Is it just me, or is this about the easiest thing there is in terms of developing an argument? You don’t have to have cites, you just have to explain? You don’t have to worry about source bias? Good Lord, can I take your class? Like, seven times? I could really use the credits and the boost to my GPA:)
I had a student in statistics who used most of my lab lecture to check his email and dick around. Fine. That’s fine. He told me he knew the material, just had to be there as a refresher, pick up some tips on using SPSS, whatever. So I decided I would not call him out for ignoring my lectures in lab as long as he wasn’t being disruptive. He was, after all, a grownup and I trusted his judgment. I even let him use his own computer instead of doubling up as some students had to. I figured, why torture him if he’s not interested in helping a classmate getting it for the first time.
Then I get his final project. He committed some of the stupidest blunders. He screwed up things that even my worst students got right. The ass either really didn’t know the material, or he didn’t care. God that really pissed me off.
Iampunah–You’d think so, wouldn’t you!??
It’s like by the time I get them they’ve had the ability to do their own thinking drummed and numbed out of them to the point they don’t seem able to develop an opinion, let alone an argument!
I used to TA for freshman chemistry, specifically for the middle section of a 3 semester sequence (in passing, I’ll note that most students combined 2040 and 2041 into one class and had no problems, but of course there’s always exceptions, eh?). So the first day of discussion section, the prof has us do an icebreaker. I hate those as it is, but what really frightened me is that during the course of said icebreaker, it came out that my 20 students averaged having taken this class and failed it once or twice already!
Now, you’d think that since they know they have such problems with the material, they’d at least put a LITTLE effort in, right? But no. First test was catastrophic, because no one did the reading, or the homework, or came to office hours, or anything else. And then many of them complained because I “wasn’t doing enough to help them!” Excuse me?!? I all but gave you the test before hand, showed you how to do every problem, and spent the entire weekend in office hours just in case someone had questions, and the fact that you still haven’t learned anything even after taking this class twice before is MY fault? AUGH!
Needless to say, it was a very frustrating semester, and I’ve decided that teaching is not for me… If they’re not willing to put in the minimal effort needed to pass the class, I feel no obligation to hold their little hands for them. sigh
I teach physics in a school on a trimester schedule, so I just gave the first trimester final exam on Friday. I just finished grading 70 of these 8 page exams this evening. This means I’m basically talking to myself now.
Let’s see…
Students who:
[ul][li]still don’t know how to use their $130 calculators[/li][li]think gravity acts sideways[/li][li]think energy appears and vanishes at their whim[/li][li]still can’t draw a free-body diagram[/li][li]write equations that are not dimensionally consistent[/li][li]simply don’t know the most basic equations[/ul]Now I get to grade lab reports. These really get me going. First report: free-fall. The students use a spark timer that marks the position of a falling steel ball every 1/60 s. Despite giving the students step-by-step fucking instructions on what to do, what do I get? Crap![/li]
Let’s see, plot the displacement vs. time. Student: “The graph is almost linear. It’s not exactly linear because of human error.” No you fuckstick, it’s not linear, its a quadratic, like we covered in class for 6 weeks!
Oh, and be sure not to include any units on any of your numbers throughout the lab! Wouldn’t want anyone to be able to follow your work!
Student’s results: “g = 22.8 m/s[sup]2[/sup]. This differed from the theoretical value due to human error.” No, it differed from the theoretical value because you made at least half-a-dozen math errors that I can find, you reversed your axes, you can’t interpret the best-fit equation, and your data is crap because you rushed through the lab in the first place!
This at least is not as bad as: “g = 9.8 m/s[sup]2[/sup], which exactly matches the theoretical value.” Yes, and I would always have perfect results if I made up my data, too. Oh course, I would at least fudge my data consistently. You can’t even fudge your data correctly! :rolleyes:
Sorry for the incoherent ramble. I have to get back to grading labs now. 
I’m an English tutor at my college and what bothers me the most are students that wirte with a thesaurus. I have students in 035, which is a basic English at a low high school level, that will look up every god damn word in the thesaurus. It pisses the fuck out of me when I have to look up 15 words just to get through 1 page of a paper.
