I don't really have any more smackdowns to administer, because my current position is actually pretty sweet and my boss is a decent fellow. However, there are a few things I'd like to change at my institution in general:
1. I wish (on behalf of the cleaning staff, who work really gorram hard and get no recognition unless shit doesn't get done) that the students would clean up after themselves. The main floor women's washroom looks like it's been invaded by baboons by the end of the day most days (I can only imagine what the men's room looks like). Despite the plethora of rubbish bins and recycling stations, the bloody kids still leave their crap all over the place - strewn across tables, on shelves in the library (!), and in the potted plants (!!). Seriously - your mother doesn't work here, and if she did she wouldn't have time to follow you around and pick up your leavings.
2. On a more specific note - I wish people would stop abusing the plants. I'm reasonably sure that Coke, coffee, and candy wrappers are not good for them. And I also wish that the well-meaning souls who keep watering the plants in my area would stop - that's my job, and the last time I checked on them the poor things were drowning.
3. I wish this one grad student I do expense reports for would tip properly. I don't want to call him out on it, because it's really not my place, but rounding up to the nearest dollar isn't a tip; it's an insult. I don't know if he doesn't know about tipping conventions (he's an international student), or if he's just cheap, but I really feel bad for servers who get stuck with him when he goes to conferences.
4. I wish the hot German post-doc in my department would get a better barber. He's got a dead sexy accent, and he's total eye candy except for a couple of weeks every few months when he looks like a mad Australian sheep-shearer went to town on him.
5. I wish that people who want me to look over their papers and PowerPoint presentations would give them to me a little earlier than the day they're due. I don't mind doing it, especially for the international students, because English really is one of the most confusing and arbitrary languages out there. But when I proofread something, I proofread the hell out of it, and a two-hour window is just not enough time for that.
Short haircuts are a Central European thing; if you love Dieter, love his short hair.
ReplyDeleteAt least you're not in a dorm with the little mothers; at Notheastern Ghetto Tech they would smash food and newspapers in the elevators every weekend, and weekends began at 5pm Thursday night.
Verdammt...should be "Northeastern" Ghetto Tech.
ReplyDeleteOur mascot was a crackhead eagle.
Actually, some coffee and other caffeinated beverages are good for plants. Just don't overdose them.
ReplyDeleteYou probably should know that, when students get others to "proofread the hell" out of and correct the grammar in their essays, they, the students, can be charged with plagiarism and/or academic misconduct, particularly in English and composition courses but, theoretically, in all courses. Very few people are aware of this, I think.
ReplyDeleteRight in front of me today a student balled up a tissue, threw it at a garbage can 10 yards away, and then did nothing when it landed on the carpet instead of in the receptacle.
ReplyDeleteShe kept talking to me, and I said... "You're kidding, right?"
All this talk of gifting made me think of these cool "ass hat" and "snowflake" pieces I found online.
ReplyDelete@issyvoo: Really? Huh. I figured that as long as I didn't touch the content (which I don't, because I frankly don't understand most of the high-level theoretical elements of... er... basket weaving), then doing things like correcting articles, suggesting a similar word or phrase with a more appropriate connotation, and altering the order of words in a sentence isn't a problem. Does it just apply to coursework? Most of what I get for review consists of early drafts of conference papers, grant applications, etc.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about things like conference papers but certainly when I'm marking course work, I'm marking for more than just content. It's very important to also see if the student has language skills. If someone "fixes" grammar, vocabulary, word order, etc. for the student, that's no longer the student's work. It's his or her ideas, yes, but not a representation of his/her ability to get those words onto paper. I have reported people for this sort of thing and been backed by my college so I'm not just making this up.
ReplyDelete@issyvoo/@Electric Maenad:
ReplyDeleteI teach a developmental-ish composition course (in addition to first-year and advanced comp courses), and I encourage my students (particularly my international/ESL/ELL students) to seek outside proofreading help. I also work closely with a comp teacher whose background is in TESL/TEFL, and she actually runs an institutionally-backed proofreading service for international students in our department. TESL/TEFL grad students earn internship credit for working with these students to improve their writing outside of their classes.
The reason I encourage my students to work with others to revise, edit, and proofread their writing is that some students (like those with learning disorders such as dyslexia) literally cannot proofread their own writing. Besides, in the "real world," writing doesn't happen in a vacuum -- all (good) writers seek out collaboration at some point in the writing process. And I think writers -- especially international writers -- benefit from working with a native speaker or expert writer during their writing process.
