Where We Return to From Whence This Page Came. (And Jesus Freshman on a Pony...is "Bass Fishing" A Euphemism?") The Old School Smackdown.

Traffic Tammie: I'm sorry but, "There was ice on the roads, so I didn't want to speed and be all dangerous and stuff, so I missed my exam," isn't an acceptable excuse. We all knew there'd be ice on the roads - funny how that happens when it's cold, eh? But thanks for emailing me...4 minutes before the exam began...from your car...while driving. "But, I live in [a really nice area of town known for its rich-bitch kids, surgery-addicted soccer moms, and traffic jams worse than the 3rd circle of hell]. And I just couldn't make it in." Funny, again - since I live 3 times farther away from campus than you, and yet I arrived...early. Oh, and your classmate, Punctual Patti, is your friggin' roomate and she miraculously made it here on time. Seriously, go get a drop form. Like, now.

Pwned Petey: I think it's great you want to "be" Dr. Herpetologist when you grow up. But, just being "cool" and going bass-fishing incessantly (and bragging about this to Dr. H) will not help you in the least in *my* lab. You're going to need to know way more than how to gut a fish to pass your lab practical tomorrow. If I were you, I'd start planning for a career in swamp tourism...

Anal Annette: Ok, I get it - you want to know every-fucking-thing under the sun. But, honey, that doesn't mean shit if you do a brain-dump immediately after every test. Remember, you're the one who wants to go to med school - which involves passing a *huge* standardized test - about stuff you learned...in...my...lab. I strongly suspect my lab course will be the first "B" to maim your impeccable college transcript. If you need the name of a good therapist once that happens, I got the hook-up, yo.

Registrar Rita: What the fuck?!? I filed all my employments form in December, and I'm still not getting paid? Oh, right - I had to put in 2 sets of forms - 1 for the TA job and 1 for the instructor job (which makes no fucking sense whatsoever, by the way) - and now these competing forms are mutually excluding me from getting a paycheck...til June...or later. Awesome! Guess I'll be dining at your place til the term's over, since I'm too broke even for ramen. My dislikes: fish, coconut, melon, whole milk, and your bureaucratic bullshit, twinkle toes. Let me talk to someone with actual authority or I swear I will lace your monstrous mug o' joe with ethydium bromide during your next pee break. Intercalate this, bitch!

Sure You Can Make Shit Up. But It's Never As Good As the Real Shit. Suzanna Needs a Proffie GPS.

Suzannah Snowflake: I’ll be at your office hours 4pm! I really need your help! Where are you again? 3:50 PM

Patient Proffie: Well I'm sitting in my office. It's listed on the syllabus, of course, but it's room 610 in Hallowed Hall. 4:01 PM

SS: u fool! there is no such thing as 610 Hall, i've asked everywhere! (original wording preserved). 4:35 PM

PP: (after taking deep breaths): Its ROOM 610 in HALLOWED Hall. I am sitting there. Just to clarify, did you just call your professor a fool? 5:02 PM

Office hours are over. 5:30 PM

SS: I still can't find ur office. I'm on the fifth floor but nobody is here.... can we meet tomorrow at another office? 6:03 PM

Already home and drinking. 6:04 PM

Downsized Darla from Dandy County.

For several weeks, we've been corresponding with Darla, a 5 year adjunct at a large community college. Because her situation has been quite contentious, and because she had been optimistic it might be worked out at some point, she had opted not to share it on RYS. But a recent development and her recent hiring of an employment rights attorney has encouraged her to share the following cautionary tale:

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My name is Darla, and since I was 8 years old I've wanted to be a professor. I excelled in high school, struggled a bit as an undergrad, but got my shit together for a decent State Uni masters and then a Ph.D. from one of the top 10 programs in my field in the country.

And then I waited. I took 2 VAPs and a postdoc in the first 3 years on the market. And then I waited.

When a community college in my parents' home town offered me a couple of classes 5 years ago, I took them. There are no benefits, and the money sucks, but I've had a great time. I now teach 4 classes a term, and although it's not guaranteed work, it does earn me enough ($28,800) to feel as though I'm not just draining my family's nest egg.

I still apply to jobs in my field, but it's been 2 years since I've even got an interview - yes, the humanities.

Anyway, at my college it is typical for us to get a preference sheet several months in advance of a coming semester. We look at the complete list of TBA sections and request ones we'd like. The various Deans work through this and assign us our sections. In the 5 years I've been here I've never gotten exactly what I wanted, but it's been steady work and I've been happy to have it.

