Student Archetypes: Teachers and Students welcome

In My Humble Opinion
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Well, after reading the Teacher Archetypes thread I feel the need to vent my rage about student archetypes. I’d love to get teacher feedback too. I suppose this is going to be mainly College stuff, but also highschool could work too.

Johnny I can’t believe you’re that dumb or care so little

You know the type. You feel ashamed for him because the teacher picks on him while he’s daydreaming or asleep in class. I’m sure you had a party the night before but have a little respect for the teacher/class/education and everything else. Yeah I know you are only taking Spanish because it’s required in Business, but just try to get out with a bit of dignity man. In language classes he usually has the worst accent and sits around with a confused look on his face most of the time. Obviously hating every minute of it. He’s usually paired up with a fratboy/girl secretly joking about how they hate the class so much

Sally I’ve studied this before

Very similar to Johnny in a lot of ways, but using a false veneer of actually being better than all of the class. Sally also studied Spanish with me, but she had been to Spain one summer and said, “In Spain people don’t even use half the stuff we’re learning, they never use the preterito whatever tense” So she’d sit around with a smug look on her face the whole time while actually failing to learn anything and killing the good vibes of the class. Sally didn’t do well either. But this leads us to…

Jimmy i wanna impress the teacher and everyone else (kissass)

Jimmy has many ways of showing off. I’m sorry Jimmy, but you don’t need to mention integrals in College Algebra. Yes I’m sure it would help, but we all know you’re good at Math and went to a great highschool, but please. Jimmy can also show off in humanities classes too! Watch for Jimmy trying to engage the prof in a debate with the misguided idea that his opinion is equally valid if he can argue it. No it’s not Jimmy, listen to the man teach, he’s forgotten more than you’ll ever know about the Holocaust. I think this species normally grows up to be a professor because he really likes to hear himself talk. I’ve also seen him–well a grown up version–at open lectures at college. At the end, during the Q&A he’s the one pestering the guest speaker about anything that will display his ingenuity and his knowledge. You know the type. They spend five minutes stating facts before they actually state the question? Yeah Jimmy, I realize you wanna make tenure, but hopefully this isn’t respected by those who are in charge.

Jennifer or John the fratboy/girl
It’s great to know that you have a boyfriend in a frat. I’m so glad you had fun at that formal, but do you have to wear that stupid combo of Social/swap T-shirt and athletic shorts EVERY SINGLE DAY?!?! You cake on tons of makeup to leave the room, yet you can’t put together a decent outfit of some kind of skirt or jeans? It’s not a goddamned slumber party you know. This archetype exhibits many similarities with Sally in Johnny in that they don’t do well, and have this smug behavior but with no obvious reason why. They are simply better than the rest with no good reason for it. They might do badly in a required course outside their major, but they simply don’t care. Maybe because they are there for the MRS degree or they are going into their girlfriend’s father’s business.

Larry lets have stupid group-work

Oh, this was bad. We had a “group profile” in my MA here. In our group of four was Larry. He was obviously dedicated and never missed anything at all. A group profile was basically written introduction. Each member had a page to discuss their strengths and a bit of background info. Larry decided it would be prudent to start at 10 AM on a day we didn’t have class to spend four hours on the task. Two hours discussing it and two hours writing it. I was gob-smacked. I unilaterally placed myself in another group. I know you are focused, Larry, and you really like the subject, but you don’t have to kiss ass that hard, do you?
Please add yours!

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The Surrender Monkey- This is the kind of student that over-stresses about every little thing. Every hypothetical challenge in the class keeps them up at night. They are bad at time management and so are perpetually stressing out about finishing stuff on time. They seem apt to complain about stuff they don’t think is within their own control.

I was a Surrender Monkey in college. I was having trouble in Spanish, but did I do anything about it? No. I could have inquired about the language lab, worked with other students to study together, etc. Rather, I just stressed about it and got more and more uptight. The final was looming, and I was feeling so hopeless I did the worst thing possible- I simply stopped going to class. I didn’t think I could pull myself out of the rut. When my grades came in, I expected a big fat F, because I didn’t even take the final. Instead I was SHOCKED to find that even skipping the final (and about a third of the class meetings) I still managed to get a D+. I really kicked myself over that. I ended up re-taking Spanish, and reminded myself of that incident.

