Professors, post your student gripes here

The BBQ Pit
61

vivalostwages said:
"Bless you, celestina, for all of them–especially #1 and #3.

–beleaguered but obviously not alone,"

No, bless you, dear. It’s so nice to know that we’re not alone. I really appreciate this thread. We teachers must be strong for each other. :smiley:

Actually, after exorcising those demons yesterday, I felt better. I really do love teaching. It’s a joy to see your students’ faces light up when they figure out that they’ve actually learned something. It makes all the idiots we have to deal with just fade in the dust.

Oh, I’ve heard this gem from math teachers. Why is it so difficult for students to write out the steps in a legible manner–that means in the general proximity of the original problem, not in the upper right-hand corner and not scrunched up at the bottom of the page–to a math problem. If you find you do not have enough room, then don’t just opt not to put the steps in at all. Math teachers are grading on your PROCESS and on your FINAL PRODUCT.

Another teaching complaint, if you have nothing constructive to contribute to the discussion, then be quiet and listen. You might learn something. If you spend your time in class questioning the teacher’s methodology, not only are you disrupting class, hindering the other student’s chance to learn, but you’re being a fucking jerk. If you think you can teach the class better than the teacher, then put up or shut up. Of course, if you actually CAN teach the class at all–we won’t qualify if you’re better than the teacher or not–then why didn’t you place out of the class altogether? And really, can you explain to me if you do know so much, why you’re failing the class?

Another office hours gripe, when you come to office hours, come prepared. That means try doing some of the math problems or try writing a draft of your paper before you go so that you and the teacher will actually have some place to start. If you just go in and say that you’re having trouble or you don’t understand what’s going on in class, that’s just a little too general for a session that could last anywhere from 5 minutes to a half hour to an hour.

As far as disciplines/writing that doesn’t really use “I,” Fretful, that’s an excellent question. I’ve heard that the social sciences and the natural sciences don’t like to use “I” too much. The focus is on the research and on the literature review, rather than the researchers, but who knows?

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I was TA for a Calculus II class briefly before I started med school. This was supposed to be sort of an experiemental course that went beyond the usual endless repetition of problems, which the students knew when they signed up.

One of the experiments was to have students write papers. We would give some sort of real-world problem, and they were to write four or five pages applying their knowledge of calculus to it. Sounds tough, and the problems themselves were fairly tough, but the first assignment had four specific questions to be answered. It was a few hours of good solid work, and we were prepared to grade easy.

Talk about a paradigm shifting without a clutch! First of all, none of these youngsters could grasp the idea that the writing skills you learn in writing classes apply to other classes, too. Not just the usual mechanical errors–they were present in spades, of course, but it went far beyond that. Of the five papers (fifteen students working in groups of three), three of them had corrections made to the word-processed paper in pen. Blue pen, at that. In fact, one paper had the entire last paragraph written in blue pen. Another paper was 4 1/2 pages long without a single paragraph break. (I told them that next time, even if they didn’t want to shape their thoughts into paragraphs, they should just hit “enter” every five sentences or so to make it easier to read.)

When I handed the papers back in the next class period to be done over, I did a twenty-minute lecture on writing a decent paper. Their response? I quote one of them: “We didn’t know you were some kind of English guy or something!” What the fuck language did you think I was up here speaking?

However, I explained to them, piss-poor writing was not why they would be doing the papers over. They would do them over, I said, because out of the five papers, one (1) of them attempted to answer one (1) of the four questions posed.

I’ve seen the writing of some of my classmates, and it’s often scary. I can’t believe that people can get to med school without being able to compose a coherent paragraph.

Dr. J

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Fretful Porpentine, I’m currently grading for a science writing course for non-science majors, and I’m constantly chiding students for inappropriately using the first person.

“I think that the odds of finding liquid water on Mars are low.” Who gives a damn about what you, an undergraduate Art History major, thinks about the odds of finding water on Mars? Either the facts speak for themselves (thus, "The odds of finding liquid water on Mars are low because . . . "), or your should quote an authority who has this opinion (“Dr. Joseph Bleaugh, principle investigator on the Mars Water Finding Thingie Mission, says that the odds of finding water on Mars are low.”)

"As I have explained in the previous paragraph. . . " This is never good form. “As was explained in the last paragraph. . .” is just as bad, naturally.

