Vashna From Vienna Does It Old Skool Up In This Mother. She Wants To Know Why Students Can't Take Notes!

I teach philosophy, OLD-SKOOL. Plato didn’t use a power-point and neither do I. Socrates didn’t have handouts, and neither do I. Consider yourself LUCKY that we have a book, a board, and some chalk (yeah CHALK – SERIOUSLY OLD SKOOL!) Aristotle didn’t have any of that when he taught.

So up in this piece, we are going to learn by reading, discussing, and TAKING NOTES. Yeah, I have blackboard. But I’m only going to use it to post grades, and thought provoking questions that you can think about while reading. And NO – these are not test questions; they are too broad for test questions. (“What ought you to do to be morally good according to Kant? How does he come to this conclusion?”) Then I’m going to lecture about what you read. And if you read with this question in mind, and TAKE NOTES on the lecture, you should be ready for anything I throw at you on test day like - “You want to borrow money and not return it. Explain what Kant would say.” It’s a simple formula for a passing grade.

However, for some students, it’s not working. For the 4th or 5th time this semester, I’ve stayed after class talking with a student who is not doing well in my class. Each time I start with, “Let me see your notes.”

The notes are SHIT. ABSOLUTE FUCKING SHIT!!!! No wonder why they’re not doing well in my course. They have not written down one single relevant comment that I have made in class. Or if they do write something down, it makes absolutely no sense what-so-ever. What good are notes if you can’t read them and understand what was said in the lecture??? You don’t believe me… let me tell you.

I used an argument for gay-marriage to show how to refute an argument. I always preface this by saying, “I am very pro-gay marriage.” Not because my opinion matters, but because I want to make sure that I’m not offending any students. But the point of the argument is to discuss how to argue properly (as in, if you disagree, don’t talk about what your momma, or your preacher said. Find a flaw with the argument, as it is stated, and tell me what the flaw is.) This is a 15-20 minute lecture.

At the end of class, one of my students said he was confused. So I said, “Let me see your notes.” And what do I see….. “Vashna is pro-gay marriage.” THAT’S IT. Nothing about fallacies, nothing about arguing responsibly, nothing about how to refute an argument. Are you fucking kidding me? Does that sound like something I would even ask on a test???

OR they only write what is on the board. If I’m discussing Nietzsche, I will write on the board, “Master Morality” and “Slave Morality” and proceed to give 30 minutes on the characteristics of each and how they relate to his views of the world.

And once again, a student is confused. I ask to see the notes and the ONLY thing written is…. “Master Morality” and “Slave Morality.” NOTHING ELSE. So I ask, “Why didn’t you write any of the information I said in the lecture down?” The response, “I didn’t know we needed to write that. It wasn’t on the board.” WHAT THE FUCK???? And please tell me exactly what are those two phrases going to mean to you when you try to use those notes to study for the test?

And they always tell me that their “other instructors” give them notes.

And each time they tell me that, I start to hate some of my colleagues. I hate those of you who give the students power point slides of every word you uttered, uploaded on blackboard, to be downloaded at the student’s convenience. I hate those of you who only test over the words in bold – as if we are teaching VOCABULARY, and not theories and critical thinking. And I REALLY hate those of you who not only spoon feed the information, but also allow all of your spoon-fed information to be used during the test – open books, open note, (and they don’t even have to worry about the quality of the notes, after all they’re the INSTRUCTOR’S!!!)

You are making me look bad, for expecting nothing more than what WE were expected to do when we were in school (prior to technology.) But more importantly, you are teaching them to be dumb and lazy and not to think. You’re teaching them to sit around waiting for handouts. And then you have the audacity to wonder why they never bother to figure things out. YOU TAUGHT THEM NOT TO EVEN TRY!!!!

But whatever, I’m going to continue to be the bitch that actually expects my students to learn the skill of note-taking (because it IS a skill, and it IS useful to know) among all of the other tidbits they are supposed to get out of my course. They may hate me now, but when they are at their future job in a boring ass meeting where only 10% of the information said actually pertains to them (but that 10%, if missed, could cost them their job), they will know to WRITE THAT PART DOWN, and then they will thank me.

Institutional Appreciation & The Pilfering of a Shitty Bracelet.

Here's the most useless gesture of appreciation for five years of service (as a staffer, not faculty).

