The other shoe...

And here we are again, at the dawn of a new semester.

Okay, so maybe not new. But with a few weeks under my belt, I've been able to get the lay of the land, and for once in a great while, the view ain't all that bad.

For those of you who've been following this blog for a while, you know how these "First Post of the Semester" entries usually read. And believe me...for a while I thought of just creating a template--something like the old "Mad Libs" games, where I could write most of the script and fill in the blanks with the small variations that are bound to occur.

This semester I was expecting more of the same. Apathy in the classroom. Dwindling attendance. Visitors as far as the eye can see. And this is part of the reason why I waited several weeks to write this post. Fall semester is a funny beast. It always starts off well, but soon enough, the other shoe drops, and we're back to the same old same old. But this fall, something happened that I didn't expect.

The other shoe has yet to drop.

In my classes, attendance--at week four--is still up. Assignments are being completed on time. There have been no mad texters, or drooling snorers, nor have I had to boot any students out of the classroom for cause. Hell, they're still laughing at my jokes, although I have yet to decide whether this is a good or bad thing. But for better or worse, at this point in the semester, they're still around and they're still interested.

I'll take it. Gods know I'm due.

This is not to say that everything's perfect. I still have students that can barely spell their own names. Most of the emails I receive still read like text messages. But as Forrest told us, stupid is as stupid does, and that part won't be going away anytime soon. But this semester--for now, at least--I'm pretty happy with my box of chocolates.

But don't worry, gentle readers. Midterms are coming, and I'm sure reality will hit soon enough. For now, however, I'm not looking this particular gift horse in the mouth.

That's "Entertainment"...

I received an email from a dear friend this morning. Knowing I was administering my last final today, he wished me well, stating that he hoped the final I was giving would be successful...or would, at least, be entertaining to him.


Well, my friend, this one's for you.


So for the last two weeks of class, I announced the date, time and location of the final exam, for all of  my sections. That I repeated myself at the start of every class actually became something of a joke in most of the sections. And to be honest, these were NOT the people I needed to remind ad nauseum of where and when they needed to be ready to roll for the exam.


The reason for my slightly anal-retentive concern was twofold. First, for at least two of the classes, the scheduled exam time was an hour earlier than our normal class meeting time. Were it up to me, this would not be the case, but I, like others, am at the mercy of the University when it comes to exam schedules. And second, this is not my first time at this particular rodeo. Someone ALWAYS comes late. But I decided that this was going to be the year. The year that everyone followed directions. The year that no one showed up as I was turning off the lights with a sob story and a desperate look in their eyes.


I'm still waiting for that pony, by the way.


In order to make this dream a reality, I tried to cover all the bases. In addition to the daily reminders, I also posted announcements on the course website. The date and time were in bold red letters, screaming out from the page every time a student bothered to log in. And if that wasn't enough, a copy of the announcement was sent to all students in the course via email.


Now I KNOW the Visitors are handy with the email. I refer you to my earlier blog entry for proof.


Until today, I was optimistic. Besides the normal cavalcade of creative excuses (see my LAST entry), no one had showed up late. In fact, things started off smooth today, and I actually remember thinking how nice it was going to be to disappoint my friend.
Maybe that was my problem. After all, pride goeth before the fall, and karma is a spiteful bitch.


The exam period runs for an hour and a half. Given the structure of the exam, most students finish in well under half that time. Even those who diligently check and recheck their answers, and those who sit in a puddle of sweat praying for some sort of divine educational intervention tend to clear out within an hour. Today, with 25 minutes to go, there was one of each left in the room.


Trusting that these two were wrapped up in their exams, I stepped out briefly to use the restroom. As I left, I noticed two students I recognized from the class waiting quietly in the hall. They politely said hello (but nothing else at that time) as I passed. I figured that they were waiting on one of the stragglers.


I was wrong.


When they were still there after I returned, I asked if there was anything else I could do for them. They looked at each other, and then just as politely asked if it was too late to take the exam.