I had also accused my girlfriend of Surrender Monkey-ism in her Calculus class in Junior college. She has a very hard time with math, and decided to just take this class this quarter. So she has one class that meets twice a week. She also works part-time 18 hours a week. There is no freaking way she can tell me ‘she doesn’t have enough time’ to study. It was a difficult class for her, but the real challenge was having her identify ways she could improve herself. She had a group project coming up, and all of the other group members spoke nothing but Mandarin. The teacher spoke with a very thick accent as well. But at first, she wasn’t willing to do anything about it. I told her that if she failed the class, it wasn’t because she didn’t get Calculus, it was because she wasn’t doing enough to make it work for her. I was really impressed with the transformation she made- she ended up getting a tutor to help her, and switched groups. She’ll probably pass with a B or even an A, which I’m pretty proud of.

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Ms.-Return-to-School-for-Enrichment I had a lot more of these in my “college in urban setting” than “college town” experiences, but I’ll wager somebody else knows one. I’m not knocking people who are over 30 or 40 or 50 and return to college- I think it’s admirable- but I had several classes in the 80s and 90s with women “of a certain age”- kids grown and husbands flown- who took liberal arts colleges for enrichment. They didn’t need the credits, they were obviously well off moneywise, and I don’t fault them the space in the classroom at all (some were auditing) except for the ones who would. not. keep. their. mouths. shut. One in particular comes to mind: EVERYTHING the professor talked about (ancient Egypt, the silk trade, the Battle of Thermopylae, the Roman annexation of Greece, you name it) somehow invited direct comparison to her or one of her children or, God forbid, her ex-husband (basically all of history’s villains were cut from the same cloth he was evidently).
The worst experience though was when I stumbled into an English lit class as a sophomore with a whole nest of these doilie hoarders. They were taking it for the grade and they chattered and giggled constantly in the back of the room. They also cheated up a damned storm on the final, even getting up to “go to the restroom” all at the same time. Most profs would have lowered the boom, but this particular professor was 132 years old, tenured, a few hours away from retirement, obviously couldn’t give a damn and did nothing, even when several of us vocally complained about it in class.
Techno-Illiterate Non-Trad- & FIERCELY PROUD OF IT

I’ve known both male and female equivalents, especially as a librarian. They don’t understand computers, they “didn’t even have computers when I was in school the last time”, blah yadda boop, and no problem there: computers can be daunting if you’ve never been exposed, don’t own one in the home, I understand that. But to these people its damned near a badge of honor. I’ll try to explain to them how to get into a database, going slow and without condescending- but they’re not paying attention, they want you to do the research for them (not just show them how), you’re gonna see them flagging you down whenever they’re in the library and they’ll never ever ever remember how to access an article from a database (or that a database is not an Internet source) and they’re gonna give you some damned spiel every single time about how they rode ponies to school and fought Indians when they were young (and some of these people are no older than I am) and “I don’t understand anything about computers” and they very clearly aren’t going to learn about them. So frustrating (especially when they’re sitting next to an 82 year old professor emeritus who’s surfing the net like it was record waves at Waikiki).

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The perfectionist and her friend the failing perfectionist.

The perfectionist is in the common room after an essay or exam has been graded, bewailing her failure to get a perfect score while the students struggling to get decent scores glare daggers at her. Nothing less than the highest grades are good enough for her, and she can be a bit humourless about the whole endeavour.

That’s all well and good unless she loses her nerve and transforms into the failing perfectionist, who hasn’t turned in a piece of work all semester, not because she’s slacking, but because she’s still worrying the sixty-fourth draft of the first paper due to death. She won’t hand it in unless her grade will be perfect, and she just knows it’s not up to scratch. Sadly, I knew one of these who had managed to fail out and was now working in the library cafeteria at my school, and one perfectionist who was only saved from this by peer pressure to hand any damn thing in to avoid that fate (and of course always scored brilliantly once she did.)

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Sampiro, i was literally laughing out loud at your colorful post.