I received an e-mail from HR congratulating me on five years of service. The e-mail included a link to an online catalog where I could pick out a lovely gift, such as a thermal carafe or a chic 70s style digital watch. Yippee, but hey, free stuff, so I perused the catalog and picked out a not-half-bad sterling silver link bracelet. The bracelet arrived at my home and I wore it several times, feeling optimistic about being valued by my employer, because it's better than a travel mug.

Then HR called me and explained that, because I spent my first two years working part-time for the university, I wasn't actually entitled to this five-year commerative gift, because when adding my two years of part-time service, I'd actually been working for the university for seven years. And they only give out these crappy gifts every five years, but the crappy gift-giving is a new policy, so I never got one at my actual five-year anniversary, and should have gotten nothing for this year as well. The HR rep asked me if I'd please mail the bracelet back to the vendor. I said okay, if they sent me postage, I certainly wasn't going to spend my own money.

I though they'd forget about it, but several days later, I got a postage-paid Fed Ex slip to mail the bracelet back. I called HR and made up a huge lie, that I gave the bracelet to a friend, and could I simply buy it from them? I was willing to pay the retail value - $38.00 - even though I know that the university probably paid more like $5 for the bracelet, since they paid the wholesale rate.

The HR woman told me, "No, because then other employees would try to buy the gifts and that wouldn't be fair." Like there'd be a mad scramble for cheap watches and beer cozies with the university logo. I then offered to send back another item listed on the site in completely new, unused condition - my department gives away travel mugs like they're going out of style, and they are the very same travel mugs listed in the online catalog. The HR woman said, "No, that's not acceptable either, because it's not a truly "new" gift so it can't be given to another employee." I then offered to forego my 10-year anniversary gift in three years' time, but again the HR woman said that wasn't necessary. The only way for me to fix the situation was to mail back the bracelet. I refused, so she grudgingly said, "Fine, be that way!"

Actually, she didn't say that, but she definitely meant it. The HR woman was really pissed of with me, she probably knew I was lying just to make a point - that giving crappy, cheap gifts to employees, then asking for them to be returned, is just plain shitty, considering that our salaries have been frozen for the last three years.

I am wearing the bracelet as I type this, and it looks very nice on my wrist, in fact, the whole HR debacle with me outwitting the university and being a stubborn bitch about it has really paid off. Every time I look at the bracelet, I think, ha, that's $38 I stole from you! Or probably more like $5 but still, I fooled the university into giving me something I didn't really deserve, or at least, something to which I was not entitled.

Mid Career Mike On the New Hire. "Welcome to Paradise, Shithead."

Listen, I'm not at an Ivy League school. Soda-Pop College is a bit of a tumbledown spot, but I work with the nicest folks, and have access to about the most spectacular beach I've ever seen in my life.

I have a low stress existence, love my students, and have a very nice life. Of course my colleagues are a part of that.

We had the chance this year to fill a new tenure-line spot, something this college hasn't had for 20 years. (I replaced someone who was retiring.) So, last September we geared up, did the job ad in some marathon sessions. Our small department shared the load of reading the dossiers, picking phone interview folks, and then bringing 3 different people to campus.

It was great. It was the smoothest and most enjoyable job search I'd ever been a part of.

2 candidates who came to campus were great. Both of them were veterans of the college wars, probably both in their late 30s or early 40s. Both women, both well published in refereed journals, great teaching, and both who knew enough about the area to know that it would fit their lives and the lives of their families.

They both gave great teaching demonstrations, and our visits with them were stress-free, actually informative, and the entire committee was agreed that we'd be overjoyed if either would come.

The third candidate, Chester from Charlesboro, was the only young candidate we brought to campus. Nobody on the committee loved him, but his dossier kept popping up in our meetings as someone who seemed too good to not take a closer look at. He had a better pedigree than anyone on the committee, or anyone else we'd looked at. But he was impossibly young, just finished his Ph.D. in an impossibly narrow subdiscipline, and well published already. His letters were off the charts, and when another candidate passed on the campus interview, Chester got the spot instead.

Chester was the last of the visits, and he was infuriatingly annoying. There was a problem with his transportation to the hotel, a problem with the hotel, a problem about what time he was WILLING to come to campus, a problem with his Powerpoint (ugh) presentation. He had the wrong laptop, the wrong slides, not enough copies, didn't know actual STUDENTS would be at his teaching demonstration, and the list goes on. He was aloof, condescending, and - worst of all - he said he'd never been south of Maryland before, and he didn't know how any of us could stand so much humidity.