When several weeks had passed after sending in the Spring 2010 preference sheet, I still hadn't gotten the normal, "Here are you sections" note. I called Dean Doris who I work with the most and asked if they'd been delayed.

"Uh, Darla? Oh, hi. Yes, well, let me see. I think, that's been turned over to Dean Daniel. You might want to call him." Then she paused. "And, I want to say that no matter how things turn out, I'm thankful for all you've done for us." And then she hung up.

For some reason I still can't fathom, her last line didn't hit me. In retrospect it should have set off warning "alarums," but I just dialed another number and asked for Dean Daniel instead. My only real contact with Daniel had come in a faculty forum where I'd been asked to be a part of a group presentation to students about graduate school. I had talked about my middling undergrad career and the culmination of graduating summa cum laude from one of the top colleges in the nation. I remember clearly after the panel Dean Daniel saying to me, "All that firepower, and you're right here with us. Isn't it strange how things work out?" It struck me as odd at the time, but I hadn't thought much about it since.

"Yes, DOCTOR Darla, I'm sorry to tell you that you've been downsized. That's certainly a common thing nowadays, even here at little Companionable Community College. We just don't have the demand to offer you any sections in the coming year or so. But we'll keep your name in our records. Thank you."

And that was it. I kept running things through my head. I felt as if in a fog. I woke up a bit when my mom reminded me about a recent front page newspaper article that reported record high enrollment at the college, especially among incoming freshmen who need exactly the sort of freshman intro courses I made a meal on.

How could I be downsized in a market that was growing?

I called the chair of my department, someone I know a bit, but truly not someone who I had much contact with. (In our college's culture, adjuncts deal directly with the deans.)

Chairman Chuck said, "Darla. Well, I did have a conversation with Dean Daniel. It seems that we simply didn't have the need this term."

"But what about record enrollment, surely those students need the classes I teach."

"Yes, that's right, I suppose, in theory. But let's say that the Dean decided to use some different options this semester."

So now it was a different answer than I began the day with. Chuck continued.

"Well, I think it might have something to do with your most recent student evaluations. There were some scores there that scared us, frankly. You understand we're just doing what we think is right for the college. Dean Daniel made the call, but I admit I went along with it. I'm sorry."

This was not what Dean Daniel had told me earlier, and against my better judgment I called him next.

"Oh, DOCTOR Darla, how can I help?"

"I just spoke with Chuck, and he tells me there's something in my recent evaluations that led to me being fired."

"Well, you haven't been fired. You've NOT been RE-hired, that's all. It's quite common. The English chair and I did have a conversation, but I'm really not at liberty to discuss what goes on in those reviews. I have to admit I'm surprised you're so interested in teaching here, what with your stellar credentials. Surely you must feel like you've been slumming here all these years. I'm sure you'll catch on somewhere else. And I haven't seen your evaluations. That's Dean Doris's job. Goodbye."

My recent evaluations? Had they come in? Had I even seen them? Did I get them and file them with the rest? I have a stack of them from the past 5 years and I dug them out. I often got dinged on grading fairness, a result - I always thought - of my tougher standards. But the most recent ones weren't there. I got on the phone to the departmental assistant. She said, "I just put them in your mailbox right now, after Dean Daniel brought them to me."

WTF? Daniel said he hadn't seen my evaluations, yet somehow today he had them just minutes ago?

I was at school in less than a half hour and I pulled the evals out of the envelope right by the boxes. I scanned the numericals and they looked okay; even my fairness number was at the department average.

Then I flipped them over.

Two different students wrote these comments: "If she thinks she's slumming here, she should try my neighborhood instead! :)" "If she wants to see a slum, she should try my room!"

I remembered the word "slum" then. I knew I had used it in class. My best friend from college had come to visit me 2 weeks before the end of the semester. She had studied in a much different - hotter - field and had gotten an amazing tenure-track job at an Ivy right out of grad school. She was a dynamo and had risen to the top of here field in the 5 years since we were sharing a dingy apartment in New York together.

I had said in class, "My buddy Amanda is coming to stay with me for a few days. She's going to be slumming it at my parents's house with me for a few days."

That was it. That was the text, subtext, and context.

Time passed. I talked to other adjuncts, even finding a website where other Dandy County non-re-hires had gathered to commiserate.