Dude, I was, like, doing this lab back in my frosh year of high school! It scared the crap out of me because this guy convinced me the sparktape carried current, i.e. it would electrocute me.
Bastard.
But how anyone could fuck that lab up . . . that takes some doing.
I’ve got a whole bunch, but this one’s my favorite:
Every semester, I have two or three students who only care about how little they can get away with doing in the class. “How many quizzes do I have to take to get a C? I can pass with a C, right?”
Yeah, that attitude will get you far in college and graduate school and life in general.
I got so sick of delivering my “Well, we want you to do as much as you possibly can…” speech that I just created a FAQ page on my classes’ site that contains formulae so they can figure out for themselves how lazy they can get away with being. Frankly, I don’t want to know what kind of grades they’re willing to settle for.
Some students plagiarize even when there is little to gain grade-wise. For instance, a student might pull out an encyclopedia article on Machiavelli and Nietzsche and paste a big chunk of it in their philosophy paper. Then, the TA who grades the paper gets the treat of reading a lot of irrelevant material written in the very obvious stilted language of a biographical sketch. It’s amazing that students will plagiarize just for the sake of adding a page or two of “filler material”. I think that generally, a lot of college freshmen are a bit too concerned about how they’re going to “fill up” 5 pages. (as opposed to how they can fill it well with cogent analysis)
Also, you will occasionally get the student who frantically comes to you at the end of the semester with a long horror story explaining why they didn’t complete any of the assignments and never attended class. Of course, you always try to be understanding when someone brings a legitimate problem to your attention. But what if they wait until the day before the final exam to tell you? In that situation, there is little you can do, unless they were taken hostage overseas or in a coma all semester (with documentation in support of their story).
[hijack]
g8rguy, you said CHM 2040-2041? Are those common chemistry numbers, or by any chance were/are you at UF? Care to tutor again?
[/hijack]
AHunter3, can one take your course by distance education? 
There is little chance someone around here would let me write an essay with the specifications you give.
Re-reading this about screening classes:
So that’s why calculus 1(and maybe calculus 2) is on my major. I always wondered what was the use of knowing how to differentiate when you are about to do surgery on a dog(animal science major, hopefully future veterinarian).
BlinkingDuck, I agree with you there then. Forcing student to take classes don’t have a purpose other than screening will just make uninterested, bored students. Which in turn won’t care about either the class or the teachers.
There are many good reasons I am no longer in academia, and having to teach is one of them… During my fortunately brief stint of teaching introductory computing to gibbering ape-creatures in the North of England, I came to the following conclusions:-
Some students are just plain thick. (This was especially the case where I was teaching, where the qualifications for entry were four A-level points “or equivalent” - basically, they would enroll you if you could prove you were a multi-cellular life form.) You can, with patience, work with these students and get them to develop to the limits of their abilities.
Some students aren’t interested in the course. Again, with patience, you can find out what they are interested in, and show how what you’re teaching relates. Or you can engage them in other ways: I had a couple of pure mathematicians once who had really no interest in computers at all - but I made them laugh, so they turned up to the classes and (IIRC) ultimately passed.
Some students lack confidence. (This was especially the case with introductory computing - some of them were initially afraid to touch the keyboards.) This can be insidious; you have to persuade them to do things and get results, but without making them feel pressured - but it can be done.
(And, I should point out, I am not a good teacher. A good teacher would take all that lot in his/her stride; I had to worry at it no end.)
But there was one group of students I couldn’t get to at all, and that was the ones who weren’t prepared to learn. Some thought they knew it all already, some thought higher education was all about going to parties and getting drunk instead of learning, some just inhabited their own alternate universe and never connected with the real world… but they had one element in common; when asked to absorb information and think about it and understand it, they all said, in effect “Nah, I don’t do that. Just give me a grade.”
The old saw has it that “Education is a drawing out, not a putting in”, and there is more than just a grain of truth in that. Learning is an active process, just as much as teaching is, and if one side isn’t making the effort, it doesn’t matter how good the other one is.