We soldiered through our long-ass day with him, and I got the job of taking him over to the Dean's office for his last interview. As I shook his hand at the door, I thought, "Goodbye, you pretentious bonehead."

We made our recommendation to the Dean's office for one of the two first candidates, and waited.

And then we waited. It got to be that veterans in the department began to worry. "You know," one of them said, "Whenever it takes this long it's going to be bad for us."

And it was. The Dean sent us all an email, thanking us for our terrific work. They had hired Chester.

The reason, we came to find out, was simple dollars and cents. Our college's pay scale requires folks who come in with experience to be paid a higher salary. They simply plug their years of full-time teaching in tenured or tenure-track spots and a number pops out. Chester, of course, looking for his first full time job, charted right at the bottom, the minimum number. The other two rated higher and would have cost the college - and you won't believe it - and extra $2400 and $3950 per annum.

The committee had one last meeting. In the end, it wasn't our call. Even our department chair had to admit that she talked to the Dean, but got nowhere. In the end it was money and that was it.

The gap between either of the first candidates and Chester was so large, that it just never occurred to me. Had we worded our recommendation strongly enough? Had the chair really explained what a horse's ass Chester was? Did his brush with the Ivy League tip the scales? Had he had a standout interview with the Dean? Did somebody promise him a dehumidifier for his office?

And so it came to be that we had a new colleague. I checked with everyone on the committee, NOBODY got a thank you note from Chester. Frankly, nobody can believe he even wanted to come here; perhaps the job market has made us a place he'll deign to join - temporarily.

And that's just it. We'll be replacing Chester soon; everyone agrees. He won't want to stay here. He showed not one whit of interest in our conversations about the area. He was like a pissy shark churning through our little warm-bodied pond. What August 27th will be like, I can't even imagine.

Welcome to paradise, Shithead.

Low Blood Sugar Lester Shows Vince from Vegas "The Bird."

I like to think I keep shit on an even keel. I don't let the kids make me nuts like so many on this page seem to. I just take charge of my room, teach my subject, grade fairly, and then pick up my stuff at the end of class and go home.

But for some reason this semester things have gotten out of control, and it all starts with a precious entity I call Low Blood Sugar Lester.

Oh, Lester. You ever have one of those students who is a patience-suck? A student who just seems to be able to get on every last nerve? Well, Lester is that for me.

He's a couple of years older than the rest of the students - a result, he tells me, of 18 months in a minimum security facility somewhere in California. That's fine. I don't give a shit about that. But his seniority in class forces him to raise his hand at the tail end of every class discussion to say, "Well, I've been through the wars a bit more than everyone else, so, here's what I think of Spinoza."

Anyway, I can handle his in-class interruptions.

But in the 3rd or 4th week Lester comes to me at the end of class with a pained expression. "Dr. Vince, I hate to bother you with this, but I'm under a doctor's orders, and I need to eat something every 2 hours; it's actually pretty important in my treatment."

He went on to show me his class schedule, and he regaled me on his morning routine, when he ate breakfast, how he was able to eat at certain times on Tuesdays and Thursday, but no matter when he got up or how he arranged things, one of his important times was smack dab in the middle of my class. I mean, he had a fucking chart!

"What do you mean, eat?" I said. "A meal? A power bar? What?"

"Oh, Dr. Vince, I normally have a high protein bar that I eat and then a special drink I keep in a plastic bottle."

So I'm thinking, that's no big deal. "Don't worry about it, Lester. Shouldn't be a problem."

And it wasn't for a while. Then in the 6th week I walk into class and I can smell something, food, something cooked. Lester is sitting at his table with a large toasted sandwich of some kind, cheese oozing out the sides."

"Hey, Dr. Vince," he said when I came up to him.

"A grilled cheese, really?" I said.

"Oh, Dr. Vince. I'm really sorry. When I got up this morning I realized I was out of my normal stuff and I had to run to the cafeteria to have something for my snack."

So, what can I do. And it sits there on his table, smelling the joint up, making his neighbors hungry, until at exactly halfway through class when he luxuriously eats it. (That he finished off with a Hershey's candy bar with crackling, wrinkling tin foil is something that was also new.)

Anyway, we went back to protein bars for several class periods, and I had just about blocked grilled cheese day out of my head.

Until yesterday, I mean.

When I walked into class and caught a whiff, I immediately knew Lester had taken things to a new level. When I passed by his table, I looked down at a whole roasted chicken in its grocery store plastic container. Not a chicken leg. Not a chicken sandwich. The entire fucking bird.