In case you were wondering, yes. They were Visitors. In fact, one of them was not only a Visitor, but a Repeater, having failed this class last semester, placing him squarely in the "Should Have Known Better" category. Regardless, I reminded them--sternly, and loudly--that this was precisely why it was important to show up to class once in a while. Without batting an eye, the Repeater looked at me and said that he just assumed the exam would be at the same time as class. And while subtler than a big scarlet "V" on his tee-shirt, this answer told me all I needed to know about the last time he had attended class, checked the internet, or hell, even read his email. At least Visitor #2, while equally clueless, tried to stammer out a coherent excuse before again asking if he could still take the test.


Against my better judgement, I caved. I knew they realized there was still technically time left, and that there were still two students taking the exam. And if past experience has taught me nothing else, even students who are willfully negligent about staying informed can find the initiative to complain to my boss. Covering my bases, I told them that they could still take the final on the condition that when the scheduled time to take the exam was up--a time, mind you, that was only 20 minutes away at this point--I was kicking them out the door.


I set them in the first row and gave them the test materials. As it turns out, I didn't need to worry about kicking them out at the end of the period. I barely had time to turn around before Visitor #2 was handing me his "completed" exam. Repeater was not that far behind. Ironically, they both finished before the last two stragglers in the room.

As Repeater was leaving, I noticed that he had hadn't actually completed the exam. He had the nerve to give me the stinkeye when I asked him to fill in the missing responses.


Now I don't want praise, and I've long since stopped caring about my online reviews. But I don't think common courtesy is too much to ask.


I'd love to provide a clever denouement to this story. Or some heartwarming last minute revelation, as the Visitors realize the error of their ways. But honestly, I'm spent, and looking forward to a few well-deserved months of rest.


However, fear not, gentle readers, because if I've learned anything from the last few years, it's that Visitors are consistent. So M, my dear friend, just know this--as long as I have a job, you'll be entertained...

Marrying Rich...

It's that time of year again, when panic flows freely through the ivory tower and all of its hallowed halls. And as I slog through exam week, I thought it might be nice to look back on the last ten years, to some of the more creative excuses I've heard for why my students needed to reschedule their exams, or reasons why they missed them entirely. So sit back and enjoy the fact that this is NOT your job. Unless this IS your job, in which case I offer my apologies...


Excuse #10. My friends didn't know what time the exam started.
They were probably too busy jumping off that bridge over there. Please don't let me keep you... 

Excuse #9. There's a Yankees game at the same time as the exam. Can I take it tomorrow?
I would have been willing to consider this one if the student hadn't used it for the December finals... 

Excuse #8. There was a final?
Well, not for you...  

Excuse #7. I forgot to study, and didn't want to disappoint you.
Too late. 

Excuse #6. I thought I was failing and it wouldn't matter anyway.
Ironically, this is the first time THIS student got an answer correct all semester... 

Excuse #5. The bar didn't have wi-fi and I couldn't check the website to see when the exam began.
To this student's credit at least they tried to check... 

Excuse #4. I spilled beer on my day planner and couldn't read what I had written down.
Actually from the same student who gave #5 above. If only effort was enough... 

Excuse #3. I got married yesterday and lost track of time.
In that case, I hope you married rich. And if you're wondering who Rich is...you better find him. Quick! 

Excuse #2. I forgot where the classroom was. Can you give me directions?
Sure. It's that building across the street with the big golden arches on the roof. (Don't judge. He's a Visitor. And let's face it...at the rate he's going, he's probably going to end up there eventually. I'm just eliminating the middleman...) 

Excuse #1. I didn't realize I was in this class until three days ago. Can you get me up to speed?
Forgetting what time the exam starts is one thing. I'm even willing to forgive that you don't know how to find the classroom. Forgetting that you're IN a class in the first place? That goes beyond Visitor, and falls into the ever growing category of Things That Are Not My Problem. Cut your losses and try again next year.

Perhaps this clip--a caricature of actual conversations I've had with students--sums it up best. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find a quiet corner and weep for the future... 

Be Careful What You Wish For...Revisted!