"I read an article about water on Mars and it said . . . " Podkayne repeatedly jabs her red pen into her eye

This week’s assignment is acutally an opinion paper (happy, happy, joy, joy) so I expect to see some first-person, but it’s rarely necessary in scientific writing, where passive voice is far preferred. First person can be used to good effect in science writing, but I see it abused more often than used well. Students need to learn that the rules vary according to the type of writing you’re doing. I don’t write the same way at the SDMB as I do in letters to my grandma or in scientific articles, and I hope their papers in Lit class are different from the papers they write for this course.

64

LindyHopper, ack!

You’re right, of course. It should be “Measure twice, cut once.” Thanks for the correction!

“Preview is my friend, preview is my friend, preview is my friend…” :slight_smile:

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Exactly. This is why telling students never to use the first person drives me nuts.

All three of the examples in your post seem to be errors of thinking rather than pronoun usage. The real problem is that the students are using the wrong sort of evidence, or including inappropriate information, or telling the reader something he should already know. And, as your second example indicates, the students cannot necessarily fix these problems by editing the sentence so that the pronoun disappears but the meaning remains the same. The solution, therefore, is not to give them a rule about pronouns with no further explanation, but to teach them what kind of information they need (and don’t need) to include in a science paper and why.

66

celestina,
I think you and I were separated at birth. :wink:

   Just one more comment (I know--just one more turns into many more very soon): I am a part timer with no real office, though I do have virtual office hours--not that most students bother to use the astonishing telephonic device or the amazing email contraption to contact me.
  I just dropped a guy I hadn't seen for the past 2.5 weeks (drop deadline was Oct. 26). Of course, he turned up today. I told him he'd been dropped, and he said, "Well, I was out of town."
I replied, "I never heard from you."

That was that.
You see, my incredible telepathic implant hasn’t arrived yet, but they expect me to know where the hell they are at any given time. ?!

67

LOL!!! Amen. Preach it, viva! :smiley:

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My favorite portions of my sociology class were those concerned with theorization. The other intro courses tended to cover “theory” as a noun; I did “theory” as a verb. It is important to demystify the process and differentiate between theoretical assertions that you, yourself, are making, and factual assertions that are made by evidence or assumed to be part of our shared repertoire of “common-sense” facts. Or, rather…I think it’s important. (The opinions of other instructors may vary).
One of my pet peeves with bad theory is the way that assertions just drop in from the sky with no visible form of agency or intentionality anywhere in sight. (Freudianism and various forms of poststructuralist theory are the worst offenders). “When the little boy first sees his mother naked, he thinks she once had a penis and it was taken away, and from then on he fears castration himself” – uh…can we see some data on that? Or perhaps you’d care to desribe the process by which you arrived at that conclusion? Put your name to it as your assertion, perhaps? “The refusal of the employer is the child’s Bad Breast voice”; “The desire undergoes cathexis, causing all objects that are longer than they are wide to represent the penis, which, being the universal signifier, represents everything by representing the process of representation” … EXCUSE ME!!!@! WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU GET THIS SHIT AND HOW DARE YOU SLING IT AROUND LIKE YOU WERE SAYING THE SKY IS BLUE???

My students do, by God, theorize from the 1st person. You don’t have to say that it is your experience, opinion, or observation that the sun rises in the east (on Earth, at any rate), but if you’re going to assert anything that more than one person in a thousand would question, I want to see data, a citation, or else own it as your own assertion and explain why you think so and how you came to believe it!

69

I loved spark timers! We played with one in 11th grade physics. We set some spark paper on fire, and this one kid to put it on his tongue. I’m not even kidding.

70

I’m currently a Visiting Scientist, but I’ve been a Visiting Professor, and was a Grad Student forever, practically (felt like it, anyway). I’ve taught a lot of classes.

1.) Learn to spell. Use the dictionary (and, yes, you can use it to find words even if you don’t know how to spell them). One student spelled “acceleration” as “excelleration”. I wrote (in red pen) “Accelent!”

2.) Don’t get cute with the way you write on the page. I had one student present his lab results in the form of a spiral. He lost big points for that.

3.) Express your thoughts in the form of complete sentences. Imagine that you came upon your own paper and had to figure out from that paper alone what you were talking about.

4.) If the homework assignment calls for a final answer Make It Clear What the Answer Is. Put a box around it or something. If the assignment asks you to show your work, then show the work – don’t just give me the final answer.

5.) Indicate the units of your answer. Is that m/sec. miles/hr, or furlongs/fortnight? Don’t expect me to convert it for you – it’s a lot easier to mark it wrong. Especially when I’ve got 45 papers to grade tonight.