I taught a second year Statistics course for my department (Psychology) for the last 3 years. My two midterm tests are open-book, open-note, week-long, take home exams. The only rules are that all answers must be your own and that only inanimate sources may be used.
30-40% of my class would fail each midterm EACH YEAR.
Last year, for the in-class final, 2 folks arrived an hour late to the in-class final, despite my having clearly articulated the time, date, and location in the previous 4 class meetings (i.e., written it on the board, included it in my notes, spoken about it in class). Naturally, the two failed to finish the exam (about 80-90% of the class did finish it). One of the two said that the exam was too long and when I informed this person that they might have had more time had the come an hour earlier (i.e., on time) I was informed that this individual had been unaware of the correct starting time. This person then went crying (literally) to my chairperson, who had the good grace never to mention the episode to me.
Thankfully a job offer at another institution led to my being able to negotiate out of teaching this class ever again.
Oh! Mememememememememememememememememememememememememe!!!
I have MANY beefs with my students (don’t get me started! Don’t EVEN get me started!), but this one abso-fucking-lutely took the cake and has yet to be bested.
Preface: I teach a required (IE: no passy Astroteacher’s class, no graduate!) English conversation class to Korean students. It is a basic-level class, so students who are already very good at English conversation can take an exemption test about 3 or 4 weeks into the semester, and if they pass they do not have to attend my class (they STILL have to take the mid-term and final texts, however.). The grades for this (I repeat) required for freaking graduation class are derived in this manner: 50% Astroteacher’s class, 50% mid-term and final exams (the mid-term and final are administered by the university, and I have NO control over them at all). End Preface.
So, 2 semesters ago I had just finished teaching my last class of the semester. I was happy. Walking down the hall, on the way to my office, I was whistling a happy ‘All I have to do is finish my grading this weekend, and then I have the next 2 and a half months off!’ tune.
Suddenly I was accosted by a young woman, who was out of breath and obviously very flustered…
“You are Astroteacher!” she demanded.
“Yes, indeedy!” I said cheerily, “What can I do ya for?”
“I am (name deleted because I can’t remember it and it’s not important… no one you know!
)… I am your student!”
“Huh?”
I said, somewhat intelligently.
[sup]Granted, I have a lot of students, and they DO tend to all look alike (except the ones who are HOT, but I digress…)… but I recognize them by the end of the semester! Even the ‘rebels’ all tend to rebel in the same way: a Korean college student with green hair and an earring looks just like all of the other Korean college students with green hair and an earring…[/sup]
“You student! I your student!” she insisted.
“No you’re not,” I said amiably, “I’ve never seen you before…”
“Yes! I you student!” she insisted.
“Well, I’ve never seen you in my class…” I said.
“I you stude…” she started, then became VERY flustered, and turned and ran away!
I stood in the hall for a moment watching her run away, then shrugged and went into my office and forgot about it. (lots of weird shit happens to me, and I have learned to just ignore it and continue on with my day…)
A few hours later I returned home, and checked my e-mail. Lo and behold, amidst the spam and glurge there was an ACTUAL e-mail from somone to me! Whoa! Cool!
I opened it. It was garbled nonsense English. What the hell??
After reading it several times, I finally deciphered it, and realized that it was from the girl who had hassled me earlier in the hallway! She: A) was registered in my class B) was a senior, about to graduate C) NEVER came to my class even once! D) figured she would take the exemption test, pass it, and take the mid-term and final tests and pass the course (parenthetically, she had NO CHANCE IN HELL of passing the exemption test OR the mid-term or final judging by her use of English in the hall and in her e-mail!) E) blew off the exemption test (2 months earlier!)! F) blew off the mid-term! G) planned to take the final exam in a few days H) wanted to know what she could do to get a good grade from me for my 50% of her grade!
I was floored by this monumental act of compounded sheer assininity! I mean, really! How can anyone possibly BE that stupid? Even with tremendous effort, I couldn’t achieve THAT level of plain dumbness!