I administered my midterm exam not too long ago. And as anticipated, the average score was right what I expected (see my previous post for all the gory details). And also as expected, the emails flowed. Most were from Visitors, or Visitor-wannabees. Some were from people who pretend to attend, but usually slide out of the room the first time I turn my back to the class. Was there going to be extra credit? How many points were left? Was there ANYTHING that could be done to save their grade? Even some of the so-called "good" students joined the fray.  


In short? They wanted more opportunities to get points. Begged for them, in some cases, in order to redeem themselves for their overwhelmingly abysmal performance on the exam. While it meant more work for me, I was generally happy to oblige. 


In the week after the exam--which also happened to be the week after Spring Break--I offered a whopping 60 points worth of assignments, which amounted to almost 2/3rd the value of the exam. The points came in the form of a take home quiz, an in-class assignment, and an online assessment. The first and last options were open book, and the in-class work was a gimme. You did it, you got the points, as there were no right or wrong answers. All told, this opportunity for points was the equivalent of a big loping softball. All people needed to do was stand there and catch it.


Lots of points. Nearly free of charge. Exactly the chance the many people needed to counter the horrorshow that was the midterm exam.


In a perfect world, I would have been the hero. Perhaps even the subject of happy drinking songs all over campus. Hell, a simple "Hey, there, Doc...thanks for throwing us a bone" would have sufficed. I would've even accepted the usual sullen non-response I've grown to expect from this particular crop of students. However, as you may have gleaned from reading this blog over the course of the last few bitter years, I live in a world that is far from perfect.


What did I get instead, you ask?


Angry emails. And LOTS of 'em.


Much like the first batch of emails, the authors and tone was remarkably similar. How DARE I assign work after Spring Break? And three assignments? In one week? That's just not fair.  And from those who MISSED the assignments entirely because they didn't check their email or show up for class? Well to them, I was just plain evil.


In retrospect, I should have guessed there'd be a catch. Students begging for more work? That just doesn't happen in a relatively low level class. It turns out my students wanted points, but they didn't want to work for them.


The next day in class, I mentioned in passing that assignment grades had been posted. A general murmur ran through the crowd. I asked if there were any questions, and  a student raised his hand. He then informed me that he didn't appreciate being punished for not coming to class, and that he thought I should give him the points that he had missed.


Now.


It's takes quite a bit to render me speechless. And there are not many instances where I snap in class. But this did the trick quite effectively.


What seems to be escaping them is that I don't give assignments to be vindictive. This is not the Simpsons, and I'm not going to stand you at the board and make you write "I will not be an entitled lazy bastard!" a thousand times. And I certainly don't give assignments because I'm bored and want to fill my evenings by grading papers. I give assignments because deep down, I want you to learn something. I give assignments because they pay me to teach, and you pay to be taught. I give assignments because this is COLLEGE, and that's how we roll.


But most importantly, in this instance, and the one thing they ALL seemed to forget...


I gave them this work...


...because they ASKED for it.


This is exactly what I told my class. Loudly. And for several minutes.


In retrospect, I feel a little bad. After all, the ones who show up aren't the problem. It's the Visitors that don't remember where the classroom is, but sure are handy with the email that were the main target of my wrath. But my point was made, and word got around. Emails are down and attendance is up. Hell, even the Visitors have come out of hibernation.


The moral of this tale? Be careful what you wish for. You just may get it. But don't bitch to me when you do.


I'm sure I'll still be mentioned over a drink or two. And I'm also sure it won't be in song.

Email Do's and Don'ts...

Finals are done. Grades are posted. And the emails are rolling in.

At the end of every semester, a good friend and I place our bets as to how long it will take for the first angry "why did you fail me" emails to show up. This semester, I barely had enough time to place my bet before the first message popped up in my inbox.

After 10 years of this, I'm used to the emails. I'm even used to the speed at which they show up. And though the students' names change each semester, the emails stay relatively similar. Most involve some modicum of begging or pleading. Others are riddled with disbelief. Some are just plain ballsy. Take, for instance, the email I received shortly after posting my grades today. To his credit, this student hadn't failed. But he told me that he felt that he had learned a lot, and asked if I would just give him the next grade up so he could save his GPA.