Sledgehammer Steve Shares His Dream Syllabus.

 Introduction to Philosophy

Class epigraph: It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again. Yeah, I’m talking to you, snowflake. See this family-sized bottle of Lubriderm on my desk? I’m not shitting you here. Start rubbing. The epigraph in my upper-division courses is “arbeit macht frei.” You’re getting off easy.

Purpose of this course: To bring you up to speed on what’s happened in the past 2500 years of human thought about the great questions. We’re doing Thales to Kripke, motherfuckers. Strap yourselves in and get ready for the ride.

Requirements: You have to write a 2000 word précis on each week’s reading, due that Friday. Yes, that’s every week. No, I’m not going to tell you how to structure your papers, read your bullshit first draft, or wipe your nose for you. You learned how to write in high school, right? Now stand and deliver. There is also a 30-page term paper and a three-hour final exam. In the term paper I expect to see serious critical engagement with primary sources as well as the most recent secondary literature. Don’t give me any goddamned book report either. I want to see some original thinking. On the final exam the questions will range from providing an analysis of Aristotle’s influence on the theology of Aquinas, to contrasting Spinoza’s necessitarianism with Leibniz’s, to explaining why Wittgenstein rejected his own views in the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, to proving the soundness and completeness of first-order quantified modal logic.

Grading: Your grade will be whatever you’ve earned by the sweat of your brow. The only curve I give is down. Don’t even think about asking for extra credit, telling me how much you need a B to keep your scholarship, or how much you “deserve” a better grade. Read the sign on my office door: Cash Bribes Only.

Class etiquette: From now on, you will speak only when spoken to. And the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be “Sir.” Do you maggots understand that? The door will be locked promptly when class starts. And then I own your asses.

Electronic devices: A physicist buddy of mine built me an electromagnetic pulse generator. If I see even one of you looking at, holding, touching, or thinking about a cell phone, laptop, iPod, vibrator, or anything else that runs on electricity, I’m turning it on and permanently frying every piece of equipment in this room. My finger is on the button and it’s feeling itchy.

Academic dishonesty: Are you fucking kidding me? I will, guaranteed, catch you. Don’t tell me how you didn’t know that buying your term paper online was cheating. I don’t want to hear your whiny bullshit excuses. When I catch you I am going to fricassee your testicles and feed them to a goat. Nah, not really. What I’m really going to do is much worse.

Finally, let me say: welcome to college. Now drop and give me 20.

A New RYS Playlet. "Easter Is Over, And My Chair Is My Cross."

Chair: We had a problem with a few of your students.

Me: Can you wait until I take my coat off.

Chair: Look, several of your students showed up for class Monday.

Me: Well, there you go. Why would they show up?

Chair: For class....remember you have class on Monday!

Me: Ummm...you are aware that the uni is closed on Easter Monday?

Chair: That’s not the point...

Me: I mean the buildings are locked...

Chair: You have to tell them...

Me: Faculty can’t even get in...

Chair: Enough of this...I checked your outline and you did not say that there was no class on Friday or Monday. It’s your responsibility to let them know. You also didn’t list the final exam day.

Me: The final exam schedule came out two weeks ago and if they can’t figure out there is no class on a holiday...

Chair: I’ve heard enough...I will be adding a report of this incident to your file for the hiring committee to read.

LATER THAT DAY:

Bartender: He was joking, right?

Me: Nope, is it too early for a double?

Bartender: You do know you failed me two years ago?

The Wonderful Witchy One From Wichita Wonders About Web 2.0, Tweeting, The Online World, How it Impacts Education, And An Undo Button For Our Classroom.

I just tweeted in my pants!

Having been a GarageBand junkie for a while, I find it hard now to hit a real stage without a play/pause button on a infinitely rewritable track, so I sort of get why proffies might prefer not only to incorporate technology galore into their curricula but also teach online courses based around podcasts and carefully crafted blogs. In fact, I attended a lively talk the other day promoting the use of Web 2.0 in and outside the classroom; it made me seriously reconsider using not only blogs, which still impose a certain hierarchy due to the post/comment structure, but also the more egalitarian 140-character tweets, individual posts which float in an amorphous cybersphere. Both, the presenter insisted, provide the kind of connectedness interdisciplinary requires in addition to being relevant, that is, setting up a bridge between different courses as well as between abstract academia and the concrete demands of "the real world." Students who are too shy to talk in class often become vocal in such settings, a community emerges, posts become increasingly more sophisticated, and everyone generally wins out. Our main goal as educators is to teach our little ones how to filter through all that information.