And then I got a lawyer.

Flakemail of the Day.

Dear Ms. [Blackboard Insert],

My name is Cindy Snowflake, I am in your class on W, Fri (1:40-2:55). I have not been able to attend class on the first two weeks [uhm...two and a half, but who's counting?] because I have been very sick with flu like symptoms [I understand that the duration of H1N1 is, on average, 7 days, but I guess you can never be too careful]. I know I have a lot to make up [knowing the obvious is half the battle] and will work hard not to miss any more classes in the future [I'd rather you worked hard in class] . Thank You [you're welcome; please come again, or, better yet, DON'T. I've got 23 other snowflakes to deal with already.]

From Cindy Snowflake [In case you didn't remember my name the first time, because I certainly don't know what yours is.]

[+]

Dear Cindy,

I'd really love to tell you to suck it, but I was hoping the F on the in-class essay you would have bombed today had you showed up to write it would have spoken louder than any of my words. But I had been instructed not to mark you "absent" provided you mentioned the magic words: "flu-like symptoms." Sheer dumb luck.

Quick question, though: what the hell were you thinking when you decided to waltz into my classroom 6 minutes before the end of class, proceeded to sit down, and then, upon my asking you, repeatedly, whether I could help you, mumbled something like, "Is this Com...pa...rative Lit...erature?" and, upon my responding that this was, indeed, 6 more minutes of Comparative Literature, you said, "I guess it's the wrong class, then" and waltzed right back out?! Please get back to me at your earliest convenience, because, dude, I've no clue what to expect now.

Baffled Ms. Proffie

Chicago Charlie on Teaching Virtue and Value.

I was teaching Plato’s Apology to my students last week. Well, actually, I wasn’t teaching. I’ve been demoted. Yes, you see, I was an adjunct lecturer before, where at least I had my own class. Now I am an adjunct instructor, which means I am overglorified TA. So the Professor gets up and gives the pitch to the 400 student avalanche, and I get my little recitation / discussion / whatever you call it group of 20 snowflakes. So in addition to losing my health insurance, I have also lost, more devastatingly, any creative or intellectual control over the course material, the content or the way in which it is taught. Now I am just a hired goon. I go to the poor urban public school across the way, so this, coupled with the fact that I am a TA, leads the fancy kids at the rich private school where I “teach” as being one step up from the janitorial staff they never see, but whom they so blithely disrespect when they leave their garbage all over their immaculately wrought classrooms.

But Socrates was poor (well, by the standards of Athenian citizens). And I have proven myself willing to endure a sort of poverty in order to pursue wisdom myself and to try and help others find it too. I am, after all, an adjunct. And when they asked him, after putting him on trial and convicting him, what he thought a fitting punishment would be for “corrupting the youth,” which he considered nothing less than providing them a moral education and a means for living an life of virtue and self-examination, he asked to dine at the public expense, the highest honor the state could give. Instead they gave him a shot of hemlock.

I watched / listened to the professor give a fancy power-point lecture, listened to the professor discuss Socrates’ rhetorical strategies, listened to the professor discuss the Socratic method and the elenchus, the political backdrop to the trial and everything else about Socrates without ever mentioning that he wanted nothing more for the Athenians to live virtuously. And when he asked what reply he would give to someone who asked him“are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end?” he said “To him I may fairly answer: There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether in doing anything he is doing right or wrong - acting the part of a good man or of a bad.”

What is the purpose of what we are teaching? I frequently read posts on RYS about people who claim they are there to teach a skill, nothing less, nothing more. To me, this strikes at the very core of what the Humanities, as bequeathed to us by Socrates, Euripides, Thucydides et al sought to do. The tragic poets considered themselves nothing less than teachers of Greece. And Thucydides believed his work would be a lesson whose value would only increase over time.

I no longer conceive of the role of my profession as being one of teaching facts and figures, of teaching history or literature. I no longer care if my students can distinguish between a tragedy and a novel, whether they know whether or not Greece came before Rome. Maybe later, maybe in higher level classes. But first, we have to teach them how to think, how to live an examined life. We have to teach them that virtue, in whatever way they define it, is more important than money or power of fame. No one else will teach them that. In the Gorgias, a dumbfounded Callicles asks Socrates: “If you are in earnest, and these things you’re saying are really true, won’t this human life of ours be turned upside down, and won’t everything we do evidently be the opposite of what we should do?” And, though Socrates never says so, yes, it should. This world needs turning upside down. This world needs a gadfly like Socrates to irritate it out of a self-destructive complacency, a self-congratulatory righteousness that preaches we all take as much as we can and leave the rest to fend for themselves. A world in which people assume that what they have is because of virtue, when it is based on random circusmstances of birth—class, gender, race, geography, parents, even time itself.

