to Do In Class.

1. Bring a trombone to class and hand it to the student closest to your desk. Say, "You take care of Mr. T-Bone, and I'll take care of you."
   


2. Whenever anyone asks a question, just reply: "I don't know. What does your monkey think?"
   


3. Announce the start of the exam, but don't pass anything out. Put your head down on your desk and say, "You're all on your own. I'm turning on the radio in my head."
   


4. In the middle of lecturing, stop, look around and say, "My mama. Did you hear my mama? You, there, can you see her? Let me know if my mama is behind me!"
   


5. Tell the class that if anyone says the words "bacon," "dishwasher," or "panorama," that you've got a sock full of nickels in your briefcase that you'll smack them with. Hold the briefcase up and say, "If it's a trip to nickel city you're looking for, then I'm the man to send you there!"
   


6. If any sound comes from outside the classroom, check your watch and say, "My wife will be here any minute. And then we're all in trouble."
   


7. Pull aside a student and whisper, "That guy behind you? Man, he looks crazy!"
   


8. All semester long, whenever any student comes in late, say loudly, "And so that's where we buried the gold." Then laugh a little too loud and a little too long.
   
   
9. When anyone else is speaking, tap the top of your head with your palm. Stop when they stop, and then smell your hand.
   


10. Bring a big tray of food for yourself. Start eating from it, and occasionally point to various students and say, "These are my beans, baby. You may want some beans. But you'll have to get your own."