Me: *Packing up papers at the end of the second-meeting of my tutorial, as students file out.*
Student: *Enters room.* "Hi? I'm in your tutorial, but I couldn't find the classroom. I'm in first year, and I've been wandering around campus looking for the room for two weeks!"
Maybe Apple and Google Maps will get together and make an App for that.
ReplyDeleteCMP, it will be a buggy feature in the newest version of Blackboard.
ReplyDelete"...and, boy, are my arms tired!"
ReplyDeleteStudent, continued:
ReplyDelete"And when I say wandering for two weeks, I mean literally two weeks. I haven't eaten, haven't slept, haven't washed, nothing. The first two days were tough, but I eventually got used to the hunger and the stank. After the sixth day, I almost gave up and resorted to looking at the college website for a map, but that feeling passed rather quickly. It seemed too much like work. So, can you tell me what we did last week? Do you have notes I can copy? Can I still pass? I'm normally an A student and I don't want this misunderstanding to ruin my GPA. Is there extra credit I can do? Hey, why are you sharpening that yardstick?"
At that point, the encounter went downhill.
How big is your campus that this person can wander around for two weeks without running into anybody who might look like he/she knows the campus? Unless your campus is just that deserted...
ReplyDeleteMathsquatch out.
Well, it *is* big, but with 50,000 students, you'd think she could have found someone to ask. Or checked one of the campus maps. Or just left out the b.s. excuse altogether.
ReplyDelete"Left out the B.S. excuse altogether..." that's just funny. Do you want to take away her very will to LIVE?
ReplyDeletePoor student. Nothing to eat but manna.
ReplyDeleteSocio, she probably asked people like me when she was wandering around. I've worked on that campus for several years and 80% of the time when a student asks me where a building is, I am honest when I shrug and say "I dunno. It's a big campus." Then again, I bother to learn the location of a building where I need to be, and the online campus map is pretty straightforward - there have been a number of occasions when I've found out where I was teaching a class and I asked myself "Where the f*'in hell is that? Never heard of it."
ReplyDeleteWhen I found out I would be teaching there, I didn't know where it (the classroom, not the entire building) was either. So, I went and checked out my classrooms before the term started. I also remember having done this as a student at my undergrad alma mater.
ReplyDeleteIt never occurred to me that this was a radical idea that new students might not think to attempt.
I would look this silly child in the eye and say, "Come on, that's not a valid excuse. Missing even the first day of class because you were lost is inexcusable: a professional would figure out in advance where the room was, and be there on time, by using a map, which are easy enough to get. Pull this kind of stunt in any job in the world, and you'll be fired."
ReplyDelete