"Hey, Pr. ****, since u were not in class 2day, I guess the [midterm/or fill in the blank with something important that is happening or due Wed] is post-poned?"e-mails?
PS the midterm is next week anyway.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Happy Columbus Day to you too.
Who else (at a school closed for the big major important holiday that Columbus Day is) got
PS the midterm is next week anyway.
PS the midterm is next week anyway.
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Wombat,
ReplyDeleteDon't you have a schedule that shows your students that they get the day off? I would figure that all students would know by heart the days they don't have to go to school. Heck, I was almost a super-keener and I always knew which days I had off. I still do. It's called a school calendar.
Anyway, I'm not really berating you, I'm saying that the idiotic student(s) has/have plenty of places to find the information on when not to go to class. If he/she/they don't know that he/she/they don't have to be in class, fuck 'em.
Mathsquatch out.
a) what a dick of a student.
ReplyDeleteb) why is columbus day still a holiday???
Of COURSE there is. Forget the super keeners, it's the first thing *I* look for. I don't even wait until intersession. As soon as this semester is far enough along, I start looking to see when next terms calendar gets posted. And it's "far enough along" by the second week.
ReplyDeleteAnd because it's so confusingly labeled "academic calendar" on the front page of the school site, I make up a schedule in the syllabus. And the syllabus is passed out in class and posted on-line.
Yeah, I figured as much, Wombat. I do the same thing and I still get flummoxed by the questions asked about whether they have to come to school on arbitrary-federal-holiday. I taught at a school that took Columbus Day off but didn't take Veteran's Day off. I gave the students Veterans Day off, too. And I still had students ask me why I wasn't in class that morning. It's an uphill battle and I seem to be wearing roller skates.
ReplyDeleteMathsquatch out.
I keep reading that as "Hey Prick" and I think, "Wow, what a rude student!"
ReplyDeleteI should start my emails that way..."Hey Pricks, this is a reminder about X assignment...."
Nah, maybe not.
This reminds me of the totally wasted effort I make every semester to publish a laughable little document I like to call the "Calendar and Due Dates." This is where, you got it, the entire friggin' semester is laid out week by week. Yet.....the Due Dates for the Discussions/Quizzes/Midterm are still a "mystery (I'm SO confused by multiple items being due ON THE SAME DAY)." OTOH, *major* holidays like Fair Day (gotta go to the parade) and Columbus Day (how do you celebrate this holiday....get a flu shot?) aren't mystifying anyone in my classes except me.
ReplyDeleteI was always a bit mystified by Columbus Day, but then we celebrate Thanksgiving today...
ReplyDelete@Prof and Circumstance... I think some cities have parades for Columbus Day, but wouldn't taking a random trip to somewhere new be a more thematic celebration?
@Nadine du Nord: To respond to your comment to Prof and Circumstance...Yes, but only if you insisted that you are somewhere other than where you actually are and then have your friends and kids enslave the native population.
ReplyDeleteMathsquatch out.
I have long wondered how we are meant to celebrate Lee-Jackson Day...
ReplyDeleteWombat, because we do not live in the Soviet Union during Stalin's rule, I would tell the CIA that this student is possibly a member of Al-Queda, the Taliban, Al Shabaab, Hizb-ut Tahrir or whatever other bullshit "terrorist"* group the government now has its knickers in a twist over. It may be ruthless, immoral, and fattening but this clod is just too dumb for college.
ReplyDelete_______________________________________
* One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter and a third's religious figure. Thanks to how much the Bush regime overhyped the threat I believe nothing about any "terrorist group".... Osama bin Laden is the Emmanuel Goldstein of the twenty-first century.
@BlackDog -- I wonder, too, but am glad that it's no longer Lee-Jackson-King Day (which it was for some years in my state, which I suspect may be the same as yours; for those not in that state -- yes, that's King as in Martin Luther King, whose day was celebrated right along with those of two "heroes" of the Confederacy. The two celebrations are now separated by a few days, which reduces the cognitive dissonance just a bit).
ReplyDeleteOn a related note, here's a comment from an English friend who visited the Library of Congress to do some research on the Civil War, and stayed across the river in Alexandria: "who decided to name a highway [route 1/Jefferson Davis Highway] in sight of a nation's capital after the president of an attacking nation, or, if you prefer, a traitor to that nation?"
This probably "outs" both my own and BlackDog's general location, but, what the heck, it's a big state, with many colleges and universities (and, for all I know, there may be more than one state with a Lee-Jackson plus-or-minus-King day).
And no, I'm not bashing the South -- I was born below the Mason-Dixon line -- but even the most committed Southerner has got to admit that there are a few oddities left over from the strong feelings aroused by the War Between the States (and I suspect that they feel like something more than oddities to some African-American Southerners).
@Prof and Circumstance (and Wombat an Mathsquatch): I, too, provide a detailed semester calendar, only to be asked repeatedly by students when this or that is due (and, yes, having two things due on the same day always throws them). The part that really surprises them is when I have to consult the calendar and/or assignment prompt myself in order to answer their questions. No, I don't memorize the deadlines; I've got two or three preps, and better things to keep in what short-term memory I have left. That's why I create the course calendar, and keep a personal calendar as well.
Yes, this happens every year at Columbus Day and Veteran's Day, yet I will get some students who think they need to come on Labor Day. Meanwhile Thanksgiving keeps getting longer and longer despite our official calendar's designation of only Thursday and Friday. I really wish we would just take the whole week, add it on at the end, and be done with it.
ReplyDeleteHere's another idea for celebrating Columbus Day:
ReplyDeleteSubmit a grant proposal insisting that the Earth's circumference is only 10,000 miles, and that you can get from Spain to China in three weeks in a sailboat.