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Yes, Sweetheart, you’ve got a great set of tits.
No, Sweetheart, that won’t get you an A.

72

I write “Support your points with factual evidence or authoritative opinions,” for the first case and “This is unnecessary and wordy,” for the latter two. Good 'nuff? :slight_smile:

73

As has already beenmentioned, these complaints apply not just to college students. My wife teaches middle school PE, and the nonsense she shares with me is amazing. Kids wonder why they flunk PE, of all things, when they don’t dress out, they don’t participate, and they either ignore or blatantly plaigerize (sp?) the written assignments. Yes, they have written assignments on the rules & history of various sports. And then big doctor or lawyer daddy calls the principal to rant and/or scream about little Susie’s grade. My wife has to explain the above ad nauseum, until they finally get it. She has had to defend herself and her grading so many times it has ceased to be funny.

People have always said I should teach. Now I know why I don’t.

74

Um, that’s “been mentioned,” two words. That’s the other reason I don’t teach.

75

I never understood how highschool and middle school teachers could put up with all the crap that they do. It’s amazing to me. However, now that I’m in college, I realize that professors still have to put up with a lot. There’s this one guy in one of my classes who is incrediably annoying. Every single point the professor makes this guy will raise his hand and say the exact same thing right back to the professor. IT’S SO ANNOYING!!! I just want to scream “Don’t you have a brain of your own??” Anyways, I was just wondering how teachers/professors feel about students who suck up. This guy is so obvious and my professor is pretty smart, so I hope that he can see the crap this guy is pulling. The class is an Honors class, and the guy is book smart but he’s an idiot otherwise.

76

I’ve never taught, myself, but I’m a student at a lib arts college and I’ve always wondered where professors come up with that infinite patience. During my sophomore year, I had a horrible time academically during my first semester and managed to write some godawful essays, which I turned in horribly late. Somehow my professor managed to find something positive about each of them and, as I slowly clawed my way back to a decent state of writing, took pains to let me know that the grade for the course wouldn’t be an “average,” but an indication of where one finally ends up.

Anyway, all you educators out there, some of us really do appreciate your time and effort, especially those who are having actual problems at one time or another. Thanks for everything.

77

Hey, ultra, you want to come be my TA? It’s been a long time since they have given me a TA that can grade worth a damn…

I teach C++ Programming (for non-majors), and it has a pre-requisite of a C course (also for non-majors). Most of my students come in still not knowing even 1/3 of what they should from their pre-req.

Some favorite lines from hell…

Student: Are you going to curve the test grades?
Monstre: Do you mean a real curve? or just blindly adding undeserved points to make the grades look better?

Student: I know I failed my tests, but I need to pass this class to graduate!

No shit, sherlock! Everybody NEEDS to pass their classes – obviously they don’t give out “All F’s” diplomas. I didn’t realize that passing grades were now part of an entitlement program.

Cheating. Don’t get me started. HUGE major problem in my course, especially since most who take it do so because it is required for their MIS degree.

Student: Why should I have to learn this stuff anyways?
Monstre: I don’t know – go ask your department. If you don’t want to be here, drop the class - I don’t want you here!

Here’s a favorite excuse, from a student trying to justify himself after I caught him cheating on an assignment:

“But I’m not going to be a programmer. I’m going to be a system analyst!”

Yeah? Why don’t you just put that on your resume, to make it clear… :wink:

And as Podkayne said:

A-freakin’-MEN!!!

Here are two good ones:
1) My TA gave me an assignment submission and said, “I really don’t know what I should do with this one”. It was a submitted assignment in which all of the variable and function names had been selected as vulgar insults directed at me. The TA didn’t know whether to give it a 0 for the impropriety of it, or to grade it as a program.

I looked at it, and noticed a few odd things, including the fact that (C++ and Java programmers will understand this one) the constructor names did not match the class names as they should. Upon comparison with other submissions, I found that this one was a direct copy of another student’s submission, only with the variable and function names changed into the insults.

A clear-cut case of cheating, so the assignment earned a 0 for cheating, and it was enough to put his final grade as an F – and he got to repeat the class. Thanks! You made my job detecting the cheating so much easier! :slight_smile:

2) And here’s the kicker…

Monstre’s advice to cheaters – First and foremost, number 1 rule, don’t forget it: Don’t plagiarize your own teacher!!!