When I was a teenager, I coached youth soccer and, ironically, it was much like teaching today’s college students: they couldn’t follow directions, they couldn’t perform basic tasks, they couldn’t work well together, they lived in a culture devoid of personal accountability where every mistake they made was someone else’s fault and any criticism directed at them was a personal threat to their own perfection (and their parents’ image of their perfection) rather than an attempt to help them improve by someone whose job it was to help them do just that. But these kids were six through ten, not eighteen through twenty-two. I came home one day, particularly discouraged because I spent all of my time teaching them how to be teachable, to follow directions, to stand in line, when I myself am the least stand-in-line-able person I have ever met. “Dad,” I said, “I feel as though I am socializing them,” and he said, in the only words of wisdom he has ever given me, “Who would you rather entrust the task of socializing them to?” And, honestly, the answer is no one. The bankers? The politicians? The soldiers?

The fact of the matter is this: when we signed up for this job, we signed up for much more than simply teaching them facts. We are responsible for socializing them. We are responsible for teaching them virtue and its value, even when that value cannot be measured. It is a responsibility I take seriously. And in today’s academy, it means being an irritation to the business-model adminsitrations wage slaves and the fundraising athletics-program whores and the crawl-over-each-other-to-get-to-the-top adjuncts and the self-righteous self-satisified tenured professors and the helicopter parents and the students too stupid to know they’re stupid and too deficient in critical skills to realize they have no idea how they could even discover the fact of their own stupidity. That is our job. That is our mission. And when I think of all the opportunities that I have lost because I adhered to that mission, and I think of all the opportunities I no doubt will lose out on because I won’t compromise myself in this way—all Socrates had to do was apologize and promise to stop!—I remind myself of the great man’s words. Nothing matters but a life fully lived, and in each case, I ought not think of my own profit or advantage, I “ought only to consider whether in doing anything [I am] doing right or wrong."

Plainsman Phillie Warns Against Being Too Pitiful to Peer into the Pines.

I'll agree with Dana that some of the responses to Dale were less than lovely. But, honestly, Dana, the death of your ideals? Just because some, or even most, of your students are half-wits and slackers? I wholeheartedly endorse your dream that higher education can change people, but I can only put down your disappointment in the reality of being an educator to the malaise of modern society, that insistence on instant and total gratification that makes us loathe our snowflakes so much. Seriously - your student body sucks? Aw, who'd have thought THAT?

You mention you were transformed by higher education - as were, I'm sure, many of us; didn't you ever pay any attention to the people you were in school WITH? Were most of them "transformed"? I'd bet money - and since I'm in the Humanities, you know how serious I am to make THAT offer - that they weren't. Moreover, I'd bet that you knew even then that many, if not most, of your classmates weren't getting from the experience what you were getting. So why did you think it would be any different from the other side of the desk? If I get one kid a semester who winds up a little more enlightened after taking my class, I feel pretty damned good for having beaten the odds.

Honestly, if you come into this profession thinking you're going to wave your chalk and/or whiteboard marker and get a scene from an overrated Robin Williams movie, you deserve your angst, just as much as the snowflakes who think everything they want and/or need will be handed to them on a silver platter deserve theirs. This isn't an unrewarding job if your standards are realistic. Make some kids turn some stuff in on time that doesn't suck, so they can learn that it can be done. Period. That's it. Being some student's inspiration? Gravy, purely a lagniappe - not something, in other words, you should be expecting.

Hell, even if you do wind up giving some student a warm fuzzy and inadvertently changing his or her worldview, who's to say you'll even know? My advice to both Dale and Dana is to scale down the pity party. You're missing the forest for the trees, here. Do you, each semester, manage to improve, even if only marginally, a handful of kids' grasp on your subject matter? Well, great - that's all you're here to do and all you can reasonably expect. And, let me say in closing, it wouldn't hurt to ponder for a moment if your students' generally bad attitudes might have something to do with the sad sack at the head of the class, standing there giving off waves of self-pity, 'cause some of us, even those of us with less-than-stellar student bodies to work with, are still doing okay overall in terms of the snowflakes' attitudes.