Yet another student took offense at an exam questions. In less than polite terms, he demanded that I credit him two points on his exam, because in his mind, there was more than one answer that had been correct. And that one I would have considered, if he hadn't chosen the one WRONG answer for that question. 

The best of the bunch this semester, as I've seen in the past, was the student that spent almost a full page going on about how she felt that her hard work and effort warranted a higher grade. But while her desperation was apparent, her writing skills were not, as there was not one bit of punctuation or a capital letter to be seen. To her credit, though, she DID spell her own name right. The same couldn't be said about mine.

This time of year, when emotions and stress tend to trump common sense, what students really need is a list of Email Do's and Don'ts--a little checklist they could tape to their computers or smart phones. Maybe even a cool little app that pops up before they click send, just to make students think before they shoot off those messages that make their professors shake their heads and sigh.

The checklist could look like this:

DO...think before you send that email you wrote IMMEDIATELY after learning that you tanked the final and failed the class. I'm not going to change your grade anyway, but when you yell and scream at me in an angry email, it makes me wish there was a "G."

DO...spell things correctly and use punctuation. You look pretty silly when you beg for a higher grade, but can't string three coherent sentences together in the process.

DON'T...tell me that you should have come to class more often. That falls under the category of "your problem, not mine." After all, I get paid whether you show up or not.

DON'T...whine. It may be bad karma, but I don't care that you had a rough semester, or that your GPA is a little too low for comfort. These are things you should have thought of BEFORE you slept through the first half of the semester, or spent each lecture making a booty call on the cutie to your left.

DON'T...tell me that you thought my class was going to be easy. I thought you were going to make an effort. Sucks to be us, but it's not gonna make me change your grade.

And finally, DON'T ask me why I "gave" you an F. I didn't give you anything. You earned that failing grade all by your lonesome.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go check my email.

And the winner is...

It's that time of year again. The leaves have fallen. There's a chill in the air. Hell, it snowed the other day. And the panic is so thick you can smell it from a mile away.

Now that I officially find myself as a member of the student body again, I have rekindled my appreciation for how stressful the end of the semester can be. Believe me...I get it, as any of my new colleagues who read this can surely appreciate. And I consider myself to be a pretty diligent student. Not that I'm perfect. I've been known to forgo my reading in lieu of a good third and long. But I can honestly say, with no reservations, that I've made a valiant effort to...you know, at least go to class.

I can only imagine how scary this time of year is for those people who haven't. And yes, Visitors. I'm talking about you.

If you've been following this blog for any length of time, you know who the Visitors are. They're like the C&E churchgoers that showed up for holidays, weddings and funerals. But in every Visitor's semester, there's that moment. That "oh shit, I'm FAILING!" moment, that's akin to the C&E that realizes on their deathbed that the guy with the funny collar wasn't kidding. It's like Bill Cosby used to say about his mother. "You are looking at an old woman who is trying to get into Heaven now." This is how I feel around week 14 of the semester as I look around at the Visitors, who reappear in droves. These are not the same people that blew off my class all semester. These are the students that are trying to get out of the grade basement.

When the Visitors start to trickle back in, the real fun begins. The front row fills up, as if being seen is enough to make up for the previous three months. Some even raise their hands and try to sound like the reason they haven't been in class is because they've been so enraptured with the material that they've been unable to tear themselves away from their textbooks to make it to class on time. And every semester, one Visitor pulls away from the pack, like that last minute long shot who ends up winning by a nose.

Well, kids, we have a winner.

During this time of year, Visitors are often fill my appointment book, and I thought nothing of it when a student with a name I couldn't match to a face sent a polite email asking if we could meet. When he showed up for our appointment today, he launched into a soliloquy of how he's been President of This, and a Member of That, and somewhere in the mix, he'd forgotten to come to class.

As I started to pull up his grades, I asked if he remembered the last time he'd been to class. "Well, that's the thing," he said. "I haven't."

