Saturday, October 16, 2010

Trade-offs are a bitch (just like me!) the Bitchy Bear Blows her top

JESUS EFFING CHRIST!!!

Ok, I am teaching a class that starts halfway into the semester and that all students think should be cake because "it's only 2 credit hours instead of four".

Look, morons, you get 2 credits instead of 4 because we only meet for six weeks instead of the usual 12.  That's why. It's a four-credit course sliced in half.  Got it? That doesn't mean you do half the work of a 4-credit course over half the time.  That would be a 1 credit course, INSTEAD OF THE 2 CREDIT COURSE YOU ARE SIGNED UP FOR.  So quit whining about the workload.

And, really, thanks for emailing me and expecting me to respond favorably to "I work full-time so I can't come to any of your classes. How will you accommodate me with additional assignments?" requests.  I love this request.  I really do. I think working full-time is so laudable.  It's something so few people do anymore.

So here's how I'll accommodate you: I'll drop you from the rolls ASAP to save you the tuition on a class you can't pass.  Sorry, hunnybunny sugar-pee, but my admin has crammed "student centered learning" so far up my ass I've drunk the Kool-Aid and all my classes involve you working in groups on projects all the time. Every. Single. Class. Period. You not being there means you get a zero for each and every one of those student-centered, project-based learning activities.

Thus,  I have wracked my brain to design a class that stays student-centered even though we admit too many students to actually DO student-centered teaching well, and that means a) no lectures and b) I don't have time to field the 1,000,0001 special requests for everybody's special special schedule.

 Back when I worked full-time and had to miss class, I just had one of my buddies tape the lecture and I borrowed their notes. But...we're all guides on the side now to make sure none of us "oppress" you with our "hegemonic views on the material**" so that you can bloom like the fucking blossom you are.  Which, unfortunately, means you have to haul your ass to class so we can watch you bloom.

Tradeoffs = a bitch.

Here's my advice. Throw a tantrum in front of the program director so that he  gets his ass moving on the online degree program. Until that happens, you're not in a program with infinite time flexibility.  Either deal with it or not, but don't expect me to.


**AKA "our views as the only person in the fucking room who has actually *read* and *thought about* the actual material"

4 comments:

  1. I hate those classes; trying to jam a semester's worth of work in half the time always seemed spastic to me, but then I never liked any alternates to the semester system.

    Tell the next complainer that they lose grade points if they bitch again, then yell out AND THAT GOES FOR THE REST OF YOU SCURVY, SLIME-PAWED UNTERMENTCHEN!

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  2. I had a class like that once... I taught it twice a semester (and once/week) and it was to help certain grad students get up to speed on some things. Not hard, but we wanted it to be enlightening... and it was ONLY pass/fail, but...

    I had a grad flake who (a) was involved in some local political stuff (good) so was late to class and missed at least one session, (b) wasn't real brilliant anyway (bad), and, while suffering with bad grades in the class HAD to miss the class before Thanksgiving to go "home", wherever that was (although this person knew the class schedule and was a full time working member of the community). And... that session had some key material in the class.

    Guess who didn't get a "pass"?

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  3. I taught two sections of a six-week, full-credit, essay and research composition class one summer at a CC where I adjuncted, and the response to the syllabus was truly astounding. Students couldn't wrap their brains around the fact that they had to meet all the requirements for the full-semester version of the course.

    We met the same number of hours per week, just more hours at a time. Students were required to do the same amount of writing with a much quicker turnaround.

    I pointed this out at the very beginning of the shortened term. I warned them that this would be a lot of work in a little amount of time, that the tradeoff was that they were only spending half their summer in class...but that they'd work their butts off to do have that other half off.

    Students cried (literally) when they received drafts back. They complained to my chair. They yelled at me. They rebelled by not attending class (a big mistake).

    The few who passed said that they felt like they'd worked 'round the clock for this one class.

    Tradeoff is a bitch. I'll never teach that schedule again. I don't care how stressful it was for the snowflakes; I needed to breathe deeply for an hour in total silence after every section with them, just to flush away their overwhelming and misdirected negativity.

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  4. I go through this every summer. Invariably some twit says "I thought it would be relaxed because it's summer session, but this is even harder than regular chem."

    If it was easier to take in the summer, why wouldn't we just do everything in 5 weeks and finish off the ol' BA in under a year?

    This is where my old piano teacher would go Tourettes in Russian, but you could tell it all meant "you're dumb".

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