I’ve had lots of these older people in class, and most of them reminded me of the Queen Bee secretary that I’ve experienced at offices I’ve worked in. Maybe they were the former Queen Bees who left to learn something. I would always get really frustrated thinking, “Jesus, why do we do it this way!!!” They’d say with a condescending smile, “Well, we know a lot more about this having been here so long.” I realize I don’t know everything but seniority doesn’t equal absolute perfection in everything you do. Ugh… I think the ex-queen bee decided to go to school and educate herself after too many encounters with people like me.

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OK, here we go–

I’m-a gonna take over the world! Kid: These are the super! motivated kids who preside over eight million clubs, have some sort of role on student government, and most definitely want to go to law school. Most of the time they are relatively bright, but their excellent performance is due to hard work and polish (these students are almost always among the best writers you will find at the undergraduate level) and they don’t tend to hang out with other intellectual students or grad students–they prefer their own kind. Often there is something very instrumental about them. High-A students in this category are generally very frustrating to their professors because we do everything in our power to keep them out of law school and inevitably fail. However, sometimes this kid goes through a crisis of performance due to overwork or cramming for the LSATs. This student’s natural enemy is…

Precocious or Pretentious Intellectual Kid: These students cluster in humanities majors, especially English and Philosophy. Pretentious Intellectual Kid is more interested in academic fads than most professional academics and can be irritating as hell (generally this student employs a vocabulary that is just over his/her head), but generally has enough brains or potential that the faculty will put up with him or her. If the faculty member was a Pretentious Intellectual Kid in a former life, s/he will seek these students out and generally tend to inflate their egos even more. The faculty member will probably encourage Pretentious Intellectual Kid to subtly tease and needle I’m-a Gonna take over the world! Kid, though Pretentious Intellectual Kid has usually been doing that since Day One. While Prententious Intellectual Kid comes to his/her professors, Precocious Intellectual Kid is generally discovered, like a nugget of gold, through class discussion or a heads-up from a TA. Everyone loves Precocious Intellectual Kid because you don’t want to wring his/her neck and this kid seems to be less about posturing and studying ridiculous things for their own sake than his/her counterpart. Both Precocious and Pretentious Intellectual Kid will hang out with graduate students. Their natural hanger-on can be…

B+ Kid: B+ kids come in two flavors. One is the slightly degraded version of I’m-a gonna take over the world! Kid–this kid tries to get the internships, clubs and grades of the counterpart, but always comes up short. This type of B+ kid is irritating as hell–even worse that Pretentious Intellectual Kid. This kid generally has no independence, and sucks up office hour time like a Hoover, basically trying to cajole the professor into reading papers and “pre-grading” them as As. All irritating policies involving reading drafts were generated in response to this breed of B+ Kid. Everything revolves around law school and every single grade will be argued to death, just in case the kid can reach the promised land of the A. The other type of B+ Kid is the lesser form of Pretentious/Precocious Intellectual Kid. This kid can get irritating (especially if s/he also masquerades as Life Crisis Kid), but also inspires pity. This kid is a hanger-on with the Pretentious/Precocious/grad student crowd, but is always one step behind. As I said, this type of B+ Kid generally has elements of…

Life Crisis/Crisis in Confidence Kid: These kids have lots of really bad things happen to them, or they had a hard time in high school, or they think they’re dumb/ugly/never going to get a job/internship/leadership post. And boy, oh boy, are they gonna tell you about it. At length. In detail. Repeatedly. Some professors are really good at sniffing these kids out and directing them to whatever counseling the school offers. Others, like me, are really terrible at detecting these kids and end up listening to lots of life stories and trying to offer solutions/affirmation (while frantically looking for the counseling number that we wrote down the last time this happened). Note that these students are different from the average “I’ve got a problem Kid” who just needs an ear once or twice and can go on his or her way. Crisis Kid almost always needs a professional counselor.

Friendly C Kid: This student doesn’t really fit in with the previous categories of students who generally jostle around at the top of the student hierarchy. However, this student generally has something in common with the instructor (they both like sports or comic books–it’s generaly a ‘fanboy’ pursuit, as these students are almost always male) and likes to chat with the instructor before class or in office hours about that subject. The professor is always surprised when these students reach out, because they never get more than a C, and professors operate in a world where someone who gives out a C is someone to be hated. Professors secretly fear that these students are plotting against them. However, this kid is, in reality, generally a nice enough kid with a job and lots of things to do who is perfectly happy to get Bs and Cs and move on with his life after college.