Here is this girl who is my student, never once comes to class, blows off the exemption test and the mid-term, and ON THE LAST DAY OF HER SENIOR YEAR tracks down the one teacher who will determine whether or not she will graduate, and asks for a grade which will allow her to graduate?? Can you imagine? (I couldn’t before it actually happened!) You gotta be fucking KIDDING me!
(before anyone turns on the mental porn music and imagines me saying, “Well, there IS one thing you could do to graduate… hint, hint…” let me say this: first, Astrogirl would not approve, and more importantly knows instantly when I lie to her (much to my chagrin!), second, the girl in question was NOT attractive at all, and third, I don’t fuck stupid people! (just a rule of mine… I prefer to do people who are smart enough that it’s a challenge to trick them into bed with me. I have only violated this rule once, years ago, and I was REALLY drunk and besides, it was Doug’s fault! That bastard!!:mad: )
I replied to her e-mail, saying (in much more polite language):
‘You are an idiot. A bag full of doorknobs would have more chance of graduating than you! You didn’t take the exemption test (which you would have failed! and would have clued you in to the fact that you had to come to my class…) OR the mid-term (ditto on the fail part…)… you are unforgivably stupid. So why is this MY problem? Even if I gave you a D for my 50% of my class, which I WILL NOT GIVE YOU, you wouldn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of passing this class… don’t make any plans for next semester, as you will be busy taking classes here, in the weak hope of graduating eventually… Yours truely, Me.
PS: the world is a better place without your input, so this is not a bad thing, trust me.’
Dumb, dumb, DUMB!! From a freshman I might expect this level of stupidity… but from a senior about to graduate?? Have you NO interest in your own well-being?
The next day, I got an e-mail from her:
‘You will give me a D?? Thank you thank you thank you!!! I will do my best on the final to pass this required class!’
This idiot didn’t even understand my e-mail to her!! (believe me, I kept my language basic, and understandable to the most English-challenged Korean student! I would have written it in Korean (she’s dumb!), but I can’t type in Korean from my home computer… English only. I had Korean lingo support once, but it made my comp crash every few minutes, so I removed it.)
I read her e-mail, and thought, “Fuck it! I’ll give her a D and let her fail on her own (without any excuse to blame me for it!).”
I gave her a D, she still failed. Haven’t seen her since, but I’m sure she’s still here, trying to graduate!
Quote by KarlGrenze:
So that’s why calculus 1(and maybe calculus 2) is on my major. I always wondered what was the use of knowing how to differentiate when you are about to do surgery on a dog(animal science major, hopefully future veterinarian).
BlinkingDuck, I agree with you there then. Forcing student to take classes don’t have a purpose other than screening will just make uninterested, bored students. Which in turn won’t care about either the class or the teachers.
I am not so sure that Calculus is on your major as a screener. When I was in grad school, I would tutor med students (and I believe Vet school is much like med school, yes?) where they would need Calculus. Many of the problems involved drugs in the bloodstream and when to give shots. It may even have involved ‘simple Differential Equations’ (an oxymoron) which gave them fits and many of them lived in fear of this part of the class.
Calc may not be a screener class for you but that is the way it works if it was.
Blink
I second the “please, please let me in!”.
I’m currently in the process of fighting my Ethics TA. Fighting. We have “recitations” where he wants us to quote the professor on various topics covered in class. Not actually, oh I don’t know, DISCUSS A GOD BE DAMNED THING. I love the prof. She gives us great questions to think about that she doesn’t answer in lecture (and usually aren’t even on exams) I would love to chat them over in recitation. Or even ask some of my own.
But no. “Recitation” is not discussion. It is an hour of “Can you read your notes?” every week. I go as often as I can force myself. I know I should get to know my TA. I know he grades my stuff and that his opinions and views are important to my grade. But its mind numbing repition of what we did in class and the desecration of the practice of ethics makes me want to scream. I go every other week. I have many, many better thing to do than justify my note taking techniques to him for that hour. Like keep myself out of jail for murdering an Ethics TA for the good of all that is holy. (I attend lecture religiously. I love the class. Other than the TA.)
One time, as a senior in high school, I was helping to tutor a fellow senior who was having a hard time in his basic English class. I was in the honors/AP course at the time, so I was occiasionally unfamiliar with the course material that his class read, and would have to go read it myself.
