Hi Moira
I was wondering about the book The Essential Homer; would I be able to read a book that has a differnt author and if so could you give me a recomedation on what other auther?
Dear Dina,
Judging by your spelling, I am not sure you would be able to read anything more complex than The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but that's besides the point. Let's address your main concern. Of course, I simply ordered the texts for this class at random, so by all means, read Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, or (perhaps more appropriately) Dostoevsky's The Idiot. All these are equally relevant to a course concerning the Ancient Greeks.
Also, remember, as I outlined in the syllabus and talked about on the first day of class, university professors are not addressed as "Mrs." (a social title) or by their first names, but as "Dr." or "Professor"--professional titles.
Clueless Calvin wrote:
i have no idea how what the enrollment password is to sign up for an account on turnitin.com so i have no way of turning in my paper.
Dear Calvin,
Remember when you read the syllabus? (I know you did because you signed and turned in the form stating that you had read and fully understood the syllabus.) Remember when you saw the turnitin password at the very top of the syllabus in large bold type? Remember the two paragraphs on turnitin in the syllabus and the turnitin quickstart guide I handed out?
Remember when I announced the password in the three class meetings before the paper was due?
And remember when I put the announcement about the password on the website before the last two assignments?
Well, guess what, that's the password.
And guess what. Your paper is late.
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Mindless Maggie> wrote:
hi Mrs. kali,i have been trying to send in my assignment and seeing how i don't have word it hasn't been accepting it. so i was wondering if I could just give you a hard copy in class on monday? hope thats ok!!!
Mindless Maggie
Hi, Maggie,
If you are talking about the Gilgamesh turnitin assignment, the guide to turnitin I gave you attached to the syllabus explains how the website accepts documents in the following format:
MS Word, WordPerfect, RTF, PDF, PostScript, HTML, and plain text (.txt) You can also cut-and-paste from any document.
So I am not sure what you mean by "seeing how I don't have word it hasn't been accepting it"--unless you have composed your paper in cuneiform on clay tablets.
So I am afraid "its not ok" --your paper is late.
Also, remember, as I outlined in the syllabus and talked about on the first day of class, university professors are not addressed as "Mrs." (a social title) or by their first names, but as "Dr." or "Professor"--professional titles.
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Absent Abel wrote:
hiive been struggling in ur class and i was wonder what do i need 2 do in order 2 pass your class?Absent Abel
Dear Abel,
It's the fifth week of class and you have utterly failed two quizzes and missed two others. You have not put a photo on your index card, and you never come to class, so I am not even sure who you are.
What "u need 2 do" is drop the class. Do it now.
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Witless Wendi wrote:
hey moira, I couldnt send it to turnitin.com b/c i did not know the pass word so i had to sent it to your email. I know you said it had to go to turninin but i wanted you to know i did do the paper. Here it is now.
wendi
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*sigh*
Thank you for showing me that I am not alone. Ugh.
ReplyDeleteps: We don't use turnitin at my institution which may be fortunate because they wouldn't be able to figure it out. but I was delighted when I went to the turnitin website and misread their slogan as "Prevent plagiarism! Enrage students!" Hahahahahaha
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain. I mean seriously I do. My students have it even easier as they can upload directly to Turnitin through Blackboard. There is even an icon I put on the main class page for them to click on. But do they get it? Ha. That would require them to think and that's something they can't seem to grasp.
ReplyDeleteOh, how I love text-speak and emails that begin with "Hey" or my first name or "Mrs." I feel your pain, but I'm also relieved that it isn't just my students who are clueless buffoons.
ReplyDeleteCalvin needs to go back to playing with Hobbes.
ReplyDeleteI might have never believed that someone like Dina could exist, except that I just saw the same thing happen in a class I'm taking.
ReplyDeleteI'm in British Lit I (800-1800) this semester, and we have a Blackboard page with class forums. One of those class forums deals with the oral report. We must present a report about some British author or work from the period covered by our class, and our professor would prefer it (though does not absolutely insist) that it be about someone or something not previously assigned on the syllabus.
Simple enough, right?
So why did I see someone floating Dante Aligheri as a topic he would like to do for his report?!
When told that this was way outside the bounds of the course, he then responded by insisting that my professor (and implicitly anyone else reading on Blackboard) provide him with a list of suggested topics and authors. Hello, Sammy Snowflake? There is a miracle of human endeavor called a literary anthology. You might recognize it as the thing that is assigned for this course. So why don't you go down the list of authors and works in the table of contents, cross-check it against the assigned works in the syllabus, and come up with a list of possible authors this way? Or check another relevant anthology? Or go to Wikipedia and look up the category pages for 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th century British authors? You have all the resources of the internet and print world at your disposal. You do not need someone to hold your hand and tell you what you ought to do. You shouldn't even need to be told this much. In fact, you shouldn't even need to be told that Dante isn't a British author. WTF is wrong with you?!
wendi, I feel your pain. I had 6 students email me their essays yesterday, despite the fact that their syllabus says "I DO NOT ACCEPT EMAILED ESSAYS".
ReplyDeleteI have never been closer to giving them a quiz on the syllabus.
I give them a syllabus quiz at the beginning of the semester just to field any feigned ignorance of assignments, expectations or other requirements, but it doesn't matter. They still come up clueless, but at least I can say "not my fault, you took the syllabus quiz and signed it, so your responsibility."