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Ms. As a [Insert Random Affiliation Here]…
These are students who’s hands shoot in the air whenever the profressor says something that slightly insults their sensibilities as a member of [random group]. The comments would always begin with “As A”. As a Communist, As a deaf student, As someone who works in a nuclear facility, As an adult learner, As someone who doesn’t understand computers, yadda, yadda, yadda. Bonus points if the professor cringes everytime this student’s hand goes in the air because they don’t want them to interrupt class anymore.

Johnny and Janie Loves To Fuck:
They’re late to every class all semester. They’re usually giggling when they burst loudly through the door. Their hair is a mess. Their clothes are backwards, inside out or obviously belong a member of the opposite sex. And when they finally sit down they’re practically sitting in each other’s lap. Congratulations, you’re gettin’ some. Now shut up so I can try to concentrate on what “The Professor Who Can’t Speak English” is saying.

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Professor No-Internet
You know the type. They won’t respond to emails, won’t use the online learning system. On top of it, they’d prefer that no presentations are done with PowerPoint, and don’t like reading anything online. God forbid you should even SUGGEST the future is e-books, and they are on you like hair on a gorilla about how nothing compares to curling up with a good book. You can also recognize this professor by the highly overpriced laptop gathering dust in the corner.

for students, there’s:
The Captain
The captain not only has the looks, but also the ambition befitting his role on whatever team. Invariably, Cap is going to intern at a financial services company, working for an alumni, but can’t understand why getting a job or passing classes is hard for other people. Living in his delusion, he is much nicer than First Mate Asshole who is just second string on the team, and is invariably crude.

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I just found my type!

You’re right about the professor reactions, I saw one TA almost jump away in terror when I smiled and said ‘hi’ after seeing him in the courtyard one weekend. He had just given me a (deserved) bad grade on a report, and I think he thought I was going to slug him.

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I encountered a few of these at Kent State. The really old ones (grandma types) were very proud of the fact that they didn’t need to take the tests or write the papers. When the prof was explaining the upcoming test or talking about paper format they’d raise their hands and say “What about us? We don’t need to take the test/write the paper!” and all the prof could say was “uhm…correct.”

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These are siblings of The Joiners. The Joiners are those people who are so chronically overscheduled with extracurriculars that there’s no possible way they can do the group work (or really, any work) that they end up screwing the group and pissing off the classmates whom they badger for notes and handouts. They also tend to screw the organizations who rely on them because they’re spread so thin.

My other favorite is The Victim. They’re not necessarily minorities. Nothing is ever their fault. If they miss a deadline, they have a ready excuse that generally involves putting the blame on someone else, generally the prof who assigned the work in the first place. If you refuse to play ball, you’re biased against The Victim’s particular group, and that makes you the asshole. Fortunately, most professors and all the students see through the act fairly quickly.

Robin

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The Rephraser, who raises their hand and asks a “question” that is actually a restatement of what the professor just said. They alternate this with asking a question about whatever is next on the sylabus/screen/board/reading, before the teacher can get to that. You’ll find your professor saying, “I’ll get to that in just a moment,” a LOT. They can’t think of an actual, useful question, but desperatly want to ask one, so they do this.

(What’s really depressing is you’ll see the The Rephraser at your next corporate staff meeting, and your boss with LOVE them)

When I was in college the Angry Feminist variant of the “As A. . .” people were the bane of many a history class (and lit classes too, from what friends said). More than once one would sidetrack class with their outraged questions and declarations about how unfair it was the way they treated women during whatever era we were studying.

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The Witnesser
I suppose this person is a variant of the **As A… ** student, except that instead of protesting that his/her group is being denigrated by the professor’s very existence, this person grabs every possible opportunity to announce to the class that the world is going to end THIS WEEKEND so y’all had better get right with Jesus on Friday night. Fortunately, this student is rare; usually found in the lowest-level survey courses because for them, the world really does end sometime in mid-October of their freshman year.

