Adult returning student who decided mid-semester he'd rather work than go to class, said nothing, than e-mailed me the day finals week started to ask if I could "pretty pretty please" (you're a 45-year-old man, why in hell is "pretty pretty please" in your vocabulary???) "give" him a "D" so he could get the hours towards his degree. I told him to turn in his final paper and take his chances like everybody else.
- A mass of students who left at the break because they decided my class was just too boring for words. I sort of feel their pain, because both the textbook and standard syllabus are fairly excruciating, and it's a required course relatively unrelated to their program of study, but I do go out of my way to make it interesting and relevant and use as little of the textbook as humanly possible. So for the seven who stuck around, I went point by point through one of the essay questions on the final exam.
- Student who showed up just long enough each class period to inform me her sitter had flaked out YET AGAIN and then left. Didn't do any of the tests or quizzes, not even as make-ups. Turned up on her presentation day (worth a big chunk of the grade), unprepared, and told me, "My sitter flaked out and I have to go home. Is this going to affect my grade?" Hasn't appeared since, nor turned in her final paper, but does not appear to have taken my advice to take a late drop.
- An apparently imaginary death in the family. Not only an apparently imaginary death, but an apparently imaginary PARENT FIGHTING IN IRAQ death. Student seems to have spaced on the fact that I know her family and that she went out of her way to remind me of this repeatedly throughout the semester in the hopes I'd treat her like the Precious Little Unique Snowflake she is. This one was too hot for me to handle, so I bounced her to student services and told her they have processes for handling students with deaths in the immediate family and will contact her faculty with instructions to give incompletes/allow late work/etc. Haven't heard back.