I suppose it's worth finding out from the academic integrity office on your campus for sure, but issyvoo's perspective strikes me as relatively rare. It's an interesting point to consider, in any case.
We have a writing center at our college run by our English department. I encourage students to go there to get help with their writing. This, though, is a collaborative process where they proofread and edit together with a qualified tutor. The problem arises when they get others to do all of the corrections for them. That is not sanctioned at my college and is a reportable offense.
ReplyDeleteHuh, interesting. I'll have to think more about this.
ReplyDeleteSorry for the hijack! Carry on.
In some European countries, and I presume elsewhere, waiters and waitresses are paid a living wage by their employer. You might point out to the grad student of item 3 that that is unfortunately not the case in the United States. Another possible cultural difference: a restaurant failing to pay a server tips put on credit cards, which would be quite illegal in the U.S., is not unusual in some foreign cities.
ReplyDeleteIf it's for a conference or publication, I have no problem with your proofreading student and faculty papers, particularly for international students or faculty. If it's for a class, please don't: classwork needs to be the student's own work. An exception to this is that students are allowed to get help from the Writing Center, but the people there should be trained in how to help students without doing the work for them. The only other exception is that students may also get help from faculty in the courses in which the work is due during their office hours. Faculty also ought to know how to help without writing the paper for a student: the Socratic method (in other words, teaching by asking questions) works great.
ReplyDeleteThe tip issue is indeed cultural.
ReplyDeleteIn Europe it is quite common to just round up to the nearest Euro. Tips can get a bit higher if the German practice is used, which is to pay separately. The waitress then goes around the table announcing each person's bill. That person then hands over the money and has to orally announce to the waitress, with everyone at the table listening, how much s/he is paying so that the waitress can return the proper change:
Waitress: "Sixteen Euros fifty."
Customer hands over a 20 and says, "Eighteen."
So everyone - including people at nearby tables, if they're paying attention - knows how much you personally are tipping.
Even then, however, tips of over 10% are very rare.
My pet peeve is the spitting. GAH, the spitting. In the potted plants! On the ground! Everywhere! FOUL! I actually grabbed a student's arm once and said "THAT, sir, is the way that disease is spread!" as I pointed to a globule of his phlegm on the brick walk between us.
ReplyDeleteIt was out of my mouth before I realized what I was doing, and that my short little self (comparatively) was grabbing the arm of one of our 6' 8" basketball players.
It's hard to say which of us was more shocked, but we both proceeded to our respective destinations.
Actually, I don't think disease is REALLY spread by spitting, at least at this point in American history, but it was at the height of the swine flu hysteria.
@Blackdog: Eugh. Gods, yes. And also, if students get drunk at the campus pub and end up vomiting, is it so much to ask for them to at least *try* to make it to a rubbish bin (or at least off the sidewalk) before doing so?
ReplyDeleteLike others above, I make a distinction between what is acceptable on course work, and what is acceptable on professional presentations. On course work, I (and my colleagues, and our writing center) tell students that they can seek help with identifying individual errors and/or patterns of error, and with learning to fix the recurring errors, but nobody should write, rewrite, or edit their paper for them. Basically, anyone they choose can circle or otherwise mark the problem areas, and fix one instance of a recurring error as an example, but that's it. The rest is up to them, on the theory that that's how they learn.
ReplyDeleteFor professional presentations (and this probably includes final versions of Masters' theses and dissertations -- basically, anything that is going to be published in some way that may reach beyond the university at which it originates), it's entirely appropriate to seek out editing/copyediting/proofreading help, from colleagues, family, friends, and/or professionals. The writing, however, should still be the author's own. And any significant proofreading/editing help should be mentioned in the acknowledgments. If one is tempted to write "x, who really should be listed as a co-author" in the acknowledgments (a phrase once commonly applied to academic wives, in the days before academic wives started pursuing separate academic careers, complete with their own books), then one should, in fact, list x as a co-author.
There are some very smart people, including one nuclear physicist I know, who can't spell worth a damn. In fact, we had a funny incident in my grad program: a visiting scholar hired one of my fellow grad students as a research assistant, but neglected to mention that one of the duties involved was proofreading/editing the work of the visiting scholar, who was brilliant but/and dyslexic. It turned out that the grad student fell in the same category, so they had to find a third party to do the editing/proofreading. The scholar is now a fairly active blogger; I assume that spellcheck has solved the problem, or that (s)he still uses a proofreader.