Halfway into the semester, however, I was pleased to discover that his class was reading Alas, Babylon, which I had read my freshman year. Finally! A book that I wouldn’t have to read in order to help him with!
Well, first, I tried to look online for a summary. Nothing detailed, mind you, but just a quick recap to refresh my memory. I knew that if push came to shove, I could always go to the library and skim a copy from there. I went to Google and typed in “Alas Babylon Summary.”
I didn’t find a summary. Instead, I found fifty-bajillion students who posted something on some message boards saying, essentially “I’m a moron, and I didn’t read Alas, Babylon like I was supposed to for class, and now I have to do a worksheet/take a test/write a paper on it, and I reallyreallyreally need someone to post a detailed summary by tomorrow. Please, if you don’t, I’ll fail!”
I decide that the time that it would take for me to write an appropriate response (such as “yeah, right; seeya in summer school, bi-atch”) to each of these lazy-ass twits wouldn’t be justified by the limited satisfaction that I derived from it, so I went down to the library, checked out a copy of the book, and re-read a few key parts.
Back to the guy I was helping. I walk him through the book, which he did read (it’s a relatively easy read, enjoyable, and moves quickly; kudos to the teacher who chose to include it in her syllabus), and check his worksheets, making him go back and read what he needed in order to get the answers. We got along well, until he had to write a paper on the book.
Side note: our school keeps files of good essays in the writing/English center–where I was helping him. There are three essays in that rather large–perhaps 20 or so–collection that were written by me. One was on Ayn Rand’s Anthem, one was on the poetry of Dylan Thomas, and one was on…come on…get ready for it…Alas, Babylon. My paper from freshman year, as a matter of fact. My name is on the top of the page.
The day before the paper was due, he came into the writing center to see me. He asked me to look over his paper. He seemed to be pretty impressed by what he turned in. I think he wanted me to say “good job,” or something. When he handed me the paper, he was smiling.
I think you can guess what happened.
As soon as I read the first paragraph, I knew that it was my paper. I looked at it for a few more moments, then set it down, folded my hands over it, and said, “you didn’t write this.”
He, of course, acted very indignant, asking me why I thought he was stupid (to my credit, I did not answer), telling me that I was predjudiced against Latinos (need I go into how fucked up THAT is? Or would you like to talk to mi bisabuela?), and that he was going to turn it in anyway.
I tried to keep from laughing. When he’d finished his hissy fit, I looked at him, hands still folded over the paper, and told him that I was the person who’d written the paper. I also mentioned the fact that I was a freshman when I wrote it and insinuated that he, as a senior, should be able to do better.
He, ah, didn’t come back to the writing center after that. Pity.
But I’m sure he’s back there this year :D.
Ooh, now here’s a thread I can sink my teeth into! I trust it doesn’t matter that I’m not a prof, just a lowly TA. Anyway, I’m not sure whether to blame the students or the system, but it drives me nuts when they seem to be afraid to think…
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I’m not all that fond of the sound of my own voice. My questions are NOT SUPPOSED TO BE RHETORICAL. Please stop giving me twenty-two utterly blank stares when I ask you something. Speaking up in class is not that scary. In fact, there is almost no chance you will get the answer wrong, since 90% of the time I am soliciting opinions.
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Which brings me to another point: yes, you are allowed to have opinions. In fact, you MUST have an opinion for this week’s assignment – it’s a bloody argumentative essay, for cryin’ out loud. Quoting a bunch of opinions from other sources with no elaboration, as if they were authoritative, won’t do it.
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Speaking of sources, they are NOT all created equal. I expect you to use some critical thinking on this point. Quoting a number of random postings from a teen chat site, for instance, adds precisely nothing to your argument – what the hell makes you think these people know any more about the issue than you do? Also, if you find a source that claims marijuana eats your brain, you might want to inspect the author’s scientific credentials before you cite this information.
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Yes, you are allowed to use the word “I”. Essays have authors, and I certainly hope you are the author of this one. You do not have to maintain the polite fiction that it dropped from heaven or appeared in your cabbage patch one fine morning.