"Haven't what?" says me.

"Haven't come to class."

Before I can reply, my computer screen refreshes and confirms what I've just heard. Midterm: 0. Paper, 0. Zeros across the board.

As anyone who knows me will attest, it takes quite a bit to render me speechless. I almost wanted to give him some credit just for that.

He proceeded to tell me that as he was going through his notes in preparation for finals, he noticed that although he knew he was registered for six classes, he only had notes for five. It was then that he realized that he had forgotten to come to my class. Not once, or twice, or even since the midterm.

He admitted point blank that because he'd been so busy with his other responsibilities he'd forgotten to come at all.

Now this isn't the part that put him ahead of the pack. This is not the first time in over 10 years that I've had a student regale me with the same story. It was his next request that catapulted him to the level of "This is going in the blog tonight."

I mentioned that there was nothing I could do to help him at this point. But he interrupted me and said that he thought there was something I could do to help. Intrigued, I asked what that could be. He then proceeded to tell me that he had cleared his entire Saturday for me, and could I just meet with him and fill him in on what he had missed. And before I could decide whether to point and laugh or burst into tears, he said that this, of course, would be enough to prepare him to make up the midterm that he had missed.

There was no request. No pleading or begging. As if the assumption that not only would I be willing to give up my Saturday for someone who couldn't be bothered to remember he was a student in my class wasn't enough, he simply assumed that I would be dumping my entire policy on "no late assignments or make up work".

Imagine his surprise when, with a slightly bewildered smile, I stood and thanked him for stopping by, and wished him luck with the classes he had bothered to show up for.

Thanks for playing. Enjoy these lovely parting gifts of forfeiture of any second chance to take this class with me, and of course, a big fat and well-earned F for the semester.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and hug a Visitor. At least they make the effort once in a while...

A lost art...

So now you're thinking, twice in a week? In 24 hours? Aren't you in law school or something?

Well, yeah. But that's a blog for another day.

I'm back because of a conversation I had with a friend while driving home from work. I was regaling my  friend--one my oldest and dearest, and frequently the recipient of both both my rants and my wrath--with my latest "this is going in the blog" story.

The topic--as it is more often than not these days--was the constant state of wonder in which I find myself after talking to my students. And I'm not talking about that innocent "snow-falling-on-cedars" type of wonder. I'm talking "I wonder what I did in a past life to deserve this" kind of wonder.

It's that time of year again, and later this week I'm collecting term papers. With the papers due in two short days, I'd like to think that most people's papers are done, and they will be spending these next few days leisurely and thoroughly proofreading and reviewing their work.

Yeah, and while I'm dreaming, I'd also like a pony.

The more likely reality was driven home today by the student that came up to me after class, practically in tears. She was just getting ready to start writing her paper, was one source shy of the five that I require, and was at her wit's end. There's nothing online, she said. I've looked everywhere.

When I asked her where exactly she had looked, she recounted a frantic weekend filled with Google searches and Wiki-reading, and trips down a variety of other cyber-dead ends. By the end of her tale, she was visibly rattled. I almost felt bad for her, until I asked what she had found in the library.

She blinked, and looked completely baffled. The library? she asked, looking honestly and completely baffled.

Now I've been here a while. And I'm not ashamed to admit that I ache when it rains, need glasses to read, and still bust out the cassette player from time to time. But I've never felt as old as when this told me she didn't know that she could use a book as a research source.

There's an article that appeared in The Atlantic a few years ago. I make my students read it every semester. Called "Is Google Making Us Stupid?", it details how the web is slowly but surely "chipping away" at our ability to concentrate on anything slower than the speed of the Google search. No wonder the library's becoming obsolete.

Not that it stopped me from literally presenting my class with a map to the library, and ensuring them that yes, books are fine. Books are good. Archaic, perhaps, but in my class, they'll never be turned away.

Wanna see what I mean? Stop by my class anytime. Or check out the article:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/07/is-google-making-us-stupid/6868/#

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'm going to curl up with a good book and call it a night.