Brianna in Bio Wants To Know Exactly What Sort of Profession She's Gotten Herself Into.

As a student and instructor in the Univeristy of Alabama system, I simply cannot properly express the huge range of emotions I've felt over the past 2 days concerning the shootings at UAH. First, I felt absolute shock - the kind of jaw-dropping, gasping-for-air empty numbness usually reserved for mass casualties. Then anger. And fear. And now a sadness I don't feel I can properly express. Perhaps it hit me so hard because I'm from Alabama and because I'm in the Biology Department and we're talking about academics killing other academics. I know we are *all* thinking, "My god. That could have been me, dying during a routine faculty meeting."

But it all just seems so....obscene. I may spend my limited free time ranting about my students' snowflakery (and sending those rants to RYS so I can confirm I'm not the only one going crazy by teaching), but I do so because I'm an idealist. Quite frankly, if I can bitch it out here - about my students, my colleagues, my advisors, my mentors, my own professors - then I can *leave* it here - and walk into class and give it my absolute all. And I don't have to depress my boyfriend or my girlfriends with my whining about teaching. I *love* teaching. It's the one thing I don't mind getting up at 5:30 am to do. And, until now, the worst thing I could imagine was a student shooting other students - which is horrific. But that still feels like it's someone "outside" the Ivory Towers of the Academie. I suppose I thought the worst thing I had to expect from colleagues was snarking behind my back - and perhaps the occassional overeager, Machiavellian type gunning for whatever job and/or status I might have. I know I have to watch what I say around students - and cover my ass when I grade, with reams of evidence - so I can diffuse any student anger issues before it becomes postal-level. But now I have to guard myself against those people whose work I revere and respect, for fear of offending someone so deeply that my life is made forfeit?

And all of this is over...tenure? 3 people are dead because someone was essentially fired and black-listed by not getting tenure. I would love to know why it was denied - was it a budgetary consideration? was it some chair or dean thinking they could milk a few more tenure-free years out of a respected researcher? or was it something she did, which we'll never truly know about? It doesn't matter - 3 people are dead. And I'm scared that the profession I've chosen is not just competitive - it's downright cutthroat.

Donzo Dale from Denver Kills It.

I'm so done with this career. Donzo.

Each semester of the past 5 or so has brought more and more depression. The classes. The stupid students. Lazy. I know this page gets off on the lively and spicy reports from the field, but I don't think I can summon the energy.

My students don't want to be there. Does anyone else see that? Why am I beating my head against the wall for them? Every day there's a new tragedy that keeps students from class, from doing their work, from taking part. "I had a stutter when I was in 5th grade." "My boyfriend has a split toe." "My mother can't find a babysitter for MY BABY." "I didn't know we had class today because it was snowing everywhere." "Do we have to?" "Do we have to staple them?" "Do we have to stay all class today?" "Do we have to type these?"

And I get these long emails from students who won't talk in class. "What did you say at the end of class. I wasn't listening." "I know you said the projects were due on Monday, but can I do mine on Wednesday instead?" "I'm having a hard time with my History class. Do you know someone over there who can talk to my professor?" "I'm having a hard time concentrating on my homework because I have undiagnosed ADHD."

And my boss brings in last semester's evaluations and closes the door. "Two students said you were very unfair in your grading? Do you think that's right? Don't you explain how grades are given? Maybe you better add that to your syllabus. Do we even have your newest syllabus? What is this comment here about, about how you told one student her idea was wrong? Do you remember that day? Could there maybe be a better way of helping that student? They really are the whole reason we're here, you know?"

Uh, yeah? Is that right? Jesus.

I smoke more than I used to. I drink more. I sit in front of American Idol and just stare at the flashing images instead of prepping class, because I get a knot in my stomach otherwise. Oh, and the bacon I eat. Just big plates of it. Bacon and toast. It tastes good. It never disappoints.

I walk the dog at midnight because I can't sleep. I stand under the stars and just wish that a fire would break out on campus and burn down my office and my classrooms. I want to get a disease so I can quit my job and go buy a boat in the Florida panhandle and just sail out into the Gulf. I want this one fucking student named Alicia to quit sending me her Twilight fan fiction because I made a joke one day in class that they should stop reading that stuff and read the textbook more.

