In my kinder, gentler moments I look at some of my students' paper drafts and realize how underserved and undereducated they have been, and how overwhelmed they are. I teach in an adult program at Big Private University, and most of my students are bright, dedicated, hardworking people who work full time, go to school full time, and juggle family, but who have never been exposed to the norms or expectations of academia. These are the people whose questions show that they have listened to my comments about how to do assignments, and who have read and thought about my extensive assignment packet, and who are either catching up pretty fast or honestly trying their best.
But there are the few who never seem to even try to get it, the ones who give every appearance of being constitutionally unable to follow any set of directions that is not bullet-pointed, and who get upset when asked to go beyond simple fill-in-the-blank. When in vent mode, I want to hand out ear-wax scoops en masse.
1. When I ask you to read and to analyze three scholarly articles on your chosen topic, I mean three. scholarly. articles. Wikipedia does not count, nor does a polemical piece in your church's newsletter. Furthermore, one is not three. Neither is two. Yes, I outlined this point in the assignment packet, and have discussed it in class.
2. I understand that you are having trouble finding three articles. This is because, despite my telling you to use JSTOR (which focuses on history among other academic areas) you insist on using Galileo, which does not index nearly as many historical journals. It may also be because you are not using keywords, but instead are typing whole sentences into the search form. Did you look at the wonderful slide show our librarian put together on using keywords and searching JSTOR? Yes? I hate to be contradictory, but the Blackboard record shows you never bothered to access that slideshow. Oh, you just found it? Three quarters of the way into term, when your paper is due next week, when I've mentioned it in every class and it is listed in the assignment book? By the way, six-thirty in the morning a week before papers are due is not the time to call me in panic mode.
3. Do I really need to tell you once, let alone three or more times, that when you find one article that you should then look at the bibliography and search for some of the other authors ... and use the titles in the bibliography as keywords? You might even (!!) find two other articles with minimum fuss. Yes, I outlined this procedure in the assignment packet, and have discussed it in class.
4. Please. Use. The. Library. Catalog. Do not complain to me that you have to buy all these extra books from Amazon. They are in our library. Yes, our library is 35 miles away from our classroom. Yes, the library will send the books to you. For free. Srsly. Yes, I outlined this procedure in the assignment packet, and have discussed it in class.
5. While we are at it, use the university library. Do not use the local public library and then complain that you cannot find anything. Yes, I outlined this point in the assignment packet, and have discussed it in class.
6. When you do find something, please be aware of time period and location. However fascinating the use of relics in modern Tibet or Nepal is, these articles will not work for a paper on medieval European relics. (Sigh) Yes, I am being picky ... No, I don't care. Yes, I outlined this point in the assignment packet, and have discussed it in class.
7. No, reading the book review is not the same as reading an article or (gasp!) a chapter from the book itself. Google Scholar is a great tool for finding books that you might want to order from the library, but you can't *just* use that, either. Yes, I outlined this point in the assignment packet, and have discussed it in class.
Papers are due at the end of the week. O wonderful wonderful, and yet again wonderful, and after that in excess of all whooping.
"By the way, six-thirty in the morning a week before papers are due is not the time to call me in panic mode."
ReplyDeleteOf course not! The time for such calls is 6:30 the night before.
When you're using free previews of Google books as your source, be sure to accurately cite the page numbers in your bibliography (... pp. 3-5, 8, 11-13, 18.). Fortunately, the pages that are omitted from the preview contain nothing of consequence. You should, however, on that 3 paragraph direct quote that spans the jump from page 5 to 8, use a few extra sets of ellipses for good measure.
Oh, and let's not forget the "My high school teacher told us we could use newspaper articles" canard.
ReplyDeleteI always countered that by saying they could use them but they won't count toward their scholarly source minimum though. Oh, and those newspaper articles usually REPORT on something else, so they should go look up that "something else."
And that, by the way, newspapers ARE NOT scholarly (not even the NYT! -- which stunned them), which means they need to use the library databases to look for something written by, you know, a scholar.
I also explained how to distinguish between journalistic articles and scholarly articles by length (3 columns vs. 10-20+ pages), author (a reporter vs. someone who usually has a PhD), and even location (People magazine or the Boston Chronicle vs. the Journal of Something-or-Other).
No, no...I expected too much of them. It's too hard and they can't find anything and it's a stupid assignment, and I'm just smug and think I am better than them, et cetera ad nauseum.
I was going to comment to say that by points 6 and 7 your format was overwhelming me, but then in TMPE's comment I learned 2 totally new things so now I guess I feel today's visit to college misery has been really productive, kind of worth slogging through that list.
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