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Revising a paper means examining every paragraph, every sentence, every word and asking yourself how you can make it better. If you confine yourself to correcting the grammar and spelling errors other people have marked, you ARE NOT DOING ENOUGH.
Thank you for starting this thread – I think I needed a place to vent.
Oh dear. Let’s see.
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If I go to the trouble to design, proofread for typos, and distribute a syllabus that contains the course objectives, my course policies, the required texts, and a schedule of what will be covered when, is it really so much to ask that you READ IT? If you still have questions after reading the syllabus, you may then ask me for clarification.
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If I ask you to come to class prepared–that means having done the assigned readings and/or other homework and then being able to express some opinion on the topic for the day–is it really so much to ask that you comply?
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If I can make it to class on time, then so can you.
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If you don’t understand what the assignment is asking you to do, then ASK me to clarify it well in advance of the due date, not the day before the assignment is due, and certainly not after I have graded whatever it was that you turned in. I’m not psychic. I can’t read your mind and know that you don’t understand unless you speak up.
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If you can click around on the internet and find all the MP3s, download movies, look at pornography, and, oh hell I don’t know, hack into some company or government database, why can’t you do some research and find some historical information on Ghengis Khan to support your paper instead of telling me that you don’t know anything about him?
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If I ask you to turn in papers that have page numbers on them and that are stapled as well as all your drafts and most of your sources, why is it so difficult to comply, especially when I’ve told you that it makes my job of grading 35+ papers a little easier when I can tell what material belongs with whom.
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When I ask you to do research–that means find sources from scholarly journals, read them, summarize them, think about them, analyze them, then judiciously narrow down specific information that you should directly quote, paraphrase, or summarize with proper documentation–don’t just read the abstracts of the articles in lieu of actually reading said articles and hope to pass that off as research you’ve cited in your paper. :rolleyes:
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If I’ve just graded 35+ midterms where oh let’s say 25 students have written on the same essay, then class please don’t ask if the majority of you can write on the same topic you just answered on the midterm for your course paper. After about the 5th midterm, reading about X topic in Y text gets OLD. Why would you think I want to read about it again. Let’s move on, folks. There are plenty more texts we’re covering in the class, and they’ve got very interesting things going on to provide you with excellent paper topics.
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Trust your instincts. If something in a text strikes you, for whatever reason, then inquire further. Don’t dismiss it because the teacher didn’t validate that perspective. You may be on to an original interpretation of the text, but you’ll never know if you don’t express you perspective.
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Yes, I have office hours. They are listed on the syllabus. If you cannot make those hours and arrange to meet me at a different time that is more convenient for you, then please don’t stand me up. My time is valuable.
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If I have graded your assignment and conferenced with you about how I came to give you the grade that you earned, then don’t ask me to make an exception anyway and raise your grade because of X reason. And please don’t have your parents call me at home asking me to raise your grade because they’ve sacrificed to pay your tuition, and when I refuse to do so have your parents go over my head to my supervisor and tell that person that y’all don’t think I’m fair and/or qualified to teach X class. And, really, I wonder where a few of you get the nerve to tell me to my face in my own goddamned office that I don’t know how to evaluate the goddamn piece of crap you turned in. You earned a D because you didn’t do very well what I asked you to do, and you’re lucky I didn’t decide to give you an F.
[sigh] I’m sure I could think of more, but I’m getting tired. Gosh, I love teaching.
Fretful Porcupine, every English class I’ve ever taken has drilled into my head that you NEVER USE FIRST PERSON in an essay. It can be hard for people to wrap their minds around the fact that same is not a rule that is punishable by death if you have to break it.
This is the one that came to mind as soon as I saw the topic. On a related note, these are typically the same students that argue that they shouldn’t be required to attend class because they pay for it.
Um… no… if you are attending a state school, the state taxpayers are footing probably >80% of your bill. And if you are “paying” the remainder with subsidized federal loans, that figure is gonna be a lot higher…
That, and if you miss a test and I let you make it up, I’m doing you a favor!