It was the end of the summer term. The weather was hot and stuffy, and the A/C was not working too well, so by all logic the snowflakes should have melted. Alas, they did not. Now I am easygoing in general, but as I was helping them review for the final the next day....
Student, interrupting in a whining, plaintive voice: These questions are too hard....
I blinked. Stared for a moment, open-jawed. I could not believe it.WHERE WERE YOU? When I was sitting in my office every day, waiting for any of you to come by asking for help,
where were you? When the [Subject Instruction Center]
was open to answer your questions, where were you? When the [General Help Center] was open to answer your questions, where were you? When Mr. Lecturer, the actual instructor of the course, was teaching these things in lecture, where were you? When he had his office hours, where were you? You didn't put any effort into this course, none at all. Now you have the barefaced, unmitigated gall to tell me that the questions are too hard? THEY ARE NOT!
And no....this was not an interior monologue. This was the rant I gave them, and they stared, shell-shocked at me. It was also the day that they were to give student evaluations. Afterwards, they said they understood where I was coming from.
I hate that - "the questions were too hard".
ReplyDeleteI work in a medical field and teach the medical field students- the questions were too hard??? Are you kidding me? Are you going to tell you patient that his symptoms, or diagnosis is too hard when he shows up with X illness???
OMG, these people make me nuts!!!
I recently told my class that the following week was going to be the most important week of the semester and not to skip class unless they had their eyes plucked out by crows like in The Birds. 11 out of 28 people showed up on Monday. On Wednesday I put a warmup problem on the board that I knew would take those who had attended Monday a good 10 minutes to solve. The fucktards kept raising their hands to tell me that I made a mistake. I kept telling them I didn't and that if they'd gotten their useless asses out of bed like I warned them to, they'd know that and to either open their books, or mouth breath until the good kids were done because I wasn't explaining it. So they chose mouth breath until one of the good kids solved the problem on the board. Then they wanted to ask questions. None of the good kids had any so we moved on. It's now going to be a HUGE part of the last quiz and the final.
ReplyDeleteWHERE THE FUCK WERE THEY??? (We need a new punctuation mark that means ! and ? at the same time.)
"The questions are too hard" is SO childish, isn't it? It's hard to imaging entrusting any student who does this to ANY position of real responsibility, beyond watching a fry station.
ReplyDeleteP.S. Bravo to Boaz for actually saying all that out loud. I hope you don't have a jagoff department chair who sides with the children.
ReplyDelete@Womabt: It already exists. It is called an interrobang: ‽ / ?! / !?
ReplyDeleteHow do you make !? print on top of each other?
ReplyDeleteCopy and paste from Wikipedia. :)
ReplyDeleteIn Word (I use 2010), type 203D, then type ALT + X.
I know where they were!!!!
ReplyDelete"Masturbating to Maury."
I just shrug off comments like "this is too hard."
ReplyDeleteI've become fairly numb/hardened to snowflake comments like that, and any part of me that wants revenge will get it when I post final grades.
Tuning out student bullshit is an art I'm working on. Or maybe a survival adaptation. Some bullshit gets through though, and does torture me, but the amount is dropping.