Selectivity, I get it; we already do it when we teach our students how to conduct research by scrolling through database-generated search results, by reading abstracts, and by skimming articles. But part of me wants to scream bloody murder!! I don't give a shit that students who would normally not even sit next to each other in class can hit it off once they realize, in a chatroom devoted to, say, Dante's Inferno that they're both hooked on the eponymous video game and can immediately strike up a friendship. They're connected in a different way now. Who the fuck cares?! First of all, that's bullshit. Second, that's performativity 101. I've read all about simulacra and other postmodern conceits; most of my students wouldn't know how to spell the word, but they've donned the mask. And it's not like I haven't either: I have a made-up name on Facebook to match my made-up personality; but the people who leave 17 comments each time I post that I just coughed, know me in real life and meet me for coffee to discuss Kirkegaard's Expectorations and not just my own. We talk nonsense because we're taking a break from intellectual shit, not because we're incapable of producing it.

The presenter also pointed out that the net is a great way to network (Duh!) and that, through tweets etc., he has scored invites to talks and other legit gigs. Hypothetically, that's pretty cool; our little ones could network not only with students in their classes but with others who happen to be on the same page, literally. I've done my share of social networking with friends of friends or folks with similar interests in the virtual classroom that is the Internet. But I've also discovered that, unlike my "real" friends, those people have forged their identities so thoroughly that they have completely lost their (yeah, I know, already fictional Cartesian) selves. They are charming, witty, sexy, entertaining, incredibly seductive, and terrifyingly fake, and when I suggest that they unplug themselves and meet me at the nearby coffee shop, they suddenly go offline. (You know the kind: they are more than willing to have chatsex with you every night, but are too afraid to ask you out.) I am not sure I would want to engage in job negotiations over 140 characters; I'm not even that comfortable texting about it. Am I just a traditional gal? a hopeless romantic? But also, am I hypocrite for accusing my students of the same posing I do as soon as I finish teaching and open my bookmarked FB page, where I get most of my news, my gossip, my weather update, my everything...? Then again, when I read that my buddy Bill is pissed about another rainstorm, I go to the Weather Channel; when my amica Amanda rants about a new senate bill, I hit me some authentic news pages many of which, though written in blog form, are also reliable because written by experts; when my pal Polly raves about a new book, I don't go to the user reviews on Amazon. I'd like to think I use these tools as a fun launching pad, but I am afraid those promising little ones in my classroom see them as an end rather than a means, and settle for less.

Bear with me; there is a question hidden somewhere in this messy post.

How do you feel about the interactive knowledge base that is created for and by the students themselves, who feel empowered as "authors of discourse" even though when asked about the term, they would probably turn to Wikipedia where other "authors" of a similar kind have left their concocted half-assed entries? Am I stuck in the 20th century, and have I read Frankenstein too many times to appreciate the knowledge-power of technology? Can there be some compromise? Can we use blogs and tweets in such a way that would help our students stay connected with each other in "the real world," and that would draw them deeply into a given discipline prior to throwing a flimsy rope bridge over into all other possible domains of which they would otherwise have equally superficial knowledge? Finally, with the advent and dominance of Facebook-MySpace-LifeJournal-Twitter-Everyone- And-Their-Mom-I-s-A-Professional-Blogger Now culture, has the real-time classroom--with its occasional goofs and "I don't knows," with its awkward silences and laughs instead of smiley faces, with its demand to be on one's toes because there is no "Go Offline" or "Undo" button--become obsolete? Sure, I can record a bang-up solo, with enhanced tempo and pitch, but I'd rather hear a fucked-up duet or, better yet, a completely cacophonous orchestra. Is this still possible or has "live" class interaction given way to overproduced studio projects? How can we keep up with but not fall victim to these postmodern times?

"I Want to Be a Snowflake, Dammit."

I want to be a snowflake!

I want to do nothing and get rewarded for it.

I want my Ph.D. because I paid for it, not because I jumped through a million hoops just to complete some meaningless rite of passage.

I want a job just because I am special, not because I am qualified.

I want to tell my students how boring they are, and not have to explain what fucktards they are when they hand in garbage.

I want to read what I want, when I want, and how I want. Student papers and disciplinary research are SO BORING.

I want personalized instruction just like Angie, Shauna, Ian, Lexi and Carlos get.