This happened. One semester, I gave an assignment that had some similarities (and many differences) to a previous semester (in which solutions had been posted). Six people turned in a function with my exact code – and one person even left in my comments, verbatim.

What the hell were you people thinking? “Oh, he won’t recognize his own code…”

Monstre

78

I don’t know how you can stand teaching high school or college students today. I guess it depends on the educational institution, and how much power it gives you over your own classroom.

In the Army now, teachers have power. It’s a beautiful thing. If someone’s sleeping in your class, you make him stand at parade rest. If someone doesn’t have his homework ready, you double it. And there’s nobody for him to go running and crying to, because the entire chain of command is on your side.

My husband has a class of recent high school grads. Recently they had an open-book test. The test was on the book. They had just finished a two-day block of instruction on how to use the book. More than a third of the class failed.

They weren’t assigned to this job against their will; this is the job they asked for. So you’d think they’d put a little effort into learning it, wouldn’t you?

79

Well, I was directed to this site by someone who thought I might want a place to vent(someone obviously tired of listening to me rant on a regular basis!), so here I am and MY GAWD, I AM NOT ALONE IN MY PAIN!

I teach a required class for Education majors at a university. And whom these people are planning to educate is a question I ask myself frequently. It’s graded on the usual grading scale, A B C D or F. F meaning you don’t pass, thus you don’t graduate. It’s a health/fitness class. Anyway, I have resigned myself to the fact that these people have trouble with rudimentary math, that is a astounding given. Tell me, dammit, what is so difficult about this equation:

  1. Determine your resting heart rate RHR (I go over in great detail how to take a pulse for one minute while laying still, and this is apparently the start of a not so easy of task for many).

  2. Save that for RHR later use in the rest of the equation.

  3. 220 minus your age = MHR.

  4. MHR minus RHR = base figure

  5. Take the base figure and multiply it first by .6, when done, add back in your RHR (low range answer). Then take the base figure again and multiply it by .85, and once again, when done, add in the RHR (high range answer). You now have what is called a range. Between the smaller number and the larger number.

That is it. Is that so difficult??? Now that I have that off my chest. I give the students a very detailed syllabus.
So let’s see, this semester’s class wunderkind brings the syllabus to my attention on a regular basis as he queries me with such questions as “For my semester project, do I do all of these?” Where plainly in bold letters there is “Pick one of these for the class project” shining out for all to see. During mid-term test review, he was furiously scribbling notes. Good sign…so I thought.

He came up to me after class, and asks, with syllabus again in hand, pointing to the detailed summary of the class plan, “Are we having a test next week? It says we are having a test.” It took all my effort not to explode at the sheer idiocy…but in my ever present professional persona, I say, “well, yes, that’s what we were talking about for the WHOLE lecture…what is going to be on the test next week.” He says…“OH I must have missed that part.” WTF!!! Then he says…HE SAYS…“What’s going to be on the test?” I just blink at him and say, “um…what we just discussed…” and he was fine with that I think because …he says, “ok.” BUT THEN he asks…“all from this handout?” and he pulls out this little sheet of small consequence that I had handed out a few weeks ago…and I tell him, no probably not, but mostly from my lecture and the text book. He then says, “Text book?? I didn’t know we needed a text book.” I have never ever yelled at a student. I didn’t start now. I am feeling like perhaps I am on candid camera or maybe a time warp or maybe a nightmare…yeah…a dream and I’ll wake up…or even better, maybe he is a psych student and I am his semester project in human behavioral studies!! So I say, “yes, a text book” and he says, “you never told us a text book was required.” I grabbed his syllabus and flipped the pages over and about drove my finger through the paper, “right here, it says right here!!!” (almost punctuated by maniacal laugher of one pushed over the edge finally) and he says…“Oh, I must have missed that part. Where do I get one?” I grew weary, dejected, and numb…I told him…the University bookstore. He says ok, and “I will try, and I hope I pass.”

Well…he got a 28% out of a 100%, and I’ll be damned if he didn’t get those questions on a default…due to my wording, the few questions he managed to get correct had to begrudgingly be awarded to him through sheer luck and his own unique way of reading, interpreting and answering, which I had to, in good conscience, award; plus, memorize one answer and plug it into all and any slots and it is bound to fit somewhere…that’s always a good strategy. Will this boy pass?..60% attendance points, 25 percent homework, 25 percent mid/final exam. He just might get a D…that remains to be seen.

Well, off to class, now.

80

Oops, I meant to say 60%, 20% and 20%.