The Affirmative Actioner
There are some kids who are sent to college because of their race. Some of them are really eager to take advantage of this opportunity. They are the very best kind of student–attentive without being pretentious, and likely to bring unexpected things to class discussions. Some of them, however, haven’t the foggiest idea which day of school they failed to skip, that got them into this mess. They don’t want to be there and don’t know how to cope–so they pleasantly, quietly, fail. Usually two semesters in a row. They are late to class because they “were asleep.” They get to class and fall back to sleep. Their assignments are illegible and, if you have them decipher the work for you, display a congenial ignorance of everything that has happened in class and everything in the reading materials. They don’t show up for exams, or on days when papers are due. It is absolutely beyond me why we, as a society, think it’s necessary to push people into college who don’t want to be there. It’s a waste of our time and especially theirs. As a teacher, one is infuriated by the situation–though never by the student, who is too passive to inspire any emotion stronger than pity.

The Turn-Around
A variant of the For Enrichment. This big blowhard spent his teens and twenties smoking pot and working temp jobs. Now, he’s gotten himself sober and permanently employed, saddled with a wife and a couple of kids, and has decided to take classes part-time so he can get an edumacated kind of job. Accustomed to being the smartest guy at the construction site, he’s tickled to death with himself and can’t keep his mouth shut in class–every time the instructor lets loose with a noun that this guy recognizes, he lets loose a noisy exclamation: the good ones are banal, the bad ones are incorrent, the ugly ones are hilarious to the rest of the class. “Molotov cocktail? That’s vodka and… sump’in else…”

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(This is my first post- I’m still in school and can place a lot of classmates in the roles so far)

The Who On Earth Are You? Kid may have self-esteem issues, or may just be eager to please. You may not always remember or recognize them because they’re ever-evolving. They change hairstyles, political parties and hobbies because someone else made it look cool. Eventually they’ll settle down into something unrecognizable to their old friends.

Did You Know I’m a FRESHMAN? got Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate credit and placed out of many first- or even second-year courses. They always speak up in class as they’re used to small class sizes. They can’t keep from reminding you how smart they are… *but did you realize I’m still just a freshman? *

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The variant on that latter is “In my AP English class…” This student wastes no time in informing you, and then reminding you throughout the term, that they are so special that they took an AP class in high school. Guess what, Einstein: I teach college English, so the fact that you were in AP English doesn’t really impress me all that much. I’m even less impressed when you say “How can you give me a C on this essay? I got a 5 on the AP test!”

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See, I think you’re lying. I can’t believe that there are people that stupid to say stuff like that.

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I think what you describe, is more common to just “non-traditional” students, rather than just those that come back for enrichment. And yes, this student exists at absolutely every institution for higher learning I, or anyone I have ever known, has attended.

Upset by the realities of, well, REALITY, what is most bothersome seems to be their inhibition to monopolizing everyone’s class time with their own private issues. Unable to finish work due to their “hectic schedule” I guess it’s expected the whole class slow down so they can’t keep up. Upon having trouble grasping an issue, their hectic schedule I guess precludes office hours as every little topic they wish to explore HAS to be discussed in class.

Maybe it’s a misunderstanding of proper classroom etiquette, maybe it’s disbelief that what they’ve been fed by the media for the past 25 years may not be the truth, maybe they just don’t realize that monopolizing a lecturer for 20 minutes of a 50 minute class with your own banal observations is robbing the other students of the subject matter (of which they TOO have paid a pretty penny).

I don’t know, but they exist everywhere.

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Jeremy needs to be Micromanaged: This student will approach the professor’s desk every five freaking minutes with questions like: “How do you spell this word? Should I put my name in the left or right upper corner? Where’s the nearest place I can buy a blue book? Should I skip lines?”
This sort of person is nice enough but has no idea how annoying it is to be asked these questions ALL the time.

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If any of you guys are on Facebook, I strongly suggest you take a look at the group called ** Keep Your Fucking Hand Down in Lecture and Shut Up. No One Cares.** Here’s a direct link.

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You’d be surprised at how stunningly stupid a good number of college students are.

Did I ever mention the student who approached me about hiring me to write a paper for one of his other classes? You know, because I’m, like, so good at English and stuff.