I want to be able to pitch a full-blown hissyfit to a student for no reason and then have my mom call their mom and tell them what a horrible person their child is.

I want to be able to afford all those gizmos and gadgets my students buy instead of their textbooks.

I want to live in a fantasyland where I believe I am a good student who always gets As even when I have a grade report littered with Bs, Cs, and Ds.

I want to get an A without studying, doing any work, or even showing up for class on time (or at all).

I want to be born in any other era than the one I was born into because the generation just previous to mine had a far easier time getting access to higher education and this current generation has such low standards it makes my hard work MEANINGLESS. (And it has now become worthless.)

I want to be a snowflake, dammit.

Cara from Clay Center Revisits Our Discussion on Good Students, the Ones Who Make the Job Worthwhile.

Sure, there are some good ones that (usually) balance out the bad. If there wasn't we'd actually go home and shoot ourselves instead of just wanting to.

This semester I had Paraplegic Paul. Now Paul wasn't the brightest student I'd ever had. His emails weren't always coherent and sometimes I wondered what his question actually was. But he tried and he never ever used his disability as a crutch. Even when he dropped his rough draft with my comments on the floor in the middle of the night and nobody came to his house for hours, he understood why the paper was still late and didn't try to argue with me about it. He always added to the conversation in witty, intelligent ways and would ask a question no matter how silly he thought it was. He dropped my class a few days ago because he had the foresight to know that he wasn't ready to do well in it. He's going to take the remedial class next semester and then tackle the intro course again.

Da Nang Dan is an older former navy man and doesn't feel the need to say "well I'm not paying for school so why should I try?" Instead, he re-energizes an otherwise dead class with his (usually well timed) antics and fairly insightful comments. When others don't speak, he's always the first to jump in and participate. He's one of only two people who actually came in to talk to me about the comments I left on their rough drafts. He's missed a few days but has immediately and very professionally emailed me apologizing for his absence and informed me that he'll be asking his fellow students about what went on in class, exactly what I tell them to do in the syllabus. Obviously he paid attention to that when others (like Jack the Ass who keeps bringing up the measly ten points he lost because he couldn't get anybody to email him back) didn't.

Insightful Ian started off a bit pompous but is now getting the gist of what he's supposed to do. He likes to jump ahead of the rest of the class and the lecture to make it known that he's smarter than the rest of the students, but at least he participates and he gets it. That and after a few light glares and some well positioned "We're not there yet so hold your horses" he's curbed his need to puff out his chest. Instead of just writing about his boring little freshman life like everyone else, he writes about his dreams in his journal. As long as he doesn't bitch about not having written every day like he was supposed to I figure we'll continue to get along fine.

Army Ann is the perfect student. She pays attention, comes to every class, is always on time, doesn't flaunt her religion or try to use the fact that she's a single mom to get sympathy points. She is always the first to speak, never minds it when she's wrong, and seems really dedicated to every part of the class -- homework, papers, and journal. She understands the teacher-student dynamic and recognizes that I don't give grades, she earns them.

These are only the ones that come to mind. In each class there are a handful of students who are always on time and usually come prepared who don't make asses of themselves. These students make up for the one or two fuckers that just get under your skin every opportunity they possibly can and the ones who start out good but somehow become evil little monsters at one time or another during the semester.

"Dumb and Lazy." A Murderous Combo that Has Irked Irma from Independence.

I have a confession to make. I hate my students this semester. No, not every single blessed one of them, but a large majority in two of my classes. Here's the problem: They violated the contract.

To succeed in college, ideally, you are bright and motivated. My students this semester are lazy and dumb. This is a problem for me, you see, because this gives me nothing to work with.

They could be lazy, but bright. They won't do the work, and they'll try to dazzle me with their plethora of excuses. It'll be ok, though, because basketweaving, well, it's not rocket science. The bright ones can usually muddle through on their own once the hammer comes down.

They could be dumb, but hardworking. I could live with that. I have to work a little harder...teach a little better, but I can do that.

But honeys, this batch I have this semester...we have this department final in basketweaving. You have to be able to identify different kinds of baskets. I can bring them to class every damn day. I can describe them, with words like "This is probably on the test. You should write this down." Makes no difference. I wonder if they are expecting me to take the test for them. Because that, I can't do.

So when I told them today that if they fail this final thingie, they'll have to take technical basketweaving again, they were acting all surprised and shocked. For about 30 seconds. Then dumb and lazy won again.

I hate them.