ReplyDeleteThis is so wrong, but ... there was a Dim-Witted Dina in my daughter's music class for preschoolers. The teacher said stand, and she'd sit there staring; the teacher said clap, and she'd keep clapping long after the others had gone on to something else. He had to tell her the same things over and over, which he did with a great deal of good humor, but it was wince-makingly painful. I'm sure the poor child had a learning issue/cognitive delay/language barrier/something, but all I could think of was some of my college students.
ReplyDeleteDear Mrs Professor Moira,
ReplyDeleteThank you for letting me read The Hungry Catterpiller instead, I am having trouble with the pages where he eats a lots of friuts. I know some of them from their pitchers, but not all. Cna you help me please, i can come to offic e hours I need an A in this class
thank y
Dina
your lame. get over your silly title.as for the the students inability to use turnitin, that does suck.i feel ya there :)
ReplyDelete1. I am not Mrs. That is my mother. You do not need to use Doctor, but I think that Ms. at the VERY least will serve to remind you that I actually know stuff. In fact, using my title might slow you down and prevent you from...
ReplyDelete2. Using too many exclamation points!! Or using them at all!
I feel badly for my 'good' students, the ones who do their work and don't complain, because my experiences with the 'bad' ones make me want to just lay my smackdown on all of them, which is really unfair.
BIV, you don't mind if I call you BIV, do you? (I don't have time the time or inclination to learn your correct screen name.)
ReplyDeleteYou know what? Too easy... anyone else want to do it for me.
Nope, can't help it.
You're lame, as in "you are."
OK, done now.
(As someone who is a very recent recipient of a "silly title," I can tell you that I worked way harder for it than I did for my title of "Cute" [granted at birth], and "Mrs Cleo" [granted by the state of Indiana]. [I would go by Miss Cleo, but I think she's in prison now.] There's a big difference between asking your plumber to call you "doctor" and asking your students to call you "doctor" or "professor" within the confines of the academy. If you cannot abide by the expectations of that academy, get out of said academy.[If you can't call your superior officer, "sir," I'd suggest you get out of the military now. Because they don't take too well to the phrase "silly title."] Rant done.)
Now that that's done....
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Dr. Kali,
Stick to your guns. Be polite, terse, and take no prisoners. Fail all of the little brats. AND ENJOY IT.
Best, Cute Cleo
I hadn't thought of it that way. I don't care if people outside the academy call me Ms. or Mrs. or whatever. But within my classes, it's Dr. or Professor. Though I don't react too strongly to "Mrs.", because that's the honorific they learned from high school; at least they're trying.
ReplyDeleteFirst names, however, are unacceptable. They haven't been taught this in high school but they need to know it, at least in first and second year.
Thanks, Cute Cleo! I was simply going to say QED*, but yours was better. Now back to grading.
ReplyDelete*or as Dr. Deimos puts it, "quite elegantly demonstrated."
I'd never thought to give a quiz on the syllabus. That's a good idea.
ReplyDeleteOn another note, I think I shall soon explode with frustration at the rapid demise of both the apostrophe and appropriate (or any) capitalization. How hard is it to press the shift key?
I'm not sure how much good a quiz on the syllabus would do. I have my students complete the excellent Indiana University Bloomington plagiarism tutorial (https://www.indiana.edu/~istd/ ). At the end, once they've passed a test, they get a certificate to print out and sign, that says, basically, "I now know what plagiarism is and there will be no excuse if it shows up in my paper." This has not prevented more than one student, over the years, from insisting to me that he/she didn't realize that substituting synonyms for a few key words in a sentence, but keeping both the meaning and the syntax the same, is plagiarism, not paraphrase, even though the tutorial and the test explicitly cover such cases. Calling their attention to the certificate, its wording, their signature, etc., doesn't seem to change the "I didn't know" tune at all. In short, for some students, the idea that they're supposed to retain and apply the principles from one exercise, document, reading, etc. to another assignment just doesn't seem to compute.
ReplyDeleteI don't care if my students strip me of my Ph.D. by failing to call me "Doctor." For one thing, much of America regards the title "Doctor" to be for physicians, dentists, or veterinarians only. Anyone else using it may be suspected of fraud: this is described in "Player Piano," by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
ReplyDeleteFor another thing, my students don't have the authority to strip me of my Ph.D. anyway. Only the graduate school that granted me the degree can do that, and I haven't crossed them lately.
I don't much care if my students fail to call me, "Professor." I find that as I get older and grayer, more of them do anyway.
Not many of them address me by my first name. I never put it on any class materials: I go by "F. Frankenstien" exclusively.
What I don't like is to be addressed as "Frankenstien!" or "Yo, Frankenstien!" When did this become acceptable? I think sometime in the '90s, since students who liked me started doing it about then. It's just plain bad manners: I remind students that bosses in the real world -won't- like it.
VIV, also: students', run-on, period at end of sentence please. So much illiteracy in two little lines. And fuck emoticons. :(
ReplyDeleteI did this with my lame title. Though really it was with my junior high school education.
ya'll are so funny. first names are way inappropriate, i would never assume to call anyone that i did not know by anything other than sir or ma'am. i find titles to inhibit possible, positive teacher/student relationships is all (i work with troubled youth in the "hood"). for what its worth i always check my syllabus and faq's before submitting a question. and ya'll sure did get me on grammer and spelling, im too lazy to try to fix it. unless i plan on turnin it in to turnitin.com of course ;)
ReplyDeleteI'm sure you are all brillant professors in your field, i am sad to acknowledge that there are alot of ahole students out there.
cleo, call me what you like, i dnt mind. black dog, i wish i could take one of your classes. you sound like you've been to some rad places. Marcia, again, i apologize for my laziness in respect to puctuation, grammer, and all those other insufferable writing rules. thnx viv