I spent half my life in school. I devoted time and energy and passed up countless other opportunities of love and business and money and location so that I could teach what I loved. And now I just want out. But these past years have beaten me down so badly.

What have I done? What am I doing?

Motor City Mitch Uses Some Down Time to Write Some Snowy Letters.

Dear Campus Response Team,

Next time you plan to close the college at noon when the weather is clearly horrible and everyone knows it's coming, please send your closure notice before I second-guess myself, get in my car, and take 45 minutes to make what is normally only a 25 minute drive to campus. Do you have any idea how pissed I was to find that you'd sent that email while I was probably still in my garage? I screwed around for as long as I could stand it while I was waiting for that email -- I even graded a few papers while I was stalling! -- and you just had to wait until you knew I was out the door.

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Dear Student,

When the college announces that it is closing the campus at noon due to inclement weather, I will not be in my office during my afternoon office hours. I will even send you a courtesy email to tell you what you ought to figure out on your own. I will do this because experience has taught me that, sadly, you are not smart enough to figure it out on your own. Yes, I realize you have a paper due in three days, and yes, I realize that you might have been planning to stop by, but it is not appropriate to send me a bitchy email about how I am not meeting my obligations to students "right" before a deadline.

I would like to explain something to you. When the college is closed, it means that I don't have to be there -- in fact, the college's closure notice encouraged me NOT to be there. When McDonald's is closed, can you go through the drive through and come out with a Big Mac? No, you cannot. When the mall is closed, can you wander from Abercrombie to Hollister to Banana Republic with your bff? No, you cannot. When the library is closed, can you head over to the video section to rent Scary Movie XXVII? No, you cannot. So when the college is closed, why on earth would your brain tell you it's logical to expect the same services you receive when the college is open?

Here's the real kicker about your snide little email. Unlike McDonald's and the mall and the library, I actually do provide limited services during closure. For example...I respond to email. In fact, I even sent my students -- including you -- an email saying that I wouldn't be in my office due to the campus closure. Then I offered to answer questions and look at paper drafts via email. (If you don't check your campus email because you prefer to correspond solely via Hotmail, that's not my failure. I did what I could.) I think it's pretty nice of me to piss away my snow day for your benefit, especially since your paper isn't even due for another three days.

So please don't give me the business for not being in my office when the campus is closed. It just makes me ornery, which does not bode well for you and your paper grade. Do you really expect me to stay at school when the campus response team has deemed that it would be unsafe for me to be there? Do you really think I should sit in my office for an extra 3.5 hours during a blizzard so that I can drive on roads that are in even poorer condition than they were in when the response team decided they were bad enough to force closure? Maybe this makes me a bad person, but I don't think that helping you with your paper in person is a pressing enough concern that I ought to risk my life for it.

I know you don't think the weather is that bad, but they didn't close the campus because it would be dangerous for you to be outside for the 90 seconds it takes you to get from your dorm to the classroom. They closed the campus because the commuter students come from Suburb A (30 minute drive), Suburb B (45 minute drive), and Suburb C (1 hour drive). They canceled because the professors and staff come from City A (60 minute drive), City B (60 minute drive), and City C (60 minute drive). The campus response team was not worried about you and your commute from Beer Pong Dormitory to ADHD Hall. They were worried about me and my 25-minute-turned-45-minute drive...and I just live in town. A lot of my colleagues, and a lot of your classmates, do not. So shut up, email me your paper, and cry about it.

Top 10 Signs That Grading Your Exams is Going to Suck.

1. A student writes a long note to you on the back of the exam explaining why she didn’t have time to finish the exam.
   
   
2. There’s a Facebook group dedicated to you. Comments are not very nice.
   
   
3. A student complains, “I forgot my calculator!” Lucky for you, I’ve got this trusty slide rule that you can borrow.
   
   
4. You’ve never seen 20% of the class prior to exam day.
   
   
5. A student sobs quietly as you collect the tests.
   
   
6. Everybody gasps when you tell them that they have five minutes left.
   
   
7. You realize that the calculation questions were so hard that nobody could answer them, including you.
   
   
8. Rumors circulate that students in the dorm passed around a voodoo doll with your likeness.
   
   
9. After the exam, you receive a thinly veiled death threat from a student, majoring in social justice.
   
   
10. Before the exam, somebody asks, “Do we have an exam today?” Yes, now go back to bed.