Today, an exchange student breezed into the office at the end of the fifth week of classes and asked why there were no classes or tutorials for her philosophy module. Quick check confirms said module was cancelled many weeks ago and all but three students reassigned.
We queried why she didn’t respond to our emails and she denied receiving any but did confess that she thought that the lack of classes etc was just “the way you do things here” :dubious:
I’m wavering towards dum in this case, its nicer than when students lie to your face.
I’ve had a student claim that they turned up on time for a match “but there was no-one there, so they waited a while then left”, when the rest of the team and I were waiting throughout at the rendezvous.
But the best one was a student at my old school who left early. He checked everyone else was in class, then sneaked out.
His route took him briefly past the front of the School, with the School clock proudly displayed.
What he didn’t know was that the School photographer was in a building facing the front of the School, taking a picture for the School magazine cover.
So the student was immortalised forever in print, with the clock showing he was bunking off!
I’ve had students claim that they thought they were allowed to do assignments together and turn in the same assignment–contrary to the syllabus. Zero points!
I’ve had students write on the teaching evaluations “If I had tried, I would have learned a lot from this class.”
I’ve had a student come up to me after class to give his official excuse for being late: “I fell asleep.” Once a week. After exams. Over the course of two semesters. Yeah he failed both times.
I’ve had students who sat in the front row and flipped through fashion magazines through the entire lecture. At least sit in the back row, hoe.
I had one guy turn in two homework sets in the same handwriting, one for him and one for his buddy. They were right on top of each other. I’m supposed to miss that somehow?
Another guy wanted to debate in class why there was absolutely nothing wrong with copying somebody else’s work. This was a sophomore level civil engineering class. That guy is out there today building the bridges that you are driving over
Another student did lousy on the first two exams. Came to me asking how he could help bring his grades up. I checked my gradebook and found that he hadn’t turned in the majority of the homework (I made a point at the beginning of each semester to remind people that doing the homework is important, not because it’s a huge percentage of the semester grade but because it’s great practice for the exams). I brought that up gently, offered extra office hours (beyond the generous ones I already kept), said I’d go over the old exams with him, etc. Basically tons of help however it all requires him to actually do some work. Student dropped the class next week.
I got three papers in a row that had the exact same answers. Normally it’s just two. If you are going to copy off of each other at least mix the papers into the stack!
Short story for you:
I knew a kid in high school that (twice) when a paper was do for a class, he would steal a paper off the teachers desk, go to the library or computer lab, print off a cover sheet with his name on it, remove the rightful owners coversheet, and stape his to the top. Both times he got away with it. I cant imagine the balls it takes to do something like that.
I have not infrequently had students hand in homework assignments where even-numbered problems were skipped altogether, and odd-numbered problems had just the final answer. :rolleyes:
There was this kid in school once who turned in a rather lengthy paper (20+ pages) that I guess was nevertheless just so much bunk, because he got an F on it. This made the kid in question rather angry “because I spent so much time writing it my hand cramped”.
I then heard later that his father came in to complain to the teacher and the principal that his kid “had put in way too much work” to get an F. As if length=effort, or effort alone merited something beyond being correct, on-topic, well-written, etc.
Anyway after much haranguing the teacher agreed “to review the paper and revise the grade”.
The next week the teacher told the kid to come up after class to get his paper back. Since he was the only one called up to do so, and since the grade was written in red marker on the cover page, many of us could see the original big red “F” on it as it was handed back to him… Which was crossed out with a circled new grade next to it, and the words “final grade” written below it.
My student are supposed to go to concerts and write short reports on them. My first year one student decided instead to look up a concert program online and write about that. Unfortunately, he failed to comprehend that “Annual Chancellor’s Concert” implied, well, annual, and that he probably ought to check the year of the concert he was writing about. Instead he turned in a report on the 1997 Annual Chancellor’s Concert instead of the 2004 one. Even more unfortunate for him was that I had sung in both. I’m quite confident that others of my students have pulled the same shit, but at least they do it semi-intelligently.
Similar story that a friend of mine pulled in high school:
We took a test in physics class, but the next day the physics teacher told my friend J that somehow the teacher lost his test. The teacher, being a good guy, said that since it was his fault he’d give J the grade he usually got on tests (an A, I think). A few days later my friend E confessed (or bragged) to me that on the day of the test, he waited around after school and told the office ladies that he forgot something in the physics classroom. He was friends with these ladies, so they gave him the key to the class to retrieve his item. He went in the class, took J’s test, copied it, and threw J’s test away. I asked him how he could screw J over like that, and he said that the teacher was such a softy that he figured he’d feel so bad about losing J’s test, he’d give him a good grade. Damned if things didn’t turn out just fine for him on that one.
